Server Version#: 1.22.1.4228
Player Version#: Web playback
Tuner Make/Model: SiliconDust HDHR Quad
Since the HDHR records a .ts file, it looks like Plex is transcoding the stream for playback when I watch through my browser (Mac or Windows). I see a solid orange progress bar of how far through the show I am along with a faint orange bar for how far it has pre-transcoded. If I hit the 30 second skip button and land within this faint orange bar, playback resumes immediately. If I jump outside of that portion, there a delay, sometimes quite long, before playback resumes and the transcoding bar progresses.
Also, if I attempt to jump backwards once I’ve jumped past the pre-transcoded section, frequently “the wrong thing” happens – lockups, backwards goes forwards, weirdness.
So, I would like to pre-transcode as much of the show as possible as soon as possible, but ideally only when playing the show (no need to transcode immediately after recording, unless that’s my only option). I’ve changed the Transcoder->Transcoder default throttle buffer from 180 to 600, and many other values, but this doesn’t seem to either work, or do what I want it to do.
Is there a setting that I can change to improve this skip behavior other than updating the transcoder throttle? Can I get it transcode more/all of the show I’m currently watching?
Is there a way that I could get the Plex webpage to launch VLC for viewing recordings?
That way Plex keeps track of what’s watched and can delete files after they’ve been viewed, but VLC does the actual playback, which it can do of the .ts file directly without transcoding.
No. Webpages can’t redirect to another program that way. Also, redirecting playback would break Plex’s ability to track progress as well as a bunch of other things.
Well, VLC keeps track of playback position too, but I can see how Plex wouldn’t know when the file was “done”, but I would be willing to turn off automatic delete to get skipping through commercials to work better.
If skipping forward in the stream worked better, that’s all I need. I guess this all stems from the problem of skipping too far forward too quickly breaking the stream (then I have to stop it, go back to the main page, start it again, sometimes twice, etc.). I’m looking for a solution to that and just trying to think of workarounds until that’s fixed.
For what it’s worth, I just enabled the DNLA server on Plex and opened VLC and selected my Plex server and scrolled through the list of TV shows to find the one I was watching in the browser and started playing it. I can skip forward through commercials quite rapidly in this setup, so it’s a decent work around for now.
Not on purpose, though I have noticed that sometimes when I open a second browser window to look at what Plex is doing, it sometimes shows a paused copy of the show I’m watching in the other window in the lower left corner of the new window and then the dashboard shows it too. I try to close the second instance when I notice this since it can send the CPU to 100% on the media server.
In this case, I was just watching the video and when I got a commercial I clicked the skip forward button a few times and then it stopped going forward. I waited a minute, nothing, I clicked backwards a few times (sometimes that fixes it), nothing, so I opened a second connection to the Plex server to check the logs, couldn’t see anything helpful (though it did look like it thought it was still transcoding things even though playback was frozen), then grabbed the logs and uploaded them here.
That explains the second session, but not why it would have a different duration. That is weird. Instead of opening a second window, just minimize the current player window. The down arrow in the tope left of the video. This will allow you to access the rest of Plex Web without a second playback window showing up. Can you get me a new log after reproducing this? That second playback is confusing.
