Could someone suggest best setting for quick playback for home video/photo, and show/movie media.
I’ve been struggling with this platform every since I started using it, and it’s never worked right. I’m running in windows with an E3-1225V3 and 32GB memory. Playback from clients is always garbage, long wait to start, to skip forward, media will just not play and give the typical varagy error message that doesn’t help troubleshoot anything.
Clients are a mix of browser (chrome), Android TV, SmartTVs (LG), Shield tube and Fire TV 4Ks. Playback totally sucks.
I’ve been testing Emby, no problem whatsoever, immediate playback as soon as I click on play from all clients - this issue, is non existent on Emby (other issues exist). I have plex pass and would like to stay on this platform but playback, the most basic feature of this ecosystem totally sucks.
Would you mind sharing what vague error message you get – at least to understand where you’re coming from? Otherwise we’ll only be guessing what’s wrong with your setup.
Similarly… what kind of media is this about? Do you experience issues with various formats or e.g. exclusively with high-bitrate 4K HDR content.
PS: Not sure anybody will bite because you drop the name of their competition (in case that was your intention)
Thanks for responding. Let me compile what I can in terms of what the error messages have been, I have not kept a record and will need to recall to some degree and to test again as Plex is not shut off while I’m testing Emby.
I have no 4K media, all my media is 1080p at most, either AVC or HEVC. My environment local lan wise is MI BOX 3s and one Shield Tube. Remote (family) is mostly web browser, Fire TV 4ks, and some LG smart TVs.
Just tried now to play back a few videos, 30+ seconds wait to start, 15+ seconds to wait once I skip forward. Will post back with more info.
I have dropped the competitor’s name to get attention, I’m testing it and if it works better I will switch, although I like particular features of Plex and I already have Plex Pass so would like to have it working.
Vague errors:
“Unable to play media”
“The server is not powerful enough to convert video”
“Playback was not possible; Not enough CPU for conversion of this item”
Sometimes the same video will play after trying several times.
There is never more than 1 stream playing back. It has been such a time consuming task to get this to work properly, just not sure why it’s so much work when this platform’s main goal is to play back media. I assume(ed) that the main work is to make this work well, but I’m not so sure.
Errors #2+3 usually imply there’s a problem transcoding your video (specifically the server not being able to transcode the video in realtime.
I usually don’t see those on a decently capable server without severe changes to its configuration.
I don’t have any issues with Emby transcoding any of the media - I’ve literally duplicated the same libraries over to Emby to test this out. When playing back movies, if I change the subtitle or the audio track, Plex chugs and adds delays before playback restarts, sometimes just won’t play back any longer (I have to exit and restart the movie from the beginning). Again no issues on Emby when doing this, it’s literally on the spot (much like Kodi, as a reference in speed).
So this leads me to think that it’s either setting(s) in Plex, or just Plex transcoding engine is very poorly optimized, and/or a combination of both.
No more need to continue this thread, I’ve made the switch to Emby and things are working much better all around, performance and features wise (on the same machine).
Appreciate you responding to this thread @tom80H though and trying to help.
