HEVC HDR only plays to a select few browsers or devices natively (safari is one)
Playing to Chrome / Firefox – that’s why the forced transcode – No HDR.
Setting a bit rate limit will automatically force a transcode.
I enabled remote logging. So, if your document is correct, they should be on some log server in your control. I am unable to fetch local log files from the Roku in the current config, so remote logging was the only option available to me.
This part – you pull from the Roku…
Local Device Logging
Logs can also be written to the local device for access by the user. When using this method, you’ll be able to look at the logs yourself and copy them out to share for investigations.
Enable and Access Local Logging
Enable local logging on your Roku, which is found under Settings > Advanced > Logging > Local.
You’ll see an IP address displayed in the app settings when you enable the logging (basically, http://ROKU_IP:8324/logs).
Reproduce the issue you’re having, after you’ve enabled the logging.
Open the URL from in a browser on your computer/other device, so you can see the logs.
Copy the logs from the page and paste into a text file or otherwise save the logs to a file.
Maintains security and control
As stated, local logging is not an option for me with the current network configuration (the Roku is on an isolated network that has limited access between local LANs). The logs should be on your network log server.
OK. Then I need the Roku dev himself. I don’t have access to that information.
I will see if he is available to come here now.
The Roku information will most likely be of very limited use. All I did on the Roku side was to disable the directplay support so that the server would be forced to transcode. This was why I didn’t notice the problem after the first 1.23.x update (most of my devices will direct play the bulk of my media without needing it to be transcoded).
But, if your dev needs the Roku information, and it can’t be obtained from your remote log server, I can re-configure the network config for the Roku to temporarily put it on the same LAN segment as the server so that I can fetch logs directly from it. It would just take a while.
If the Roku remote log works as I think it does, it sends automatically itself. No user intervention. It also self terminates after that period of time.
At this point, I’m afraid we need wait to see what he finds
No worries. I have a workaround for now, so just let me know if you need me to re-set up a test environment for further data.
Yes, I was confusing things before - it was never direct playing but transcoding at maximum quality. If I lowered the quality from that point I received the error in the browser. For some reason this isn’t happening in my VM though.
I’ll have to wait until I can make some downtime for my server to enable debugging for the transcoder.
You make that preference setting while it’s running.
I wrote the script presuming you are on the host and it is live (the preference is in the DB so it must be running )
The dev went looking…
yeah, i looked for suncat, etc, but nothing in our logs. They would need to enable “Remote Logging” in the Roku Plex channel, then attempt to play the content. Happy to look again whenever. They do stay around for 2-3 days.
Please attempt to recreate again after you know the logging is enabled.
Oh, no I’m still on 1.22.1 on my production server, sorry for the confusion. The test transcode that worked was from an Ubuntu server VM on a Windows host.
I’ll be running the script on my production server during the week during the day when it’s less busy, then I can update, run the script and provide logs - assuming the issue happens again.
Mixing major version, especially in light of the fundamental shift between 1.22.3 and 1.23.x …
You’re giving me a 
OK. I have my test Roku configured on the primary LAN and ran a quick test on the older 1.22.3.4523 server code for a baseline. I’m just waiting for family to finish viewing a show they are in the middle of before I take the server down to update to the problem release. Stand by…
OK. I reconfigured my Roku and ran three tests.
Fri Jun 11 15:20 PDT 2021 - Running test on 1.22.3.4523
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-06-11_15-26-02.zip (3.3 MB)
roku.logs.1520.gz (12.0 KB)
Fri Jun 11 15:35 PDT 2021 - Running test on 1.23.2.4656 (no HW accel)
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-06-11_15-38-06.zip (3.2 MB)
roku.logs.1535.gz (19.0 KB)
Fri Jun 11 15:40 PDT 2021 - 1.23.2.4656 test with HW accel (server crashed)
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-06-11_15-44-10.zip (2.9 MB)
roku.logs.1540.gz (19.2 KB)
For the last test, no .dmp file was produced, but I did have the server configured to report crashes to you, so it may have been auto uploaded:
Jun 11, 2021 15:40:23.818 [0x7f81a8b2cb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/JobRunner] Job running: ‘/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/CrashUploader’ ‘–directory=/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Crash Reports/1.23.2.4656-85f0adf5b’ ‘–version=1.23.2.4656-85f0adf5b’ ‘–platform=Linux’ ‘–platformVersion=27 (Twenty Seven)’ ‘–serverUuid=f3ee4b4f6a4eddb3a37b4ef68ece3ef00141bd7e’ ‘–userId=plex@solgatos.com’ ‘–sentryUrl=https://sentry.io/api/1233455/minidump’ ‘–sentryKey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ ‘–vendor=Fedora’ ‘–model=x86_64’ ‘–device=PC’ ‘–allowRetries=0’
Just to clarify the previous post:
The first test was a baseline on stable code.
The second test was with the latest update, but with HW accel turned off. The attempt to play the short resulted in the client spinning trying to load.
The third test was with the latest update with HW accel turned on. This results in a server crash.
I have guests coming over for dinner and a movie, and also have other family dependent upon this server, so it is being reverted back to the last stable release for the day. Any further debug will need to wait until tomorrow at the earliest.
Thank you. These are greatly appreciated.
Hi there. I’m also having similar errors related to transcoding, but slightly different.
Whenever I transcode something, it takes forever and then times out. I go retry the movie and still happens. I go and check on my server and even though nothing is playing, Plex is using 100% of my CPU. When I go look in the console, there is evidence of Plex continuing to transcribe even though nothing is playing. I have to restart the process to fix it.
I have tried to let it transcribe the movie out, but it doesn’t stop. Also, it using 100% percent to transcribe is excessive as usually it’s around 50-70% when one person is transcribing. While trying to recreate that on my computer I have gotten error: 4294967283.
Attached are the logs. I will say that the DVR recording did not cause this issue and while it was running in the background in this log, it wasn’t a couple days ago when I experienced this issue. I’m running Plex on Ubuntu and the movie I used for an example was Mars Attacks.
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-06-11_21-39-17.zip (3.5 MB)
Would you please turn the transcoder logging preferences back to DEBUG level?
Transcoder on verbose setting generates very disruptive logging when dvr is active.
and, because no names are displayed, it’s impossible to understand what it’s really doing. (it displays job UUID values as ID which are quite meaningless without the DB in front of me to query)
Can you show the XML (<media> section only) of what you’re trying to play?
I have a good idea already based on what I see in your logs but would like to confirm it by examining the XML of one of the problematic files.
Yes, my bad. I thought I had switched back.
Attached is the log with the problem recreated. This time the DVR was not recording this time but the same error occurred.
I hope this is the correct part of the XML. I can upload the whole thing if necessary.
Thanks!
<Media id="16977" duration="6346410" bitrate="2154" width="1920" height="800" aspectRatio="2.35" audioChannels="2" audioCodec="aac" videoCodec="h264" videoResolution="1080" container="mp4" videoFrameRate="24p" optimizedForStreaming="1" audioProfile="lc" has64bitOffsets="0" videoProfile="high">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="17734" key="/library/parts/17734/1426297903/file.mp4" duration="6346410" file="/mnt/ntfs3/Plex Server Files/Movies/Mars Attacks (1996).mp4" size="1711935371" audioProfile="lc" container="mp4" deepAnalysisVersion="4" has64bitOffsets="0" indexes="sd" optimizedForStreaming="1" requiredBandwidths="4768,4249,3344,2408,2252,2216,2216,2216" videoProfile="high">
<Stream id="50871" streamType="1" default="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="2062" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" codedHeight="800" codedWidth="1920" frameRate="23.976" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="800" level="40" profile="high" refFrames="5" requiredBandwidths="4676,4157,3252,2316,2160,2124,2124,2124" streamIdentifier="1" width="1920" displayTitle="1080p (H.264)" extendedDisplayTitle="1080p (H.264)"> </Stream>
<Stream id="50872" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="2" bitrate="92" language="English" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="stereo" profile="lc" requiredBandwidths="93,93,93,93,93,93,93,93" samplingRate="48000" streamIdentifier="2" displayTitle="English (AAC Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="English (AAC Stereo)"> </Stream>
<Stream id="45200" key="/library/streams/45200" streamType="3" file="/mnt/ntfs3/Plex Server Files/Movies/Mars Attacks (1996).srt" selected="1" codec="srt" format="srt" displayTitle="Unknown (SRT External)" extendedDisplayTitle="Unknown (SRT External)"> </Stream>
</Part>
</Media>
