Remote streaming going down to 2mbps, SD9

General Discussions
1

I don’t know what’s going on aside from this issue me we happened for multiple years using Plex.

All remote streams are stuck at 2mbps and transcodes to SD as a result. For the past years all streams were going out at 8 to 14mbps and rarely transcoded on the same remote hardware.

The server is set to 18mbps maximum for remote connections. Speed test from the machine show a 26mbps upstream. The network is not congested whatsoever.

Nothing has changed on any networks aside from software updates. All locations, more than 7, are affected.

Please provide any advice as I can’t sort this. Thanks!

2

Verify firewall ports and Remote Access working correctly.

2 Mbps is the limit for indirect connections.
When Remote Access is enabled and showing green (directly accessible), you will be able to send at whatever limits you have/have set.

3

Yes it’s all green and port is manually set and forwarded just as before from router to server. Strange times we live in.

4

I’ve been having this issue for a while (or at least, a version of it.)

It appears that the transcoder is now calculating that 2Mbps needs to be in SD rather than 720p, so the client-side default has now inadvertently become SD 2Mbps.

I can see this fairly easily in the new Dashboard, everyone that’s left it to the defaults will get transcoded down the 2Mbps and therefore, SD. Some clients seem a bit finicky about getting their settings to stick, but once they properly apply, anything 3Mbps or over appears to transcode to 720p (and beyond.)

Taking a look at the transcoder logs, it’s applying a “fudge factor” to the calculations which seems to be blowing it out to estimating 2Mbps to SD.

My server is running in a Docker container (host networking, and forwarded correctly) on a CentOS host running the latest elrepo kernel (5.x) although I’ve had this issue for a fair while now. There are no network or hardware limitations here (CPU and Network load rarely exceed 50%.) It’s also running hardware transcoding, although I’ve tested by turning this off with no change.

Broadly, if the “fudge factor” is actually correctly calculating the bitrates and it wasn’t before, we should at least rename the 2Mbps setting as “SD” in Plex.

Here’s an excerpt of the logs to illustrate my point;

Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.146 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Calculated bandwidth of 4952kbps exceeds bandwidth limit. Changing decision parameters provided by client to fit bandwidth limit of 2000kbps
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.146 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Determining preferred transcode encoders through transcode only decision.
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.146 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.156 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 5923Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.157 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.172 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 5923Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Jan 30, 2019 14:04:05.173 [0x7fd6c07ff700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reducing playback quality for 1904kbps stream bitrate: video resolution to 720x406, audio channels to 2, quality to 41, disable video DS as 4954kbps is > the 1724kbps available

I also have access to multiple other friends’ servers, and I can reproduce it on all of them (and they’re running in much more vanilla installations, including Windows.)

5

May I have some clearly defined conditions, expectations, and, most importantly, current log files?
Jan 30? and only now bringing this up with PMS 1.15.1 having been released?

Needed information:

  1. Server platform
  2. PMS version
  3. Player(s) tested
  4. Player(s) local LAN or remote
  5. DEBUG (turn off VERBOSE) logging
  6. Recreate the problem, play for 30 seconds, then stop playback
  7. Collect the ZIP file,
  8. Attach the ZIP file.
6

Condition: Play set at “2Mbps 720p”
Expectation: Play at 2Mbps 720p
Whats occuring: Play at 2Mbps SD

Server platform: CentOS, Docker
PMS: 1.15.2.793
Players: Plex Web (Chrome), Plex Media Player, Plex on iOS, Android, Android TV, Kodi and I have other clients on Apple TV, Xbox One, PS4 and Safari
Occurs regardless of locality when transcoding at 2Mbps

PMS.zip (189.6 KB)

7

This is a known bug that I reported some time ago.

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8

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