For some reason, like in the past few weeks, starting some movies (but not all) we own from the server have buffered longer than normal then they start playing for a few seconds and buffer again. This continues to the point where we give up and skip it, nothing has changed from my end. I’ve restarted the server, the storage device and the player which is Roku.
Any thoughts/help would be appreciated.
Sincerely, watching my Xfinity data cap like a hawk…
What information is showing in the “now playing” tile for that playback on the Plex server dashboard? Specifically…
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/
Nothing seems to show up in now playing when this happens. I’m running a chkdsk on the storage drive today the drives aren’t even 2 years old but it will at least rule out drive issues
tom80H, I was able to get some movies to play and now I can see that movies that play normally are direct play and movies that are failing are transcoding. I’ve made no changes to settings on my Roku player or Plex server. What would cause some to be transcoded and some not?
I have found if a movie has subtitles, and they are one, this is causing the transcoding to happen. If I turn the subtitles playback off the movie plays, does this help to point to how to fix the issue?
Looks like your server might not be powerful enough to transcode those particular videos. Transcoding is required when the client asks the server to burn the subtitles into the video (either because it’s unable to display the subtitles as-is or because the client has been configured to display the video in a specific quality that’s not matching the file as-is).
That’s the thing, I can’t even remember how long I’ve been using Plex on this server and I’ve had zero issues until this past month and this month. I thought it might have been an update on Plex and/or Roku but there was a recent update to Plex and no change. We can play from the browser on the server and no issues. Is there a way to force transcoding off?
You can disable any transcoding from happening – however if the client cannot deal with the media as-is and transcoding being disabled, you won’t be able to stream that particular video.
Some simple checks within the in-app settings…
Settings > Video > Local Quality)?Direct Play in your Roku app (Settings > Video > Direct Play)? – should be set to Auto or ForceDirect Stream enabled?Settings > Subtitles > Burn-Subtitles)? – should be set to AutomaticThank you, I’ll check these settings and test
I checked the the settings you recommended.
Settings > Video is set to Original
Settings > Video > Direct Play is set to Auto
Direct Stream is checked
On the Plex server I couldn’t find anything about subtitles but under Roku Settings > Video > Burn-Subtitles) is set to Automatic
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