@mdnitoil said:
So, I may be crazy but wouldn’t this feature naturally lend itself to gapless audio playback?
Why?
@mdnitoil I don’t think so. Gapless audio relates to pre-loading the next track (at least partially), so that playback can start immediately. Automatic quality is about adjusting the quality used for a currently playing item. 
@MattTwinkleToes said:
Yes i understand that a phone is more likely to get variable bandwidth however where I live, mobile data is expensive and if i tried to watch a video for an hour in the park, streamed over the network, it would cost me an arm and a leg.It is the same story for everyone else i know too in the UK and Netherlands, we sync content when on the LAN and watch offline when out and about.
You are painting a completely wrong view of the cost of mobile (cellular) data in the UK. Vodafone do SIM-only deals of 20GB for £20/month & 25GB for £25/month. Three offer unlimited data for £27/month. I signed up on a special offer with Three a couple of months ago for £15/month for 12GB & if I ever exceed that I can purchase a £5 add one to upgrade to unlimited data for a month.
@DaveBinM said:
@mdnitoil I don’t think so. Gapless audio relates to pre-loading the next track (at least partially), so that playback can start immediately. Automatic quality is about adjusting the quality used for a currently playing item.
Right, and my thinking was that, now that a stream is being queued, and Plex already knows the next audio track it’s going to play, it should be possible to remove the gap. I appreciate that they’re not the same thing, but both would require queuing the stream, which is now being done.
I suppose the point that I’m missing is that Plex is only queuing the currently stream and not building on to it. The next item to play has it’s own stream.
@MattTwinkleToes said:
I am very interested in this feature to see how it affects the main bottle neck in my system which is my internet connection and it´s pitiful upload bandwidth.
Good thing is, you will be able to soon!
@KarlDag said:
I have a good use case for this; I like to stream a show or two at work when I have downtime/breaks, but the download speed there is limited and shared with other employees. With this feature, on my android tablet I shouldn’t get buffering anymore even if someone else starts using lots of bandwidth at the same time.
No doubt this will be useful in cases like this and other desktop and in-home uses. We’ve got a lot of clients to update and want to make sure we get the essentials right with this feature, but support for ABR across all supported platforms is coming.
@mdnitoil said:
So, I may be crazy but wouldn’t this feature naturally lend itself to gapless audio playback?
No.
Smooth, All works great now, a star soultion from the Plex Team.
My plex have never been better. Thanks a lot.
SaluteI have found issues with this new feature…
When activated on my Apple TV, video playbacks have had a tendency to halt at times (often near the end of a video) and the Apple spinning wheel appears for a few seconds, then playback restarts. It happens several times in a video, but we’ve never had this issue before activating this new feature.
We’re running the Apple TV hard wired over our internal household 1 Gb Ethernet LAN with Plex Server running on a dedicated MacMini computer. Nothing else is happening on the LAN or MacMini at the time these anomalies occur.
Anyone of any ideas?
Regards,
Doug
@Badgerdog said:
I have found issues with this new feature…When activated on my Apple TV, video playbacks have had a tendency to halt at times (often near the end of a video) and the Apple spinning wheel appears for a few seconds, then playback restarts. It happens several times in a video, but we’ve never had this issue before activating this new feature.
We’re running the Apple TV hard wired over our internal household 1 Gb Ethernet LAN with Plex Server running on a dedicated MacMini computer. Nothing else is happening on the LAN or MacMini at the time these anomalies occur.
Anyone of any ideas?
Regards,
Doug
Thought it wasn’t available on AppleTV, only iOS and Android?
Edit: Nevermind
@KarlDag said:
Thought it wasn’t available on AppleTV, only iOS and Android?
It is and as an update, I tuned this new Auto Quality feature OFF and tested it playing the same video files that had problems, as explained in my original post.
The result… back to normal with no pauses and spinning wheels during playback …
Conclusion … not sure this new feature is ready for prime time without more testing…
Regards,
Doug
@Badgerdog said:
@KarlDag said:
Thought it wasn’t available on AppleTV, only iOS and Android?
It is and as an update, I tuned this new Auto Quality feature OFF and tested it playing the same video files that had problems, as explained in my original post.
The result… back to normal with no pauses and spinning wheels during playback …
Conclusion … not sure this new feature is ready for prime time without more testing…
Regards,
Doug
Please provide logs to help the devs.
@KarlDag said:
Please provide logs to help the devs.
Can someone help me with how to do this for an Apple TV?
There’s definitely an issue with Auto Quality feature ON when running on all 5 of my Apple TV’s, even hard wired with Gb Ethernet over our in-house LAN.
Regards,
Doug
@Badgerdog said:
There’s definitely an issue with Auto Quality feature ON when running on all 5 of my Apple TV’s, even hard wired with Gb Ethernet over our in-house LAN.Regards,
Doug
Did you look at every setting for the auto quality feature? I noticed that there were a few extra settings that I had to tweak, even on my home network.
@kegobeer-plex said:
Did you look at every setting for the auto quality feature? I noticed that there were a few extra settings that I had to tweak, even on my home network.
I’m not sure which ones you are referring to?
To validate the issue, I turned the Auto Quality feature ON again and watched a couple of different TV episodes. While playing them, again, my Apple TV halted at times and the Apple spinning wheel appeared for a few seconds, then playback restarted. It happened several times in the videos.
I then turned this new Auto Quality feature OFF and tested it playing the same video files that had problems. They played normally with no pauses and spinning wheels during playback.
Not sure what else I can say… pure cause and effect…
Note, I also turned OFF the Apple Screen Saver because of the reported BUG in this new version where during playback in Plex, the video suddenly exits to the screen saver at the time (number of minutes) set for it to activate. I understand this has been fixed in the beta version of the Apple TV being tested.
Regards,
Doug
@Badgerdog said:
I’m not sure which ones you are referring to?
To validate the issue, I turned the Auto Quality feature ON again and watched a couple of different TV episodes. While playing them, again, my Apple TV halted at times and the Apple spinning wheel appeared for a few seconds, then playback restarted. It happened several times in the videos.
I then turned this new Auto Quality feature OFF and tested it playing the same video files that had problems. They played normally with no pauses and spinning wheels during playback.
Not sure what else I can say… pure cause and effect…
Note, I also turned OFF the Apple Screen Saver because of the reported BUG in this new version where during playback in Plex, the video suddenly exits to the screen saver at the time (number of minutes) set for it to activate. I understand this has been fixed in the beta version of the Apple TV being tested.
Regards,
Doug
There are multiple settings on the client application, like internet, local, etc. Have you made sure they are all set correctly?
@kegobeer-plex said:
There are multiple settings on the client application, like internet, local, etc. Have you made sure they are all set correctly?
Any chance you can post your settings, which I’ll mirror on my AppleTV4 and re-test again with the Auto Quality feature ON …
Thanks… 
Regards,
Doug
I tried the new Autoquality Stuff on my Nexus 5X while on the train in Switzerland. Well it sucked. I tried to watch a TV Show Episode that originally has 12 Mbps. I am regularly travelling the same route by train and therefore know that 4G is a bit patchy and it often falls back to HSDPA or even 3G for like a minute or two. Before that autoquality was out I figured out that if I select 720p 3Mbps it usually works without buffering. Now with that autoquality enabled I had like a spinning circle multiple times until I gave up on it and went back to manually selecting 3 Mbps.
I think the algorithm that chooses the quality reacts to fast for the above mentioned environment. I figured that the 3 Mbit streaming quality must be the average bitrate available to me while in the train zipping around at 100 kp/h but obviously if I am in 4G territory I have nearly 100 Mbit available and the client starts to upgrade the quality significantly. As soon as I am in an area where only 3G is present I am sitting there while the phone is buffering. Before I guess my phone would just pull that 3 Mbit stream faster if in 4 G and prebuffer a lot so if I am a minute or two in 3G territory it doesn’t matter that I have only 1.5Mbit or so…
I know that’s probably the big tradeoff question: Quality vs. Consitency or in other terms how fast should the algorithm adapt to network speed changes…
@mcboss86 we have some theories about this but would like to see your PMS logs first.
@Badgerdog said:
@KarlDag said:
Please provide logs to help the devs.Can someone help me with how to do this for an Apple TV?
There’s definitely an issue with Auto Quality feature ON when running on all 5 of my Apple TV’s, even hard wired with Gb Ethernet over our in-house LAN.
Regards,
Doug
As I said before, I’d love to help, but where do I find them for my Apple TV’s?
Regards,
Doug
