Samsung TVs both have video freezing but only when resuming film

Plex Players Smart TVs
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Duplicated topic from server-windows as realised it’s probably a player problem more than the server…

Server Version#: 1.19.3.2852
Player Version#: Samsung 4.25.2 (Tizen 2.4.0)
Player Version#: Samsung 4.25.2 (Tizen 3.0)

Please somebody help/ figure this out.

We have 2 Samsung TVs using our Plex server and experienced a couple of years playing 1080p, 7-10MBps with PGS subtitles transcoding and no issues.
We could pause it on one and resume on the other no hassle, with very little initial buffering and zero playback issues.
This was with a second hand i7-3770 3.4GHz.
Now suddenly the last month or so we had equal quality but if we tried to resume a transcoded 1080p every 10-60 seconds that video would pause on an image for a few seconds, essentially freeze. The audio is always completely unaffected, just continues on and the video catches up afterwards. No buffering symbol or anything appears, just the frame hangs for a little while and it looks like the actor is pausing for dramatic effect.

We tried fiddling with settings with no fix lasting. Of note the Samsung with Tizen 3.0 and wi-fi connection (5GHz Sky hub) has been a bit more problematic than the Samsung with Tizen 2.4.0 and ethernet connection to the nearby Sky hub.

We did notice the i7-3770 CPU would always run at 100% when subtitles were transcoding whether on 480p, 3.3MBps or 1080p, 7MBps (changing settings between make my CPU hurt and Automatic did nothing).
So, after researching stronger CPU single thread benchmarks and doubting the condition of our old one, we have now just set up a brand new server with an i3-8100 3.6GHz and an SSD for the windows and server drive. With the settings on make my CPU hurt it now hovers between 90 and 98% CPU use on a 1080p transcoding subtitles on (so easily strong enough for what we’re asking it to do?)…
But the video still freezes when resuming film mid way! We sometimes get away with starting from beginning and fast forwarding but not every time.

I’m having trouble believing it could be the connection between the router and TVs, as surely the ethernet that handles 100MBps file transfers between my laptop and the server (in the attic on other end of a 15M ethernet cable) isn’t the problem?
(Also tried a powerlink connection instead of the extremely long ethernet and there was no change).

My guess is an update on the TVs are the issue but haven’t seen anyone with the same problem.
Could it be our server is still too weak and that resuming films asks a bit more CPU strength?

Any help is appreciated, I haven’t listed all our server and player settings as I’m not savvy enough to know all the relevant ones.

Many thanks,
Nick

2

Have now found the problem has existed already and might be assumed to be fixed?

Swapping DTS on or off doesn’t stop the stuttering occuring :frowning:

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Update: After signing up for a month’s Plex Pass, I have enabled hardware accelerated transcoding and the issue has been consistently absent from the Samsung with Tizen 3.0 so that is a great result and we’ll likely buy the lifetime pass because of this.

But the Samsung with Tizen 2.4 is unchanged, does this mean the older TV is just condemned to this issue even with subscribing to the premium service?

4

Have now had a couple of movies play with really funny video quality with the hardware acceleration so giving up on that solution. Would rather have to turn off subtitles when resuming movies than put up with that.
Guess I’ll see if I can install a previous player version from before this stuff was happening…

5

Final update:
After both Samsung TV’s updated to 4.29.6 the problem persisted.

Though since I uninstalled the server and installed version 1.16.6.1592 (chose it for being introduced in a month I was sure was before we started having these problems) the problem has disappeared! All blu rays rips transcode as they did long ago.

Hooray, hope anyone with the same issues finds this topic.

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