Seeking not working on iOS w/ Direct Play

Plex Players Mobile Devices
1

Server Version#: Unsure, will ask server owner
Player Version#: 8.3

While direct playing in the iOS app, when I try to seek past the buffered part of the video (the darker gray part of the progress bar), it just simply never works and continues playing as if I hadn’t tried seeking at all (really frustrating since this is essential functionality). If I seek within the buffered part of the video, it works fine. If I turn off direct play, I can seek anywhere regardless of it it’s buffered or not. I’ve confirmed with 2 other people (that use the same Plex server) that the same thing happens with them in the iOS app.

Here’s a video demonstrating this: Streamable

And here are logs from my phone:
PlexDebugInfo-hotsno-8.3-2621 (2022-05-19 16.13.54 -0700).zip (159.9 KB)

2

Some files just aren’t encoded or muxed well for streaming & seeking. That’s very common with anime.

2022/05/19 16:13:03.891 (211 MB) (5824955) 🔧 PMKMPVClient.m:508 | [lavf] v: queuing seek to 3167.373000
2022/05/19 16:13:03.891 (211 MB) (5824955) 🔧 PMKMPVClient.m:508 | [lavf] v: Cached seek not possible.
2022/05/19 16:13:03.891 (211 MB) (5824955) ❌ PMKMPVClient.m:492 | [cplayer] error: Cannot seek in this stream.

Direct Play means the file is sent as-is to the player. That’s great if the file is well-prepared for streaming! But this one isn’t.

Disabling Direct Play - keeping Direct Stream enabled - allows the Plex server to remux the video and audio streams into a new container before sending to the player.

Direct Stream isn’t much work for the server, and doesn’t alter or reduce video quality.

Direct Stream is underrated.
Direct Play is highly overrated. :slight_smile:

3

@Volts
Thanks for the insight!

I’m looking into it right now, but can’t find much so far, but would you happen to know how to disable Direct Play and enable Direct Stream on iOS?

4

There may not actually be a setting to disable Direct Stream on iOS. If that’s the case, Direct Stream is always active and there’s nothing to worry about. Disable Direct Play and be happy.

5

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.