NOTE: Before someone asks about VC-1. My files are h264 codec. Mostly mkv and mp4 type files.
Anytime I decide to watch a movie with subtitles I get the error ‘‘the server was not powerful enough to convert this video for smooth playback’’. If I turn off subtitles then everything works perfectly. I know that this has been asked a ton of times, but I have not found a satisfactory solution to the problem.
I am running PMS on unRAID with an i7 and 32gb of ram, I hardly think my system is the problem. I can handle multiple streams and my system will not even break a sweat. I checked all the cores while this was happening and they all were under 3%.
Is there a solution to this problem? I am at wits end and do not want to jump ship to another media server app. I really enjoy PMS, but man, this is getting old really quick and that enjoyment is getting tainted.
Yep the server shouldn’t be the issue. The Apple TV4 shouldn’t be an issue.
What format are the subtitles and how big are the actual movies?
Is it every movie that doesn’t play?
Go with the common denominator - Only MKV ? Very high bit rate?
I have an i7 NUC getting media from a big NAS with SRT subtitles and MP4 formatted.
And serving an Apple TV4, 2x Shields, 2 rokus and more.
My movies are at biggest aroung 3gb - 60 minute tv show upto 700k.
They ALL stream with subtitles all the time.
BTW I have the same issue streaming from Plex Cloud - media with subtitles do not play.
Which is interesting as the same media works fine from my local server and remotely.
The movies range anywhere from 1.3-7gb, and if it is a movie I really really really like then I rip it from blu-ray at around 22gb. The subtitle files are SRT files saved in this format moviename.en.srt
I checked two mkv files one with a high bit rate and the other that wasn’t and the problem persisted in both.
I am going to check to see if plexmediaserver has permissions to the transcode folder, and also if maybe I should make the container privilaged or not. I don’t know… I am willing to try anything at this point including hopping on one leg while chanting.
Yeah, I am using The Raid 2 as a test file. The 2:14:00 mark is where I do my testing. It is the fight scene in the kitchen. Never fails, it will give me the not powerful enough error. I have tried mp4, avi, and mkv with no success. I guess I can try burning in the subtitles which is what I do not want at all.
Well, I have tried emby on the same server hardware. Watching it on the same Apple TV and Television. I do not have those problems at all. My final conclusion is that Plex itself is not handling the subtitle transcoding correctly. I have tried burn ins, converting to mp4, avi, and whatever else I could through at it. Plex just will not handle transcoding subtitles correctly.
Hello,
I am resurrecting this old post since I am facing a very similar problem.
Using Plex server on QNAP NAS and rendering on smartTV with Plex App. Looking at the video in high quality without sub-titles works just fine. As soon as I activate subtitles it keeps stopping and loading. I tried reducing the video quality without any change in behavior.
Any idea how I can solve this issue?
