Server Version#: 1.25.5319
Player Version#: 8.28.0.30077
Android Version (NOT UPDATED) 8.2.3
Story: Updated from PMS 1.23.x to 1.25.5319, and that killed PMS. No option to start/stop Plex server. Settings in app and PMS were set to full access to external adopted storage.
Reformatted USB SSD and configured as removable storage. Rebuilt Plex from scratch and everything worked solid for 2 weeks, except HW transcoding was completely broken.
Today I can’t start PMS. No Start/stop server option. Hard and soft reboots don’t help. Nothing has changed, and I don’t use Shield for anything else. Have NOT updated to Shield experience 9 yet. It appears v1.25.x is unstable regardless.
UPDATE: PMS still dead. Both the internal and external drive mappings are inaccessible on my network despite being able to ping the Shield.
UPDATE2: I decided to delete cache/data and uninstall PMS. I sideloaded latest PMS v1.24 and hopefully can recover the DB, metadata, and bif files, but we’ll see.
That sounds like an issue with the Shield. PMS does not control being able to access the Shield from a computer. Did you try reconfiguring that access?
That’s not really a big concern to me at the moment, and I was able to access the shares from a different computer. Main concern is just getting PMS to work again (start/stop server button), and then being able to transcode. So, I’m rebuilding on v1.24 as we speak.
Ok, I was just thinking that if you were having trouble accessing these, maybe there was a problem with the Shield so PMS also couldn’t reach them. If PMS can’t reach the database, PMS will not run.
Updated from PMS 1.23.x to 1.25.5319, and that killed PMS
There was a significant change in 1.24.5 and later where an update is needed for your Plex database. This can take some time. If you updated from 1.23 to 1.25, you would have needed this change. Depending on the size of your database, this can take some time, especially on the Shield.
If you interrupted this during this update, you may have corrupted the database. A fresh reinstall of PMS would have been needed and appears to be what you did.
except HW transcoding was completely broken
Was this while playing content on the same Shield running PMS? If so, we recently identified a bug that we are trying to track down. You can follow along in Shield tv don't hw transcode.
So, I’m rebuilding on v1.24 as we speak.
Check the exact version you are using. See my note above about the database update. If you start with 1.24.4 or earlier, make sure to wait after updating. If you haven’t started, I’d recommend 1.24.5 so you won’t have this issue updating in the future.
There was no indication of the DB conversion when I went from 1.23 to 1.25. I did wait a significant amount of time, and the server start/stop button never appeared.
HW transcoding isn’t working when streaming over the internet. There’s no need to transcode playing directly from the Shield, so movies play fine locally.
I’m rebuilding with latest v1.24.5.5173. I believe after that it went v1.25, and my suspicion is that’s the build that broke transcoding.
EDIT: I couldn’t figure out how to restore the DB and metadata, no PMS start/stop button…
So, I’m back to adding libraries, scanning folders, and rebuilding intros and thumbnails. The lack of a comprehensive backup sucks big time. That should be fundamental to such an unpredictable platform. I wouldn’t even care much about rebuilding Plex if it were something like “import from last save”, but doing a 4 day recovery each time it breaks is extremely painful.
EDIT2: Plex will be churning for the next 4 days, but HW transcoding H.264 videos to my iOS phone on cellular data is working correctly, which is a good sign.
The Shield doesn’t show any type of message. You just have to wait. Not sure how long you waited but it can be a while (10-30 minutes) if you had a large database.
but HW transcoding H.264 videos to my iOS phone on cellular data is working correctly
Nothing’s changed, that’s still the same version of PMS you would have had access to earlier.
I still don’t know why my clean install v1.25 stopped working after 2 weeks (keep in mind I don’t have Shield Experience 9).
Since that version (1.25) doesn’t HW transcode, I’m happy to just get back to what should be a stable and functional v.1.24.5.
I’ve tested HW transcoding on my iOS device on several h.265 videos now, and everything is working smoothly so far. If this turns out to be stable, I’ll probably never upgrade unless some killer feature comes out.
