There was a transcoder Error when trying to record live TV.

General Discussions Plex Features
1

Hi Plex people,
I am trying to get my DVR settings worked out and i am getting an error message when trying to record any live TV. The message is simple “there was a transcoder error”

My setup looks like this
Ubuntu 16.04
PMS 1.10.0.4523
HDHomeRun Extend
The DVR directory is a mounted folder with the following permissions:
drwxrwxrwx 13 plex plex 0 Dec 5 10:40 dvr

2

Would need to see log files for the time frame of a recording with the message. Settings/Server/Help, click the download logs link and upload the zip file created.

3

Is there a specific log file needed? I have the bundle but will need to remove some private information from it.

4

You can PM the logs to me if you want.

5

Hi johnm_ColaSC,
I sent you the log bundle.

6

Seeing messages where the HDHR device is refusing the connection request:

Dec 05, 2017 10:35:20.605 [0x7f5c0fffb700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://192.168.1.35:5004/auto/v6.1?transcode=heavy: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply

Is the device being used by other applications outside of Plex? Normally a 5XX error indicates that the tuners were all being used.

7

The HDHR is only used by plex. And the odd thing is, I can watch live TV. Stop watching. See the tuners are unused then try recording and I get that error.

8

Well this is super odd. It hasn’t been working since i setup the server 3 days ago and it magically started now…

9

I’m having this same exact issue, any ideas what fixed it?

10

Just wanted to chime in with a potential solution. I started experiencing this issue yesterday and it was driving me nuts. It seemed to come from nowhere, and nothing I tried would resolve it. I scoured the internet for advice and never found a solution, but I did notice several of the threads mentioned a mounted disk for the Plex library. My ubuntu server mounts a Synology NAS via NFS for library storage. I took a look at my NFS settings and made some changes that seem to have fixed this issue for me.

Initially I had this line in /etc/fstab

x.x.x.x:/volume1/media /mnt/nfs/media nfs rw,soft,intr,user,rsize=4194304,wsize=4194304,timeo=14,vers=4

I had set that up with “rsize” and “wsize” based on a recommendation I read on some forum somewhere, which supposedly made the NFS faster.

I decided to remove the “rsize”, “wsize” and “timeo”. I also realized I was missing the “0 0” that is supposed to be at the end. So now, my /etc/fstab entry looks like:

x.x.x.x:/volume1/Media /mnt/nfs/media nfs rw,soft,intr,user,vers=4 0 0

I rebooted, and now recordings work! I had rebooted half a dozen times beforehand and recordings hadn’t fixed themselves, so while possible that the reboot randomly fixed it, I think it has to be related to the nfs settings. I’ve also noticed a few less issues as well, my Nvidia Shield would randomly stop playback of non-tv content, which no longer seems to happen.

Anyway, I don’t fully understand the NFS settings to know how that may have helped, but something to try!