Hi all!
I have been having problems with playback via Plex for a few weeks now. I want to play films on the local network from my Synology DS414.
All films only have a resolution of 720p to 1080p.
I am trying to play back the films via our Blue TV (a box that is only available in Switzerland) and via the Plex app on the Samsung TV. I have two boxes and two TVs. Both TVs and boxes are connected directly via LAN. The modem is a Fritbox 7590.
I used to play the films directly via the Samsung TV. This no longer works with many films as the audio track usually cannot be read. Apparently there are problems with the new Samsung TVs. However, this had always worked perfectly. Everything also worked perfectly via the Plex app at the beginning. So the network connection should actually be stable enough.
I can’t explain why it suddenly stopped working. After a few minutes, the picture stops every few seconds. Sometimes it works for several minutes and then at some point it doesn’t load at all.
Now I wonder, was there a Plex update that can cause this? Do I have to make changes to the settings somewhere in Plex or the app?
Or could it simply be that the disc station is suddenly no longer powerful enough? It is the only constant during playback.
Information about the DS:
DSM version 7.1.1-42962
CPU: MARVELL Armada XP MV78230
1.33 Ghz
1024MB RAM
I know it may be very difficult to say what the problem is. But maybe someone has a spontaneous idea of what I could check.
If any further information is required for a diagnosis, just let us know.
Many thanks in advance for your help.
I’ve seen a TV do that when it couldn’t cope with x265 format content.
What you could try is choosing a film to test with and make some optimised versions of it.
720, 480, 360 and 240 resolution.
Then try plying back each version in turn to see if they play smoothly.
If that works then you may need either review the transcode settings in the NAS and/or in the player.
Also you don’t say what version of Plex MediaServer you’re using or how it’s launched (docker or Synology Package etc…), but there was an issue recently that affected a lot of us with transcoding on Synology due to an incompatibility with a specific type of CPU.
I will need to see the DEBUG server logs which captures this occurring. (just the start of playback)
As for HW transcoding, ARMv7 CPUs have no such capability so we can rule that out. (None of the ARM CPUs have HW transcoding capability at this time)
I will caution, A DS414 is getting very old. It will soon be time, which might now be happening as new media comes out, where the DS414 should retire to be “The NAS only” and PMS is moved to a more capable CPU.
Thanks for your response!
I only have videos with 1080p or 720p. However, the problem occurs with both formats. But I think it’s a bit more with 1080p.
Of course I could now load a lower resolution to test this, but I don’t really want to do that either.
Thanks for your response!
If that’s okay with you, I’ll be happy to send you the logs. Unfortunately I have not found a way to send a private message. Am I blind or is this option not available here?
I’ve actually been thinking about replacing the device for a while now. As I’m not sure if the current problem is with the Diskstation, I haven’t done that yet.
What do you recommend, does a new Synology Diskstation make sense or is there an alternative that would run more stable and not cost a fortune?
