Switching from Direct Play Transcode While Watching

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#:1.43.0.10492
Player Version#:8.45 (9684)

Immediate symptom is that playback briefly pauses with a blank screen and spinning logo for a couple of seconds. This has also show itself as un-pausing a show on its own (ie the playback is paused with the remote, then shows a spinning logo and resumes playback without any user input). Sometimes the client reports not enough bandwidth for playback. This error occurs on multiple AppleTV devices in the same home.

When watching the dashboard during playback, it appears that the playback switches from direct play to transcode, or from transcode to direct play when the spinning logos appear. I also noted that the player’s address shown in the dashboard seems to have switched from ipv4 to ipv6.

I downloaded logs while these symptoms were occurring, happy to share but will need a private way to share with the team.

2

I’ve been doing some additional troubleshooting.

Disabling IPV6 stopped the transcoding in and out, but buffering stutters continue.

Watching the dashboard during playbacks, I get network spikes of 400MB+ whenever there is a spinning wheel issue.

Attempted disabling direct play on the Apple TV Plex app following some older advice I found related to containers, same issues exist with Direct Stream.

Attempted to play the same file using the Infuse AppleTV app connected to Plex, no issues.