Transcoding/Connection Issues

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1 
Sorry if this has been posted before but I couldn't find a solution from previously posted topics.
    Onto the actual issue:

(The systems described below are running Windows 10 Pro)
I have used plex for a long time. I used to use it with my 4790k CPU in my gaming pc and then upgraded to an 8700K with no issues. Ive always had my media stored on a 4TB drive which has been nearly full for a long time as well (700GB left). I never had issues with the server going down or taking a while to load or anything of the nature. CPU usage would always ramp up when I played back media and I could download media onto my iPhone for traveling without issue.
Recently I felt the need to build a home server so I scraped together an HP Proliant G6 Server with some upgrades. Currently it runs 2 6 core 12 thread Xeon E5645 CPUs at 2.4 GHz (2.52 turbo), 84GB of DDR3 1300 MHz and I moved the drive into this new server. Everything was recognized and working and I can use windows RDP to remote into the server anytime I need as well as Tondio file sharing software without issue (I have a raid array for the file server and a boot drive separate from plex drive). It is also connected to a gigabit switch across 10 gigabit NICs, one of which is designated locally and over my network for plex, leaving plex with its own gigabit connection. The network speed is the same now as it was before at 400 down and 20 up (thanks for the parity speeds spectrum :frowning: )
The issue I now have is that on this server which I would think has more than enough power to transcode streams, 99% of the time my media stutters and stops all together if plex loads at all. A common message I get is that my cpu isnt powerful enough to keep up (something like that, I forget the exact wording), but when I look at Task Manager, the CPU usage NEVER goes above 20% for the whole system. I can run premiere pro or blender loads on this system and pin the CPU to 100% usage while it maintains a 2.52 GHz Turbo speed and it still operates fine for other background tasks.
This issue happens on the local network (laptops. fire stick, fire tv, smart tv, iphone), over a direct connection to a computer 5 feet away, and over the internet (both with secure and insecure connections).
Have I missed something? Lowering the quality has not helped nor has uninstalling plex and deleting all meta data and allowing it to rediscover all the media. I tried recoding small batches of media to see if the mix of .mkv, .mov, .mp4, and so on was the cause but the same issues persisted. Please help, I just want to be able to watch my media without being tethered to external drives and USB devices again.

2

What a curious problem! Other than the CPU architecture of the Xeon being 7-8 years old, they’re still fast and capable chips and you have two of them.

Is Windows 10 Pro recognising all cores from the dual socket setup? (device manager may show this…). Is hyperthreading enabled? (I realise you can max out what W10 is showing with other apps, but perhaps Plex is more conservative in it’s use of what CPU the OS does expose to it).

Is it possible you could install Linux on another drive and boot the server with that, and install Plex for Linux? That could rule out either OS or Plex Server version issues and prove the hardware is capable enough…

3

I have a spare SSD I can load Linux onto and see what results that provides, I have little experience with Linux so it may be a few days to figure it out between work. All 24 threads are shown in Win10 (task manager and device manager). I am using Plex version 1.13.4.5271 at the moment and have update errors where it tells me to manually update as well. Is there any way that a failing boot drive (where plex is installed as well, media is located on separate drive) could be the culprit? It seems like a long shot but just a thought.

4

I try to avoid Linux where possible :')

I guess a failing drive could cause issues but as you say, it’s unlikely to be that. If you suspect it’s dying you could clone it to the spare SSD before venturing down the road of testing with Linux, maybe…

Have you looked at the log files?

5

I honestly dont know where to find the log files and can look into getting a copy on here for sure. I will start with cloning the drive before linux then!

6

So I went to explore the log files but I cannot seem to find anything related to transcoding speed. In fact, when I search the string “speed” nothing is found at all. Which log file do I need if “Plex Media Server.log” is not the right one? Also I constantly get the “Conversion failed. The transcoder exited due to an error.” Which log file would this error be located within?

7

The following is an error that likes to appear commonly in the “Plex Media Server.log” files. It is copied exactly out of the log. I have 10 active connections on this machine but through my router plex is bound to a specific port and 192.168.1.27 I believe.
EDIT: I shortened the error to make this thread not awful.
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.070 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.072 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.072 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.072 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.073 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.073 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.073 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.074 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.074 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.075 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.075 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.075 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.075 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.076 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.077 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.077 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.077 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.077 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.077 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.078 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.079 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.079 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.079 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.079 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.079 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.080 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.081 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.081 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.081 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.081 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.081 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.082 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.083 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.083 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.083 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.083 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.083 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.084 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.085 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.085 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.085 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.085 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.085 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.086 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.087 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.087 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.087 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.087 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.087 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.089 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.089 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.089 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.089 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.089 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.090 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.091 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.091 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.091 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.091 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.21???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.091 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.26???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.092 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.27???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.093 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.18???
Jul 24, 2018 15:10:24.093 [19972] ERROR - NetworkService: How did a null service make it in for 192.168.1.12???

8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.