Problem playing 4K media

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Plex team,

I’ve been having problems lately playing 4K movies.

One important thing to note before hand: I was able to play the same movies I’ll list here (with exception of Coco as it is a new movie) with no problem. From beginning to end with no flaws or interruptions.

Here’s what I’ve been experiencing:
Whenever I try to play 4K movies, either Direct Stream to Chromecast Ultra, or transcode via AppleTv or even Web Play (just to test) I see different outcomes, but all problematic.

In Chromecast the movie stops, as if reached the end. And always at the same moment, although each movie has its “own” moment. For example, Coco always stops at 15 seconds, Thor Ragnarok at 40 something seconds, Daddys Home 2 at 50 something seconds. But for each movie, it stops at always the same time.

In AppleTV the movie won’t start and when I check the progress bar I notice the pointer sliding to the right as if the whole movie was being fast forwarded, the screen keeps black, the wheel spinning and the progress bar reaches the end in 5 seconds or so.

On Web player the movie never starts, infinite wheel spinning.

I can, although, convert the movie to 265 (1080) and then I can play all movies with no problem. But that kind of defeat the purpose of having 4K media, 4K TVs, Chromecast Ultras, AppleTV 4Ks and the like.

What I’ve tried so far:

  • Reinstalled the Android app (to stream to Chromecast)
  • Checked the space left on all drives, I still have plenty (hundreds of gigs)
  • Factory reset the Chromecast
  • Downgraded Plex to 4 versions ago, then 3, then 2, then 1 but the problem persists
  • Completely reset the PMS (even removed the “AppLocal/Plex Media Server” files and started the Library from scratch
  • Downloaded the newly released version of Plex (I think it was released today) - 1.12.1.4885
  • Checked movies I had played throughout before, and yes, the problem now occurs
  • Played the same files (as mentioned before here) transcoding to 1080 and the movie plays fine
  • Deleted all the codecs and tried playing again
  • Tried to check if the problem was related with the Audio, but both DTS and TrueHD (when converted to Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital+) caused the same issue

I’m writing this “ticket” as I’ve completely ran out of options/ideas.

I’m attaching the Log Files (as suggested by @ChuckPA on another thread (no verbose and generated 30 seconds after the latest incident).

Please help!

Flavio Santini

1 Like
2

Plex team?! @ChuckPA ?? Any comments??

3

Your processor is too slow to keep up with realtime conversion of the media and no hardware acceleration is being detected
If the hardware were detected, it would be listed here.
Mar 17, 2018 17:34:14.228 [17664] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:

Please observe speed= entries.

progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=9600&vdec_packets=39&vdec_hw_ok=21&speed=0.5&vdec_hw_status=1 (16 live) Signed-in Token (flaviosantini)
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.188 [17436] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:60644] 206 PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=9600&vdec_packets=39&vdec_hw_ok=21&speed=0.5&vdec_hw_status=1 (16 live) 0ms 326 bytes
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.691 [13852] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:60645 (Loopback)] PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=9896&vdec_packets=51&vdec_hw_ok=33&speed=0.9&vdec_hw_status=1 (17 live) Signed-in Token (flaviosantini)
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.691 [17436] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:60645] 206 PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=9896&vdec_packets=51&vdec_hw_ok=33&speed=0.9&vdec_hw_status=1 (17 live) 0ms 326 bytes
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.912 [17436] DEBUG - handleStreamRead code 335544539: short read
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.915 [17436] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as flaviosantini
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.915 [21020] DEBUG - Request: [10.0.0.23:60640 (Subnet)] GET /player/proxy/poll?deviceClass=pc&protocolVersion=1&protocolCapabilities=timeline%2Cplayback%2Cnavigation%2Cmirror%2Cplayqueues&timeout=1 (15 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (flaviosantini)
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:03.916 [21020] DEBUG - Beginning read from two-way stream.
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:04.199 [9132] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:60646 (Loopback)] PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=7133&vdec_packets=64&vdec_hw_ok=46&speed=0.9&vdec_hw_status=1 (16 live) Signed-in Token (flaviosantini)
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:04.200 [17436] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:60646] 206 PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=7133&vdec_packets=64&vdec_hw_ok=46&speed=0.9&vdec_hw_status=1 (16 live) 1ms 326 bytes
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:04.706 [11960] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:60647 (Loopback)] PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=6202&vdec_packets=77&vdec_hw_ok=59&speed=1.2&vdec_hw_status=1 (16 live) Signed-in Token (flaviosantini)
Mar 17, 2018 17:54:04.707 [17436] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:60647] 206 PUT /video/:/transcode/session/9q7v18fbz674bkg2a20dskdy/99f0c982-2afd-4132-8331-4b397f57400e/progress?progress=0.0&size=-22&remaining=6202&vdec_packets=77&vdec_hw_ok=59&speed=1.2&vdec
4

Transcoding 4K HEVC is no joke without dedicated hardware. You would need a 10-core Skylake-X, Xeon, or Threadripper to do it via CPU.

5

@ChuckPA when playing 4K media my processor gets at 5% at most, so I don’t agree with that statement. I do have a GTX1080, and by what I read it is capable of having hardware acceleration, can you provide me some guidance on how to make that work?

Another important question, why was it working until 2 weeks ago? And it has been working for 4 months at least.

1 Like
6

@ChuckPA also, what do you mean by realtime conversion? I’m seeing DirectStream when I check the Activity page in Plex.

7

@ChuckPA one more info: while I was testing this weekend, when I forced the conversion I could see the Origin and Destination formats both with the “(hw)” mark, telling me it was using Hardware Acceleration. Am I mistaken on that?

8

If you see (hw) that tells you hardware is involved. You are using Windows and I’m the Linux guy. If it behaves differently for you then so it does. It has always been my experience the transcoder reports HW decision.

You might have a video (e.g. VC-1) which won’t be hardware decoded.

9

@ChuckPA What I was saying is that I only see the (hw) mark if I’m transcoding from 4K to 1080. Otherwise I don’t see that.

I added Plex Media Server to the list of Programs in the NVidia 3D settings and the speed went up from 0.x to 6.x. But the problem is still there. Videos stopping at the same moment.

Please take a look at the newer logs generated just now.

10

Here’s the activity when I’m converting to 1080p:

jq6ladpqx0q7.png785×609 378 KB

In this case it is converting to 1080 and using (apparently by the hw marks) hardware acceleration

11

I also found this in the latest logs (after playing the movie converting to 1080):

Mar 21, 2018 12:16:13.645 [19144] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using hardware decode accelerator dxva2
Mar 21, 2018 12:16:13.645 [19144] DEBUG - [Universal] Using local file path instead of URL: E:\Media\Movies\Coco.2017.2160p.BluRay.REMUX.HEVC.TrueHD.7.1.Atmos-FGT.mkv
Mar 21, 2018 12:16:13.645 [19144] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support not present
Mar 21, 2018 12:16:13.645 [19144] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: dxva2, final encoder: nvenc

hope it helps! :smile:

12

see the ‘not present’ ? that’s probably the one you want.

Notice the other issue? You have Coco playing OK. I think dxva2 is the Windows one. I know the nvenc is for nVidia.

This is where I will need to ask someone else, @OttoKerner , to take over. The only “Windows” I really do involves window cleaner and a towel :smiley:

13

haha

OK, thanks for your help so far!

@OttoKerner feel free to join the discussion :smiley:

14

don’t know if it is relevant or not, but I also found this:

Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.194 [6988] DEBUG - Removed transcode output stream 0x166a93b0, active count 1 => 0
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.194 [19188] DEBUG - [Now] User is flaviosantini (ID: 1)
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.194 [12016] DEBUG - [TranscodeOutputStream] Input processing thread exited after writing 139712172 bytes, m_closed=1, m_endOfFileReached=0, session->isStopped()=0
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - [Now] Device is Chromecast (Chrome).
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - [Now] Profile is Chromecast
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - [Now] Updated play state for /library/metadata/10.
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - Statistics: (t1oai6tgui6zphzj1wi5fv8h) Reporting active playback in state 3 of type 1 (scrobble: 0) for account 1
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [13212] DEBUG - Killing job.
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Terminated session 0xade61f0:zsiyya6o34h3327u5ug12tp1 with reason Client stopped playback.
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.195 [19188] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Removing session 0xade61f0:zsiyya6o34h3327u5ug12tp1
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.198 [6988] DEBUG - Completed: [10.0.0.2:40009] 200 GET /:/timeline?ratingKey=10&key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F10&playQueueItemID=78&state=stopped&hasMDE=1&time=15000&duration=6302000 (25 live) TLS GZIP 11ms 798 bytes (pipelined: 2)
Mar 21, 2018 12:26:24.207 [13212] DEBUG - Job was already killed, not killing again.
15

Also, @OttoKerner I found this:
when playing 4K and transcoding to 1080p I can see that Plex is using the GPU resource from my PC. I’d say it’s safe to assume the Hardware Acceleration is happening. If I play 4K I don’t see that (as there is no need to transcode video, meaning it is being played via Direct Stream, correct?)

16

@OttoKerner any comments?

17

@flaviosantini said:
@OttoKerner any comments?

No. I have neither 4K media nor HEVC encoded files. And I have no 4K clients either.
So I cannot give any recommendations from experience.

I only know this: to successfully play 4K media nowadays, your file needs to be 100% compatible with the client (and crucially, what the Plex client on that device thinks is compatible).

Enable ‘debug’ logging on your server, if you haven’t already done so.
Restart Plex server
play the file for ~ 1 minute.
then inspect the Plex Media Server.log
search for lines containing MDE:, they will offer detail info why a transcoding was done, instead of direct play.

18

@OttoKerner thank you for sending this, but did you check the whole thread?

I don’t think your answer was related with the problem I’m experiencing.

The problem does not occur when transcoding, but when Direct Playing or Direct Streaming.

By enabling debug logging do you mean all the logs I have added to this thread already?

It was working before, I can promise you that. And it’s not working anymore. Something must’ve broken…

@ChuckPA any other ideas?

19

And I finally gave up on Plex for playing 4K content.

For those who are having the same problem I’ll tell you what I did: just bought the Oppo 4K player (UDP 205). This baby access your network and plays all and any media files you might have. MKV, yes; MP4, yes please; DVD TS files, sure why not! UHD M2TS HEVC 10 bit (TrueHD or DTS-MA) for dessert? Yesss!!!

This device is the best investment I could have thought of. In a way, thanks Plex for tanking on this feature or I’d never have to look for something that really works.

20

@flaviosantini said:
And I finally gave up on Plex for playing 4K content.

For those who are having the same problem I’ll tell you what I did: just bought the Oppo 4K player (UDP 205). This baby access your network and plays all and any media files you might have. MKV, yes; MP4, yes please; DVD TS files, sure why not! UHD M2TS HEVC 10 bit (TrueHD or DTS-MA) for dessert? Yesss!!!

This device is the best investment I could have thought of. In a way, thanks Plex for tanking on this feature or I’d never have to look for something that really works.

Wow! $1299 is a helluva lot to play for a media streamer when you can obtain the same functionality for a fraction of that price & without giving up Plex. There are many better clients than the Chromecast e.g. Amazon Fire TV 4k or Apple TV 4K running MrMC or Nvidia Shield.

1 Like