Transcoding issue for .mpg (mpeg2)

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Slightly odd issue and can’t find any settings to help.

Background & setup

I have a Plex server that died recently. It was running on an old intel based dell circa 2010 with Ubuntu 16.04 32 bit with 8GB. It was running plexmediaserver_1.32.7.7621-871adbd44_i386. So basically out of the arc for video but capable enough. However it ran well for about 5 years and served 4K TVs, mobiles, tablets - both live and downloaded content.

The system drive was fine so I’ve created a new server based on an HP Prodesk (Intel Core i5-9500 CPU @ 3.00GHz, 6 cores, 16GB. In the process relearned UBUNTU server (especially netplan WT!! is that about?) and with little issue a server back up and running. It’s running plexmediaserver_1.40.5.8897-e5987a19d_amd64

Content is held on a separate server, so that’s all fine and hasn’t changed.

Problem

Everything seems OK, except that home movie content in .mpg format will play fine on my 4K TVs but doesn’t play at all on my PC through Plex web. I get Dialogue Playback error - the server is not powerful enough to convert video.

Now this worked with the previous server, i.e. I could watch them via Plex Web on my PC.
Nothing as far as I am aware has changed in the three or four days to get the new server running - I manually update Windows and Firefox and it’s a long while since I’ve needed to update any Codecs for any video related programs.

What I’ve done, thoughts and questions

Checked server and PC web settings

Server transcoder settings are set to “disable video stream transcoding” as I never wanted the old server to even try but it all worked fine with powerful clients. This has been inherited by the new server at this point.

Now I know that for the TVs and tablets I’ve set the clients to just send original file as well. i.e. avoid transcoding but I can’t find something similar in the Web client configuration settings.

In trying to work through this I’m stuck at trying to find out what decides that transcoding is required and to what but to be honest there are few options to control behaviour anyway that I can find.

Even if it genuinely needed to transcode, the files are all similar spec
from file info
Media
Bitrate 8942 kbps
Width 720 Height 576
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Video Resolution 576p
Container MPEG
Video Frame Rate PAL
Video Profile main

a server really shouldn’t need much oompf to do so and the new box should easily handle that.

a) Is the error message accurate and specific or just a general error message for a number of transcoding hiccups?
b) if it’s effectively the same server on better hardware why does it suddenly need to transcode when it didn’t before for the same client.
c) Is there a process or logic difference in trasncoding between versions
1.32.7.7621-871adbd44_i386 & 1.40.5.8897-e5987a19d_amd64

Any suggestion welcome.

2

Let’s start with C, yes, yes they have and further complicated by which version of Ubuntu did you load and hopefully figured out how not to use the snap version or docker.

If you want to have a stable server I would use use Ubuntu 22.04 and Plex version 1.32.8.7639 and wait for the dust to settle sometime next year.

Release notes: Plex Media Server - #607 by gbooker02

3

Ah! Thank you. I’m not wedded to an Ubuntu version so I’ll take your advice and redo the server creation and see what happens. Snaps, flatpacks never! Docker occasionally but not for something like this that may at some point need to transcode multiple streams. Shared platform doesn’t seem quite right when I can do standalone.

Presumably looking at the comments about the release of 1.40.0.7775 I’m going to have to reload copies of the database as well, as the 1.4 branch will somehow have upgraded the database.

Purely out of interest, I am still holding back on upgrading libraries (based on the issues I saw come out when this first arrived about 18 -24 months back or so). Is that likely to have a bearing at all? Again can’t see why but caution first.

Recreating metadata over 20TB of media takes a long time on my network connection and frankly there’s so many viewing statuses in place for family members I don’t want to bugger those up either.

I’d rather use Plex as a user with a simple install and minimal admin.
To a large extent that’s true but every so often wrinkles seem to come up on upgrades and as casual user, even with a lot of IT experience, I find it hard to get at relevant information because in order to do so you need to understand and therefore learn a lot more context that isn’t widely published.

Again, thanks.

4

1.40.0 introduced many database changes.

However, you should still be able to fall back to 1.32.8.

You will need to allow time for PMS to migrate the db back to the 1.32.8 format. So don’t be surprised if you see a “503 maintenance” message in Plex Web. Refresh the web page every 10 min or so to see if the migration has finished (the page does not auto-update).

5

Before you start re-installing things…

Enable video transcoding.

“Server not powerful enough” appears when Plex needs to transcode the video but transcoding is disabled.

The i5-9500 should easily transcode 1080p or lower using the CPU.

If you enable hardware accelerated transcoding, pick the UHD Graphics in Settings → Transcoder instead of leaving the selection at Auto (default).

6

Upgrading the Libraries is something that is occurring in the 1.40+ process. If you haven’t cleaned up your directory and naming structure then you may have some rework.

You can migrate and try to preserve everything.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/migrating-a-tv-library-to-use-the-new-plex-tv-series-agent-scanner/

Or make new libraries and move files over following the new naming rules.

TV shows are usually more specific.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files

Movies
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/

7

Thanks for the info. Good to get the confirmation that the new box is more than up to it here.

What you are suggesting here seems more like a workaround than a solution.

Previously I didn’t want the server to transcode because it would barf on even HD video, that’s why I set it not to and set the TV clients etc where there were client options to just play original format. That used to work fine and I never needed to set anything in the web client.
How it worked in the background I didn’t know (or care really) I assumed that the server probably read the source file from the network drive and simply punted it back out as a stream to the client. Very low activity.

Given that that worked I have no reason to want to change this as among other things it minimised energy usage for the Plex server - certainly with UK energy prices I’m currently consolidating all my home servers from old, power hungry units to a couple of new low power devices and virtualising as much as I think is practically possible.

So I understand what you are suggesting fixes an issue because PMS thinks it needs to transcode video but I’m not letting it.

For me however that is not the issue, the issue is that new Plex now requires a video transcode when handling an SD level mpg video and serving to the web client when neither the new Plex with other clients or old Plex with the same client required this.

Setting transcode on might get a working setup but it’s not really addressing the underlying cause.

… and that sort of fix has caused me grief in one or two instances over the years when things change again.

8

If the files direct played before, then they should do the same on the new system.

If you want to know why Plex wants to transcode the video, then enable transcoding and play the video for ~20 seconds. Then pull the server logs and upload the zip file to the thread. We can take a look and see why Plex was transcoding the video.

Letting the video transcode adds the necessary information to the log files. Otherwise the log entry is the “server is not powerful enough” message.

Transcoding should not adversely affect the system. My server (Ubuntu 22.04, i5-10500T) regularly transcodes without issue. I frequently have two or three friends streaming remotely and transcoding video.

I have not put a wattmeter on my server, but transcoding using the GPU will be much more efficient than using the CPU.

9

To add to FordGuy,

May I get a sample of the file(s)? I’d like to test them on my systems
(ALK, Nvidia, and GLK)

10

OK, as it was simple I tried, and yes removing video transcoding disable allowed files to play on web client.

ChuckPa, I’ve attached a sample file that causes the error dialogue in web client here if disable video is checked.
vidfile.zip (6.0 MB)

I’m slightly confused by the guidance on log files however.

The page Posting Log Files says:
Tip!

Access tokens let you perform tasks as your account, so they’re private information and hidden by default. Before sharing logs, make sure that you have not changed the server setting such that access tokens appear in logs. Make sure the Allow Plex Media Server tokens in logs preference is disabled in your server settings .

If you’re disabling this so you can share logs, be sure to: (1) quit/stop your Plex Media Server after disabling the preference, (2) delete the contents of your server Logs directory and then (3) launch your Plex Media Server again before reproducing an issue and gathering logs.

Obviously I don’t want any personal or account data to leak but
I can’t find the setting for allow tokens under server settings - is this still relevant?
I can’t see any option to delete current logs, so I assume that’s delete them physically on the machine?

Thanks.

11

If you have “disable video transcoding” and the browser (or app) cannot play the MPG natively, then it will fail.

Notice here it’s going from 480i → 480p
Screenshot from 2024-08-28 01-38-14

12

OK. Understood.
If I use a file ref as the URL, the native file plays in the browser (Firefox) but it launches VLC to do so, but this was always the case.
I’m stumped as to why the behaviour should be different from before to now, I’m sure Firefox hasn’t been updated in the relevant timeframe.

When you say play natively in the browser what is it that the browser is being presented with? Presumably Plex streams the file in some format and it’s down to how the browser handles the stream, which I assume will be different to simply playing a file as far as the browser is concerned.

I’d like to get to the bottom of this but this is rapidly going into the too hard category :slight_smile: Given that it works on all bar the web client as is, I’m inclined to live with it as I can play the files on the PC another way.

Thanks for all help.

13

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