I have read through the all the posts I could find and I didn’t see anything similar so hopefully this isn’t a repost. I am running Plex on a Xeon server with 8GB of RAM. Granted, the server is doing other tasks, but it should have no issue running Plex and streaming/transcoding. Yet, I logged into the server and tried to watch a movie locally on the server and got the “Server not Not Power…” message. Last night my roommate tried to watch something on my server through the website and kept getting the same message and had to refresh his browser to continue watching the movie. I logged in while he was streaming to check the utilization and the server was sitting at 5%. Why is Plex giving us this message when the server is more than capable of transcoding a stream? Any ideas?
Please provide media info so we can see the details of the media that caused the issue. Also, provide Plex Server logs so we can see what’s going in during the playback. In your next post when you upload those files, also tell us the name of the file being played - that will make it easier to find in the log.
Close Plex server. Wait one minute. Restart Plex server. Wait two minutes. Attempt playback. When the problem happens, wait one minute, then download the logs from the Plex Server settings -> help -> Download Logs.
i am experiencing similar problem:
I have WD My cloud ex2 ultra with the latest firmware and the plex app installed. I also have Samsung SUHD smart TV with the latest plex app installed. However, each and every video that i try to play (new or old which i have already watched via the plex app) gets the “server not powerful enough” message.
The problem started 1 week ago. It is very strange because even videos which i already watched with this same setup are now unable to load. i tried everything:
- Re-installed the app on the TV
- Updated the firmware of the TV
- Re-installed the app on the WD Mycloud
- I even rooted the WD Myclound in order to delete the preferences of the app and reinstall it with its default settings
- I updated the firmware of the WD My could
- I played with the transcoding settings and with the straming quality settings but nothing is solving the problem.
Currently, there is not a single file that i can play via plex. At the same time, if i log in through my macbook pro (safari) i can play all files with through the browser.
Please help.
@kegobeer-plex sorry for the long delay. I am not having luck reproducing the problem on demand. A friend 8 states a way, I can see all kinds of things causing issues. But the roommate upstairs… The issue must only manifest if/when the server has a strain/load from one of the other processes running. With 16 cores I don’t see this as a computational bottleneck, but more likely a hard drive bottleneck.
@jorjfilipov don’t hijack a thread. Plex having issues on your WD my cloud is nowhere near the same thing as a performance issue on a $3000 server.
@smlrwd said:
@kegobeer-plex sorry for the long delay. I am not having luck reproducing the problem on demand. A friend 8 states a way, I can see all kinds of things causing issues. But the roommate upstairs… The issue must only manifest if/when the server has a strain/load from one of the other processes running. With 16 cores I don’t see this as a computational bottleneck, but more likely a hard drive bottleneck.
Try to find a video file in your collection which is encoded in the VC-1 or H.265 video codec and has either PGS or VOBSUB subtitles. Play this with activated subtitles on a client that cannot handle pixel-based subtitles on its own (pretty much any Plex client except PMP or OpenPHT).
You might be able to recreate the issue this way.
Use ExportTools to find a file that meets the criteria.
@OttoKerner ExportTools doesn’t work. It breaks on me every time I try and use it.
@smlrwd said:
@OttoKerner ExportTools doesn’t work. It breaks on me every time I try and use it.
Don’t use the XLS export. It is new and relies on a wonky library.
CSV files can be opened in any spreadsheet app as well. (and they’re exporting much faster too)
@smlrwd: so, the price tag makes the difference ?! I was trying to show you that most probably it is not a matter of your hardware performance. Anyway, good look!
@jorjfilipov No, and I didn’t even pay for it. What I was getting at was performance issues on the western digital versus a proper server can’t really be compared, hence the hijack.
@OttoKerner Switched to CSV and it worked fine, but all media is either h264 or MPEG. I did find the subs you mentioned though. Started up two concurrent streams, both transcoding video and audio, and no issues.
Does Plex ever offload transcoding? I noticed in one of the usage graphs it had pre-transcode and post-transcode. I haven’t seen this terminology/usage before.
@smlrwd said:
Does Plex ever offload transcoding? I noticed in one of the usage graphs it had pre-transcode and post-transcode. I haven’t seen this terminology/usage before.
Sorry, I don’t know which usage graphs you are referring to. I also don’t know of ‘pre-’ and ‘post-’ transcode.
There are clients which can direct-play these kinds of subtitles as I mentioned above.
@OttoKerner said:
@smlrwd said:
Does Plex ever offload transcoding? I noticed in one of the usage graphs it had pre-transcode and post-transcode. I haven’t seen this terminology/usage before.Sorry, I don’t know which usage graphs you are referring to. I also don’t know of ‘pre-’ and ‘post-’ transcode.
There are clients which can direct-play these kinds of subtitles as I mentioned above.
Sorry, was a little too ambiguous there. I was referring to PlexPy, but I realized what it meant.
I used Chrome to play the files on both devices. I assumed a web browser wouldn’t have any native support for pretty much anything. Considering I don’t have any files like the ones you described and am having a hard time reproducing it myself (it was others that had the issues) it could be either very specific server circumstances or playback device issues. I may just chalk this up to randomness unless it becomes a more prevalent issue.
@smlrwd said:
I used Chrome to play the files on both devices. I assumed a web browser wouldn’t have any native support for pretty much anything.
That’s right. Browsers don’t support pixel-based subtitles. Nor VC-1 or H.265 videos (yet).
