I have a Plex Running on Qnap TS-231P2 and since it’s not capable of hardware or software transcode I want to avoid transcode completely. Therefore, I have set the following on the Server already
Settings => Quality => Video Quality Maximum
Settings => Remote Access => No upload speed limit and 'Limit remote stream bitrate: Original'
Settings => Debug => 'Enable Direct Play'
Also, verified and under the Remote Access tab I got remote access configured properly plus port forward set on my router correctly so Plex Relay doesn’t come into the picture.
Still, when I try to play movies from different clients like iPad, iPhone etc I get the follow error message
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.610 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.610 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 2645
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.610 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Zuhanás a szerelembe (1984): Direct Play is disabled
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.610 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Zuhanás a szerelembe (1984): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.610 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Zuhanás a szerelembe (1984): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/eac3
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.611 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec eac3 when profile only allows mp3
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.611 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Zuhanás a szerelembe (1984): selected media 0 / 2645 > Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.612 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Calculated bandwidth of 1860kbps exceeds bandwidth limit. Changing decision parameters provided by client to fit bandwidth limit of 1000kbps
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.612 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Determining preferred transcode encoders through transcode only decision.
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.613 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Scaled up video bitrate to 1498Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.613 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Scaled up video bitrate to 1498Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.614 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Streaming Resource: Reducing playback quality for 952kbps stream bitrate: video resolution to 720x346, audio channels to 2, quality to 5, disable video DS as 1513kbps is > the 835kbps available
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.615 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Scaled up video bitrate to 1498Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.615 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - [Transcode] Clipped max bitrate to 835Kbps based on client-requested limit
Despite the fact that I have set Original or Maximum quality on the server at every possible option and the same on all my clients (tried 3 different clients) it still tries to transcode the remote stream. Any idea or suggestion?
What information is showing in the “now playing” tile for that playback on the Plex server dashboard? If there’s no quality restriction set on your client but Plex considers there’s a 1 Mbps restriction this could be related to some indirect/relayed streaming…
Problem is I can’t verify anything from ‘now playing’ option as the movie never plays. I’m suspecting also. Plex Relay kicking in which is throttling down the bandwidth however, port forwarding is done properly I can reach the port from the outside world and remote access is configured ok too.
Do you have a way to verify if Plex Relay comes into the picture or not?
The now playing tile should show up even if the playback is buffering/stopping…
Beyond that only a deep look into your logs might unearth the truth about why the remote access is wonky (if that’s the cause of your problem).
I think you are right! Looking at the logs it seems we do have Plex Relay kicking-in here - searching in other threads if that loopback IP (127.0.0.1) appearing in the logs of a remote stream indicating that the connections is relayed through. Can you please confirm this?
Jan 03, 2021 20:31:21.422 [0x71fff440] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:47798 (WAN)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/decision?protocol=hls&mediaIndex=0&waitForSegments=1 (12 live) TLS
If that’s the case any suggestion how can I troubleshoot why the stream is relayed?
No idea… at least not based on single lines of logs
The loopback requests should be fine. The NetworkService / publishing lines should be more interesting as for the remote access setup.
Looks like Plex is losing its remote connection after a little over 1 hour.
From what I see, your NAS has 2 LAN ports… do both of them have an IP reservation in your LAN? Have you set one to be the preferred port to be used by Plex and can you verify the port forward is using that LAN port’s internal IP?
If I put my iOS device on my home network it forces the server to transcode and in the activity window on the server I see indirect connectivity as opposed to remote stream connectivity (I assume indirect means Plex Relay?)
Can you please share the settings of Plex on your iOS device?
I’m particularly interested in Settings > Quality > Video Quality (preferably for remote and local).
Are the PMS and your WLAN AP in the same subnet of your home network?
I actually think it’s due to Double NAT… here’s how my network look like:
(ISP)=====>(ISP ROUTER IN NOT BRIDGE MODGE)=====>(MY OWN TP LINK ROUTER)======>Plex server
I came across this article how to fix the Double NAT issue if I can’t have the ISP router set to bridge mode which is the case for me. I will give it a try tomorrow.
