Hi all, recently I have been having issues playing certain videos after increasing my export settings in premiere pro. Typically I would do 1080p and it played super smooth, I got a new camera though and am now exporting in 4K High 10 with a bit rate of 66mbps. When I play my new videos on my TV’s (LG Oled, Sony Bravia, both are 4K TV’s with HDR) there is constant buffering, when this happens it typically happens at the same exact spot as last time I played the video. However, on my phone which only has a 1080p screen video playback is once again very smooth. One thing I thought would be good to note, is that when playing directly off of my computer I must use VLC media player, plus the videos which plex gets it’s media from is my NAS which had a read speed of about 130MB/s. The TV’s are connected via ethernet. My server is my main PC which seems plenty powerful to be able to transcode video, it has an AMD Ryzen 1700x and an RTX 2080 with 16GB ram. What is causing this to happen? Any fixes?
Server Version#: 1.15.2.793
Player Version#: 7.12.2.9471
Have you tried a much lower bit-rate? I would try that and you will see if you are simply overwhelming your gear/network somewhere, or if it something about the resolution or codec that is causing the issue.
Then take a look at your Plex server to see if that stream is transcoding or playing directly. if its transcoding is it using software or hardware. if it is using hardware, disable hardware and see if it makes a difference.
I notice that some high bit-rate HEVC files like you describe cause my systems grief, while lower ones (under 40) work fine.
Also, that doesn’t sound like the right version number for your Plex server, that looks more like the version number for a web player.
Thanks for the response. I will try what you have stated. My correct version number is 1.15.2.793. I also read something on the Adobe forums that exporting in a compression level of 5.2 causes issues for some devices, especially windows. I’m also going to try a 5.1 compression level if changing bitrate yields no success. Once I finish I’ll get back to you.
Ahah! So, after about 7 hours of trying different export setting I was finally able to come up with a conclusion. Changing the bitrate reduced the amount of buffering but still wasn’t acceptable. Changing compression levels and 2 pass VBR however, fixed the issue. Still no direct play because of AAC audio but definitely satisfactory and quality looks just as good. Thanks for the help and sorry if I wasted your time, hopefully this can help others.
Great! Transcoded audio usually isn’t the end of the world. most have enough CPU to take care of that. AAC audio is usually a pretty safe option, but if your client can’t handle it, well that’s where Plex kicks in. It sounds like your client didn’t handle some of the video codex profile options you initially used, and you found something it does handle.
