Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488
Player Version#:
See in the screenshots below, I have the server set to only allow 3mbps outbound, but it appears that it’s utilizing significantly more than what is specified. Does Plex server only curve bandwidth for trans-coded streams?
An SD video direct playing at 9mbps?
I very much doubt it.
Refer to Server log files from the time of playback
(debug logs must be enabled)
Give also the media info of this movie a look, to see what bitrate it has.
This could be a bug, either in the Samsung app or in the dashboard.
Did you disable the Transcoder somehow? Or is your server running on a NAS or a raspberry pi which cannot transcode at all?
When the graph for bandwidth first showed up, I checked often to see what was happening. I noticed that even SD videos were indicating huge bandwidth (up to 25Mbps) for short periods of time and then virtually nothing, even though the file was still playing. Depending on the app, and the clients connection, it seemed to me that big chunks of the file were downloaded and buffered, and I’m pretty sure that the end result over the length of the video would be something close to the average bitrate of the video, about 1.5Mbps.
I did verify the bandwidth usage on my pfsense router as well. At this given time, it was streaming at the 9.5 mbps for at least 5-10 minutes.
The server is running debian stretch, i7 4790k. Trans-coding is enabled. I’ve also seen other transcodes do as leelynds said…pulls a bunch of data…then slows down…then pulls more again. Honestly, I was surprised by this last night, as it’s not the norm.
I’ll see if I can grab the server logs. I’m not sure debug was enabled at this time.
This is kinda the norm. The bandwidth limit is not ‘traffic shaping’.
If you take a look at the overall bandwidth over a period of several minutes or even the whole movie, it should come out at an average of ~ 3mbps.
Sounds like the bandwidth limit is pretty much best effort when transcoding. I’m fine with that, it was just a surprise to me. I’m guessing the stream last night just didn’t want to transcode for some reason. Maybe I’ll need to transcode it to a better format manually.
Thanks all!
As I said, it has nothing to do with traffic shaping. The bandwidth limit is a parameter for the transcoder to use as ‘target bitrate’.
The transcoder chops up the video into chunks.
The first few chunks are transcoded as fast as possible and then transferred to the client as fast as possible, to fill up its buffer.
This is a precaution to compensate for possible bandwidth shortages which may occur later during playback.
Once the buffer is filled, transcoding will get “throttled”, as will be the transfer of subsequent chunks.
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