Press play, get audio, no video. Remains on selection screen.

Plex Players Player Betas
1

Hello,

Sporadic issue that can’t be reproduced on demand. I’ve been having this issue for a few months, the only reason I haven’t reported it is because I’ve been trying to find a way to get it reproducable. So far, all attempts have been failures. As far as I can tell, this problem is just completely random.

When I start playing a file (sometimes a TV show, sometimes a movie), when I click on play the display/menu with appear to “blink” for want of a better description, then return to where it was. I then hear the audio from the show, but I still see the screen you need to be at to start playing a show.

Pressing the play/pause button does just that - pauses and continues on the audio. Pressing the “menu” button usually takes you out of the video back to the screen I’m currently seeing, but when this problem happens I can go through menus and the audio from the show will keep playing. The only way to stop it is to press the “home” button and go back to the ATV’s menu. At this point I usually quit out of Plex, and re-open it. If I then go back to the exact same show, it will play normally (ie, it will not have this problem).

It seems to happen once a week or once a fortnight, though I’ve also had it happen within quick succession of happens, watch normally, happens, then won’t happen for a week or two. I have not been able to predict its ocurrence, otherwise I would have recorded video of it so I could demo it.

If there’s any more specific details you’d like me to try to provide or tests you’d like me to do, please let me know (ie, turn on logging and make sure I report timestamps of it - I’m leaving my system on default settings for now).

All my media is pre-converted to mp4 containers, h.264 video codecs and aac audio codecs. The videos this has happened to are a combination of 1080p, 720p, 480p. 20-minutes to 130-minutes in length. I have direct play enabled, but I’ve had this happen when I’ve been using direct stream too (with direct play disabled).

This has happened through multiple versions of tvOS, Plex for ATV, and Plex Media Server. My current versions at time of writing is

Plex Media Server 1.4.1.3362 (last ocurred on 1.2.0.3167 PlexDVR Beta4 - updated the server this morning but haven’t tried playing anything yet)
macOS 10.12.3

Plex for ATV 1.7 (4782)
tvOS 10.1.1

Other threads that have brought up this issue - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1375357/ - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1300348/

2

This happens to me as well. It’s very annoying having to exit the Plex app to cut off the audio. Sometimes I also get the same issue with the quick ‘blinking’ except there’s no audio. Essentially when this happens I have to press the play/pause button a few times before the video actually plays.

3

yes, same problem here

4

Ditto. It only happens intermittently but it’s very frustrating when it does.

5

Out of pure luck, I caught it happening on video tonight. Hopefully a video of the problem happening can help in diagnosing the problem.

https://youtu.be/xqN7pdDBUjM

6

Also out of pure luck I have an observation that might help. I have a harmony hub and remote, tbh I never really use the harmony remote, I use a universal one I like better. I had Plex open, I left my ATV input back to DVR input, I then picked up the Logitech remote and hit the “movie” (the ATV) icon and voila, this issue occurred. I couldn’t figure out what file was playing but I heard the audio and saw the Plex home screen.

IF I’m completely out of Plex, then replicate this steps I don’t see the issue. If I try to replicate a few times there are times when the video properly catches and plays with the audio. As one who programs universal remotes a lot, It’s one of those things where you feel like a Pause is needed so where, I hope that makes sense.

When I’m using the ATV remote or my 3rd party universal remote, I never see or have ever seen this issue.

7

Hey, thanks for the reports. We’ve seen this issue ourselves and are working on tracking down the cause. The rare occurrence is making it a bit tricky but we’re working on it!

8

Once again, I have no idea if this information is in any way shape or form useful or not. It’s just another observation made. I’m a sysadmin by trade, not a Swift/tvOS coder - so no idea if this information is in any way relevant and helpful or not.

When everything works, once I press play I get the usual loading spinny thing (I’m a drunk sysadmin, so this is as technical as I get), it blacks out quickly and returns really quickly to the loading spinny thing for a while, then the show starts.

When it doesn’t work, I get the usual loading spinny thing, it blacks out, and I go back to the load screen. Then I get the audio only.

I’m on annual leave ATM and marathoning Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Lots of short episodes, so it’s been happening “more than usual” for me. If there’s any testing or log capturing you want me to do, let me know.

9

We made some changes in the 1.9 release version that went out yesterday we hope might resolve this. If you see it again after updating could you let us know?

10

@chfredrickson said:
We made some changes in the 1.9 release version that went out yesterday we hope might resolve this. If you see it again after updating could you let us know?

Will do.

Edit: 2017-04-19 - Editing this post as I don’t think there’s much point bumping this thread unecessarily. 12 episodes of American Dad last night, didn’t see this issue once.