Server Version#: 1.31.3.6868
Player Version#: Not sure issue with multiple users.
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>
Okay so where do I begin… First off I know that my server version is wildly out of date and that can not be fixed, I am currently running PMS on Server 2012 R2 I know its no longer supported, I just haven’t had any extra cash lately to splurge on upgrades. Now everything works fine, how I don’t know still but it does. I decided recently to turn transcoding off because my poor old cpu gets nuked when a few users are encoding on the fly. After turning it off my cpu has never been cooler and everyone’s streaming quality has improved so much.
Today I decided to test the waters and see if I could stream 4K to a friend. Now I can watch 4K with no issues locally all day long. It never worked streaming, PMS would always transcode the file and shoot CPU temps up to 160F. I figured since transcode was turned off it shouldn’t do that right? Well it didn’t work my upload of 35MB just isnt enough I guess. No big deal right? I revoked access of my 4k libraries from my friend and everything is okay right? Apparently not. Everything stopped working if I had a 1080p and a 4K version of it, for everyone would give the error there isn’t enough CPU power to convert this file, but transcode is off it doesn’t need to be converted…
Then everything stopped working for everyone, no one could watch anything in 1080p. Nothing worked anymore. I cleared the cache, cleaned bundles, optimized database, emptied trash, restarted PMS. Nothing was working. Only way to fix the server was to turn transcoding back on, but now the quality is absolute trash for everyone, even if they select video quality and choose max.
This doesn’t make sense… How could giving someone access to and then revoking a library cause such catastrophic failure? I know all of this sounds nutty and not even possible, I feel stupid just typing this out but I am really scratching my head on this one.
Yes I know I need to upgrade, but I am kinda poor right now so unless you buying me new hardware and server 2016+ this is what I’m working with lol
Like I said it has worked reliably every single day for months now on this old version and all my friends and family that use it have never had an issue. Unless there was a new client side update that is causing this issue with this old server, ugh may just be time to bite the bullet and start upgrading my hardware…
I think this is wherein your problem lies. I’m curious if you have ever stored your 1080p files in the same folder as the matching 4k file. If plex matches a show/movie and it shows 2 versions of the file, they’re usually in the same folder no?
Send some screenshots of the files (with their folder location and library) that are effected. maybe I can help troubleshoot.
Turning off transcoding doesn’t eliminate the need for transcoding, it just prevents anyone from doing it
Their stream just simply won’t play if it calls for a transcode and that’s why they’re getting the error message.
After you shut it off, what you were seeing play without any problems is content that would have direct played regardless of transcoding being turned on or not
Since even lower quality media won’t even play now, I would be first looking at my remote access to make sure that’s still working properly
You will have to investigate individual files with logs beyond that. What you have so far is very general observations when you really need to provide specific details about individual files
I don’t know if an old server version or outdate hardware is the problem but it’s certainly going to be problematic moving forward
When I had transcode off the last few weeks everything was direct play and everyone’s quality increased and everyone was incredibly happy, including my CPU. So… Not sure what still needs to be converted. Everything is in x265 1080p or 2160 HDR 265.H. Not sure what specific files you reference as was stated it was all. Every single piece of video would not play locally or remotely after I tested out 4K streaming. Nothing worked again until I turned back on transcode and the quality is now worse for streaming than it was when I originally had transcode on.
So in summary. I ran for years with transcode on. Everything worked fine. 3-4 weeks ago I turned off transcode to spare my cpu from being nuked and everything worked better than it ever did. All I did was give one user access to two libraries that he did not have access to prior. He tried a couple different movies and he would get a bandwidth error. I revoked access and put him back to original library configuration and everything went to hell and the only fix was turning trasncode back on and now it is worse than it was before I initially turned off transcode 3-4 weeks ago.
It’s hard to troubleshoot your problem with a second hand account. It would be a lot easier if you posted some screenshots and steps to recreate the problem.
