So, I updated PlexConnect to commit cfd51de on my Mac Mini (running OS X 10.6.8) and since then, PlexConnect has become unstable. I have to restart the PMS to get it working again. From the log file, can anyone tell me what the issue is? Should I just download to the previous commit?
Interesting. Seems to be related to the subtitle handling (with missing host/URL or sumething, though I have no idea where this comes from… Could you please set loglevel to High and post a fresh log of such an error?
Same problem here, Also subs are nog in sync. Do I need to start a new topic or?
Again: Logs.
There was no change to subtitles handling… you really think they changed the “sync-ness”?
I haven’t yet experienced this problem again, although PlexConnect’s performance has been sluggish. Also, after changing loglevel to “High”, the PlexConnect log has swelled to 94 MB when normally it’s only 4-8 KB. Is it expected for the log to grow that big when the loglevel is set to “High”? The log is filled with “XML Converter” entries.
Yeah - unfortunately it logs A LOT of the converter activity. That’s the part where most of the development work flew into.
Do you restart your PlexConnect host every now and then? This would reset the log and start and fresh one… but make sure to enter trailers from aTV top-level again, otherwise it will miss the PMS discovery.
By the way - depending on your host (NAS?) - setting loglevel to High might lead to increased page load times. This might explain your “sluggish”, would it?
baa,
Yeah, you’re probably correct about the extra logging leading to the increased page load times.
@baa said:
Interesting. Seems to be related to the subtitle handling (with missing host/URL or sumething, though I have no idea where this comes from… Could you please set loglevel to High and post a fresh log of such an error?
Finally happened again a bunch of times while I had the log level set to high. Usually when this happens, I have to reboot the ATV2 to get PlexConnect working again.
Here’s the debug log:
http://pastebin.com/fM1S4Ldt
So, are there any clues in the log file I posted?
That Log shows, that your PMS is not talking to PlexConnect - Connection refused.
Is it correctly published? Ist there an issue with IP addresses changing just shortly before you get this error (like your ISP is changing your Public IP, while plex.tv wasn’t yet informed about the change)?
My WAN IP hasn’t changed in months, if not years. And the PMS IP and the ATV2 IP are reserved on the router, so they never change.
@elstreif when the problem starts with PlexConnect, are you able to play from YouTube without rebooting the ATV ? If yes, the YouTube thumbnails are black ?
@baa said:
That Log shows, that your PMS is not talking to PlexConnect - Connection refused.
Is it correctly published?
What do you mean by “correctly published”?
@moody_blue said:
@elstreif when the problem starts with PlexConnect, are you able to play from YouTube without rebooting the ATV ? If yes, the YouTube thumbnails are black ?
The official YouTube app is no longer supported on the ATV2. And when PlexConnect stops working, I can’t use the unofficial YouTube Plex channel. However, all other ATV2 apps, like Vimeo, Crackle, and Netflix continue to work; it’s only PlexConnect that occasionally stops working.
As for the black thumbnails, I do see that issue a couple times a week. I never used to have it but it’s been cropping up more frequently.
The reason why I’ve asked is because your problem had some similarities with a problem I’ve called “perpetual buffering”. Your answer leads me to think that you may experiencing a similar situation. The only thing that I forgot to ask you is if the hang occurs (in your case) in DirectPlay only, because in my case it never occurred in DirectStream or Transcode situations, it only occurred in DirectPlay.
The various tests that I (and others) made at the time evidenced that the iOS video player (the one used by PlexConnect) cannot sustain a too high transmission rate. The solution was to modify PlexConnect so that some delay / synchronization was made, so that PMS did not send data so quickly to the ATV.
Nevertheless some users continued to claim that the problem was not solved, but as neither baa nor roidy were able to reproduce the problem, no other solution was discovered. What I have observed is that, in DirectPlay situation, if the video bitrate is near the maximum allowed (20Mbps for ATV3) the ATV still hangs. The limit bitrate for the ATV2 is 14Mbps. So the next question is: are you using DirectPlay (or transcoding) whose target bitrate is near (or higher than) 14Mbps ?
@moody_blue said:
What I have observed is that, in DirectPlay situation, if the video bitrate is near the maximum allowed (20Mbps for ATV3) the ATV still hangs. The limit bitrate for the ATV2 is 14Mbps. So the next question is: are you using DirectPlay (or transcoding) whose target bitrate is near (or higher than) 14Mbps ?
I almost always DirectPlay. I’ve had too many subtitle problems with MKVs and Direct Stream, so I remux any MKVs into MP4s, which allows me to use DirectPlay. Most of my video files are SD or 720p. How do I determine if the target bitrate is near to or higher than 14Mbps?
Is there also the possible this could be an issue with files that are encoded with very high number of reference frames (9 or higher)?
If you directplay then the bitrate of the video is what counts because in this case PMS will stream to the ATV with no changes to the original file (other than the ones required by hls). You can inspect the bitrate of each file using this technique. The target bitrate only matters if you transcode (it’s a parameter in PlexConnect ATV settings).
I’m not an expert on video encoding parameters, but I’ve been told to always keep the reference frames to a minimum, being 8 the upper limit and 4-5 the recommended values.
So there’s nothing to be done if it can’t be reproduced reliably?
It’s strange though that I never had this problem until the last few revisions of PlexConnect. It never happened with earlier versions. I wonder if it’s trigger by recent updates to the PMS.
