Server Version#: 1.13.5.5332
Player Version#: Android 7.5.0.6642
Hi - I am trying to stream 1080 HD (from Plex Live TV video recordings) to my Chromecast devices. I am also trying to stream 1080 HD video to other home devices, like my LG OLED TV that has a Plex App installed.
My home WiFi is pretty beefy - I can get 150 Mbps transfer rates (via a mesh network) throughout the house.
My LG TV is hard-wired to my home network’s router.
When Chromecasting, I see constant buffering issues every minute or two. When streaming, I also noticed that my QNAP NAS Is almost always @ 100% CPU.
I also see pop-up messages that the PMS isn’t powerful enough when playing the video on the LG TV.
I have no idea as to whether the PMS is sending the video files across my local network, or sending the video files up to the internet - I couldn’t find that information. I guess I could set up Wireshark …
Are there any Plex/QNAP settings I can change to get rid of these streaming issues? It doesn’t seem like there is any hardware transcoding going on. My PMS is pretty much useless if it can’t stream properly…
Update: I was able to get hardware transcoding working for Plex by removing the official QNAP Codex Pack. My CPU usage when streaming dropped from 100% down to about 25%.
However … I still see buffering when Chromecasting, so I’m still looking for a solution.
Update #2: After deleting the QNAP CodexPack, I now see that I can Chormecast OK and also stream 4k UHD video without buffering - as long as I don’t turn on PGS subtitles.
If I enable PGS subtitles, I see constant buffering issues when playing 1080 HD videos on my local network.
I have noticed that playing SRT subtitles works fine, though.
SRT subtitles are text based. Almost all the players allow text subtitles to be sent as a 3rd data stream then leveraging the player API to display them.
PGS, VOBSUB, and other image-based subtitles are not so lucky. They must be burned-in to the the video stream. This burning isn’t supported by the hardware acceleration ASICs
Thanks for the info @ChuckPa … It looks like the QNAP TS-453 Pro won’t be a viable option for Plex streaming then. My wife and I need subtitles at our age
I switched my Plex Media Server over to my 6-year old main PC, and I can stream 1080 HD with PGS subtitles fine now… It sux a little that I need to keep my main PC running 24/7 again to record videos - it definitely was nicer to have the QNAP operate as the PMS.
