Stream skips

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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1

I’ve been having issues with stream stuttering on Plex.

The raw facts:

  1. the streamed files are 5-9 GB MKVs
  2. the server PC is Windows 10, running Plex Media Server 1.13.2.5154 on an Intel i7-4770
  3. the client is Android 7.0 on an LG Fiesta potato phone running Plex 7.1.1.5878
  4. I use 4G instead of wifi because the wifi kicks me off after 45 seconds anyway
  5. my internets are meh but should be good enough for this: 15 ms ping, 12 mbps down, 3 mbps up
  6. the media server is fully accessible from outside the network

Plex worked flawlessly for about 8 months begining May of 2017, then at some point a couple of months back the streams seem to randomly skip ahead 10-15 seconds or so at random intervals. Last week I was watching an 85 minute MKV and it was perfectly fine for the first hour, then the remaining 25 minutes saw something like 12 to 15 arbitrary jumps in the stream. Yesterday I was watching an 88 minute MKV that was fine for approximately 21:05 of play time, then arbitrarily jumped to 52:xx. After manually scrubbing back to the 21:00 mark, it played for 5 more minutes and jumped ahead a half hour again.

Suggestions would be great, since nothing has changed about my network setup since I got Plex and this arbitrary skipping problem has pushed me away from the software. There’s a lot I’d like to get to watching on it given I spend 6 days a week at work and Plex is how I keep up with a lot of what I want to watch.

2

I was able to successfully reproduce the same issue that Moblus has and I have the log files here.

Awwtbone-Pixel2XL-PlexLogFile-SkippingForwardIssue.txt (1.2 MB)

Plex Media Server.log (1.8 MB)

Server Version is 1.13.4.5251
Android Version is 7.2.1.6015 (f25d479ea)

Anytime I watch a movie or TV show with a stable 4G connection, the movie will randomly skip about 10-20 seconds ahead instantly without a need to buffer. This will definitely happen at least 5-30 times in a given 2-hour movie.

For the purpose of the log file, I played a movie for approximately 5 minutes before the problem happened. I stopped the movie shortly after and collected the log files for Plex to review.

My Plex Media Server is connected to a fiber line at 150/150mbps , RAID50, and a stable build of Windows 7 x64 that does not run any other program except anti-virus.

Please let me know if you have any other questions and I will monitor this thread for changes.

Thank you!
-Awwtbone

3

Noticed you have a Pixel too (taimen). For that device, in the Plex app open [Settings] > [Advanced] > [Player] and turn on Use Android media player. The Pixel does not work well ExoPlayerV2. I have a Pixel (sailfish) and everything works better using the device supplied player. Give that a try and report back. Side note, you have a lot of timeouts. What’s your latency like?

1 Like
4

I see the attachment of Plex Media Server.log above, so I’ll include mine as well. I used the export function from the server interface so it should be cleaned up properly (I’ve noticed the removal of the auth_token, etc.)

The 88 minute MKV mentioned above that skipped 30 minutes occurs around 15:30 on the 13th of July.

Plex Media Server.log (2.3 MB)

5

Hey, Cbabb.

I switched my phone to “Use Android Media Player” and I was able to get 10 minutes of uninterrupted playback for the first time in months. I will test this thoroughly this evening and report back additional info.
As for latency, my home network in a LAN environment is built like a tank. My 4G, however, ranges from great to abysmal depending on my location.
Also, the log files may be showing some issues when I was trying to watch a recorded FIFA Match at 15mbps instead of 2-6mbps while using 4G. 4G is good, but not that good.

Thanks for your prompt reply and I’ll post additional logs/information soon if things get wonky.

Thank you!
-Awwtbone

6

Perfect! Do let me know if anything goes wrong.

This is what I see around that time. No idea what it means.

Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: Entity: line 1: 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: parser 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: error : 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: Start tag expected, '<' not found 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: status=ok 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - XML: ^ 
Jul 13, 2018 15:39:12.938 [8948] ERROR - Error parsing content.
7

I gave the Android media player a try as mentioned above, and I do not get any audio with that option enabled. My options seem to be either missing chunks of video playback or not getting any sound.

8

Using device supplied Android Media Player works for a limited set of devices. It depends on the device. In the case of Google’s phones, it works.

9

Hey, cbabb!

I can confirm that after 8-hours of usage, my Google Pixel 2 XL has flawless playback when using the “Use Android Media Player” without any additional skips or crashes.

Thank you for your assistance and I will post this information on another thread that I was asking the same question.

Thank you!
-Awwtbone

10

So I upgraded my phone and still have the same problem, even when on wifi.

Server is still the Intel i7-4770 with Plex 1.13.5.5332, and client is Android 8.0.0 on a Moto G6 XT1925DL running Plex 7.4.0.6424.

This leads me to believe the problem is the server. My PC certainly has to be powerful enough to accomplish transcoding and streaming, so it has to be a misconfiguration I’m not aware of or some Plex software glitch. It certainly makes more sense that network problems would cause buffering and not seamless random jumps in the timecode between 10 seconds and 30 minutes.

11

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