I upgraded my server recently, which required setting up plex from scratch again. Conveniently this has coincided with the new plex experience and lots of other issues. But the web experience seems to still work fine for me across all different media types. By contrast, I seem to be having an issue related to playing mp4 movies on Roku. It tries to play, gets stuck at 33%, restarts once or twice, and then I get a playback error that “Playback has stopped due to multiple playback errors. Please check your connection and try again.”
This isn’t a problem with the web app (I tried disabling direct play and the video in question still worked) or the ios app. I’m also not sure entirely when this problem started, but I’m fairly sure the movies were playing after the server update but then stopped working somewhat recently.
Anyway, I tried a few random movies released within recent years and the ones that were mp4s had issues, but the ones that were mkvs didn’t have any issues. No issues with 720p TV shows in mp4 format that I tried.
When I looked at the debug logs, it says that transcoding failed. I see something about not being able to handle the audio stream due to profile or setting limitations. When I force direct play, then the movie plays.
Your logs show your server transcoding the audio from aac to eac3. Check your Roku’s audio settings. It’s telling Plex to make the conversion but if you don’t have a way to play the eac3, then playback will fail like you are seeing.
@MovieFan I appreciate the reply, but I looked at the settings for both the Roku and the plex app for Roku, but couldn’t find a way to adjust it that way. I tried turning off and on a bunch of different options that were close to related to this, but none worked. Could you point me in the direction?
The only thing that’s worked so far is forcing direct play. I found an old reddit thread that suggested it was related to how the subtitles are stored.
Appreciate the reply. The only thing that seemed relevant in the Roku audio settings was “preferred streaming format”. It was set to auto, the other options were Dolby and DTS. Setting it to Dolby didn’t fix my issue.
Another option in the audio screen is “display output format”, but this relates to pass through and doesn’t specifically mention Dolby.
Ah. Well I had tried both options at the time and just tried DTS again and it didn’t work. There is also an allow DTS-HD option in the plex roku app that I tried (with both auto and DTS settings in the Roku itself). Neither of those options worked.
I’m having this same issue, which started around the same time. As far as I can tell, the specific issue is that when the audio codec isn’t supported by my Roku, it tries to transcode and the transcode fails. AAC Stereo works, but AAC 5.1, TrueHD, and even FLAC Stereo all fail while DTS-HD MA works fine.
Before this started happening, my Roku Ultra was my go-to streaming device. I also have the app on Windows and Mac machines and my PS5, which all accept the transcoding with no failures. One of my users also has a Roku and is seeing the same issues.
I believe either the Roku device or the Plex app for Roku had an update that caused the failures, or else that the Plex server app updated in such a way that Roku can’t handle any more. I know for a fact that movies and tv series that worked before are now failing and that it happened to both me and the user around the same time. I didn’t make any significant changes to my server settings before the errors started cropping up and it’s highly unlikely that the user and I happened to change the same setting in our Roku settings at the same time to break it for both of us.
I am having the exact same issue with my Roku Ultra box. mp4 files won’t work at all and mkv files with h265 codec simply will not work. mkv files with h264 does. None of my other streaming devices including Nvidia Shield, or even the Roku Streaming Stick have this problem and they are playing the same files from the same server.
I rolled back to server version 1.41.6.9685-d301f511a and that fixed the issue with the Roku Ultra. Reproduced the same problem when I pulled down 1.41.7.9799-5bce000f7 and the latest version as well. Went back to 1.41.6.9685-d301f511a and boom, fixed.
Whatever was changed from 1.41.6.9685-d301f511a to 1.41.7.9799-5bce000f7 did something that prevents transcoding from working with the Roku Ultras.
Same issue but with mkv. Direct play works but roku transcode fails. Was working fine before I updated to latest plex server version. I also been using both the preview app and non preview app. Can confirm using docker with version 1.41.6.9685-d301f511a works fine.
Per another thread:
Important part: encoder=eac3_eae
1.41.7 releases have a bug when transcoding TrueHD to EAC3.
Plex is working on a fix.
Fall back to 1.41.6 or earlier until the fix is available.
If you need the 1.41.6 installer, look in the Updates folder in the Plex Data Folder. Plex keeps the last few installers in that location.
I seem to be doing better with 1.41.7.9799, but they say in the other thread that 1.41.7.9823 does a better job with the fix. Not available yet on my platform, but will look for it. Good luck.
