I have Plex media server running on a reasonable machine (Core i7 920/8G). All movies play within several seconds with minimal buffering on Plex HT, Roku 3 and Plex Web Player. However, trailers just buffer for a minute or so and either never play or play for a few seconds then start buffering again.
Plex Web Player is running on the same machine as the server and displays a message: “Your connection to the server is not fast enough to stream this video. Check your network or try a lower quality.” I have tried several lower quality settings and non have worked.
On Roku after a long time of buffering a message is displayed that direct play is not supported. I tried many combinations of direct play and other settings, none appeared to have worked.
Plex HT (also running on the same machine as server) when playing a trailer the screen goes black apparently indefinitely. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
I am having the same issue. Granted I am running on older hardware (dell PE SC1430 quad-core) but all my movies play just fine, it is just extra’s and trailers from the web I have an issue with. Speed tests for my FiOS 50/50 are just fine so I am not sure what the bottleneck is.
Speed test results for FIOS 75/75 are consistently 80-84Mbps for DL and 70-75Mbps for UL. Other online services such as Netflix, HBO GO, Amazon Prime and Showtime Anytime work fine with no noticeable delay or buffering. I wasn’t aware that trailers were streamed over the net. Could this be an issue with Plex settings or perhaps a firewall or router issue? Any suggestions?
Unless you have specifically ripped or downloaded the trailers and have them in the media folder with the media itself, they are being downloaded from a service. Even if the service has the trailer in a good format for streaming the your Plex Client App, it might not be the bitrates your client device is set up for. Or it may be that the trailer has something not right in the codecs. Then your server is going to transcode it to send it to the client device to fix whatever issues might be present.
On paper this feature looks and sounds great. But it’s been my personal experience that it’s nothing but buffering or not able to play most of the time. It’s frustrating as all get out that this is a Pass feature, but something that has almost no usefulness for so many people. I’m hopeful that sometime we will be able to download the trailers and put them into the same folder as the main media is in and be able to stream this downloaded trailer instead of relying on outside services. We do this already for subtitles, so why not for trailers?
I was using Plex Rarflix on Roku and that worked pretty well for trailers and was certainly more reliable than the current Plex apps. However the trailers stopped working a while ago. So the only good option right now is to download our own trailer content? That’s disappointing as the main reason I went for Plex pass was the hassle-free trailers feature. It is really nice to have the ability to preview a movie seamlessly on the big screen before watching it.
Suddenly the trailers started working pretty much flawlessly with near instant loads. I found that when connected through a VPN (PIA in my case) the trailers appear to work, when disconnected from the VPN the trailers stop working. This may give some insight into the problem.
I also have playback issues for trailers and extras on my local network. When I use the browserapp on my iMac at the office, trailers and extras play fine. At home I tested with PS4, Nvidia Shield and the browserapp and had the above described buffering issues. Movies and music are streamed without any issues.
Trailers are a mess. I get them fine early in the day, but they fail or at least are very slow to load at night, and I have Fiber to my home, and my throughput is still much higher than most folks have even though it drops some at night, I have way more than enough to stream HD content so I think it’s the server end. It’s so bad I’ve turned trailers off, but I do miss them.
To be clear, I have 1G down and 250 up, and even at it’s worst I have hundreds of meg of download on dslreports or speed test, and trailers don’t stream well (at least on the Tivo app where +90% of my Plexing is). I would really like for the app to buffer my trailers when it loads because I usually spend a few minutes selecting a movie to watch that it could use getting this off site content.
Just as an aside, where would your Plex Server be located as far as regionally… Or more specifically, where does your IP/DNS ‘locate’ you… I am finding that the buffering of trailers is specifically related to those factors.
Running my server through my VPN gives constant buffering, while running without it leaves the trailers streaming well. It is not a question of bandwidth in either case, but rather how the Plex ‘provider’ (we don’t know who this actually is…) is allocating the video based on the requesting IP/DNS.
@bferrell said:
Trailers are a mess. I get them fine early in the day, but they fail or at least are very slow to load at night, and I have Fiber to my home, and my throughput is still much higher than most folks have even though it drops some at night, I have way more than enough to stream HD content so I think it’s the server end. It’s so bad I’ve turned trailers off, but I do miss them.
Ditto. Totally broken in the evening here also. Can stream 4K Netflix & Youtube instantly at same time so it’s not network congestion. Where are these trailers coming from? Kodi trailers, streamed from YouTube I believe are instant.
Don’t waste money on Plex pass for this borked feature. It will only frustrate.
