Streaming Brain - Buffer question

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I’m a plex pass user but am actually currently on the normal stable builds for stability sake , was reading through the blog post that was posted in October and am quite excited about this streaming brain feature.

I have a question about the remote bandwidth and the available buffer on the client side.
I noticed this is the blog post :

Using that information, your Plex Media Server can work together with your Plex app to figure out how much bandwidth is really required to stream something. For example, to direct play that previous “3.5 Mbps average bitrate” file:

an app that has a large buffer might only need ~5.4 Mbps of bandwidth to ensure smooth playback
a different app with a smaller buffer might need ~8.4 Mbps of bandwidth because the smaller buffer can’t tolerate spikes as well

This is interesting and makes a lot of sense, my question is, i take it the client has to report back the available buffer to the sever ,which can then decide how much bandwidth is needed, does there need to be an update to the client app ? For example my raspberry pi running rasplex has a large buffer ( which i set myself ) , i take it something like a chromecast has little to none ? is there anyway we can see what’s reported and how its working out the bandwidth from that ?

This is a very welcome feature, i’ve been direct playing my media from my server for a while now and yes in action scenes i’ve noticed the bitrate jump from the average 7-10 mbps to 20-25 mbps , hence why i’ve set my buffer to be quite large and therefore it plays back smoothly without buffering.

I’m also slightly worried that it may decide that it shouldn’t direct play my file anymore, for example , i know it uses 80% of the set limit, so lets say i set my limit to 20 mbps ( actually is up upload speed ) , its going to use 16 mbps , now lets say the deep analysis pulls a value of 20mbps for the peak …would that file now transcode as the peak bitrate is 20mbps and the upload is set to 16mbps , even though i have a larger buffer i know it can handle it, as it would now

Thanks
keep up the good work

2

does there need to be an update to the client app?
Yes. The first party clients had this spec change long before the streaming brain was released. Rasplex, being a third party client, did not get this spec until after the streaming brain was released, so I would expect it to take longer. The server selects the bitrate appropriate for the client’s buffer size, as reported by the client.

3

Awesome, can you shed some light on how it does that? How does it work it out I mean