I cannot access my friends Plex server from the Plex Player on my Vizio TV, nor from the Plex Player on my Playstation 4 (connected to my Vizio TV). I can connect to his server from a web browser on a computer on my LAN but I cannot cast that to my Vizio TV. When I try to cast it seems to timeout and then say “Something went wrong” (which I nominate for best error message! ).
So to recap, I can get to my friends Plex server using a Chrome web browser. I can stream things that way. I cannot cast the tab or the Plex playing using Chromecast to my Vizio TV. I see a page on the TV saying loading, it spins around for a few minutes then says “Something went wrong”.
Using the Plex client built into the Vizio TV I can’t even get to my friend’s Plex server. Says it’s unavailable. Really? It was just available on my web browser.
Using the Playstation Plex Client same deal, says the server is unavailable.
Using the Plex Client on my phone I can get to my friend’s Plex server and I can browse and stream videos. I can’t cast them though. The cast pretends as if it works but nothing it displayed on my Vizio TV - the video continue to play on my little phone screen.
All these clients worked fine in the past. Now they don’t. I can’t get the videos to play on the big screen. Help!
I have the same issue. I’ve been able to narrow it down to the transcoder for mine. The error I get says
“Something went wrong playing your media. Please try again.
Conversion failed. The transcoder exited due to an error.”
I do see the following in the server logs, just don’t know what it is referring to.
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.457 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as blanken79
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.462 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - We're going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 1.
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.462 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Selecting best audio stream for part ID 65697 (autoselect: 1 language: en)
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.462 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - We're going to try to auto-select a subtitle.
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.462 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Audio Stream: 156313, Subtitle Stream: -1
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.463 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 3373Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.463 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.463 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 60290
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.463 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - The War with Grandpa - audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.463 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - The War with Grandpa - audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.464 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - The War with Grandpa - audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.464 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to profile or setting limitations
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.464 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - MDE: The War with Grandpa (2020): selected media 0 / 60290
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.464 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Session 0x7f6be8153720:27039C58-92C4-4962-A4AE-1B10825DF4CB changed from using 4696kbps to 7978kbps of WAN bandwidth. Used bandwidth is now 21940kbps
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.464 [0x7f6c9effd700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=22455 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,This app cannot play this item. The reason is: audio.channels limitation applies: 6 > 2. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=60290 part=(id=65697 decision=transcode container=mpegts protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=156312 decision=copy width=1920 height=1024) Audio=(id=156313 decision=transcode bitrate=640 encoder=ac3 channels=6 rate=48000))))
Aug 30, 2020 20:20:15.465 [0x7f6d4cfa8700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.250.155:59893] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/decision?audioBoost=100&autoAdjustQuality=1&directPlay=1&directStream=1&directStreamAudio=1&location=lan&mediaBufferSize=20000&partIndex=0&path=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F22455&protocol=hls&subtitleSize=100&subtitles=auto&videoQuality=100&videoResolution=1920x1080 (35 live) TLS GZIP 8ms 2676 bytes (pipelined: 13)
Server is running on Ubuntu plex version 1.20.1.3252. I just upgraded the other day, noticed this after the upgrade.
If I do a direct play it will play just fine, anything that needs to be transcoded will fail.
This is not really an answer. The Plex server is not mine - it’s my friends. I run my own Plex server too. My Plex server, on the local LAN, works fine. I see it in all clients and can stream from it and the Plex players on the Vizio, PS4 and phone work fine. What they don’t work for is my friend’s Plex server.
And I’m not sure it’s a transcode issue because it plays in the browser just fine, just not on the various clients. Also, my error message doesn’t say anything about the transcoder, it just says something went wrong.
Also, this doesn’t explain why I can’t cast from the browser or the phone to the TV.
Try setting one of your local devices to convert from your plex and see if you get the same issue. I was digging around on my issue and found this error.
Aug 30, 2020 23:05:58.177 [0x7f65fd318700] **ERROR - [Transcoder] Unknown decoder 'aac_lc'**
Aug 30, 2020 23:05:58.179 [0x7f6606f76700] DEBUG - Jobs: '/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Transcoder' exit code for process 4888 is 1 (failure)
Aug 30, 2020 23:05:58.179 [0x7f65b3fff700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Terminating session 0x7f65cc005ff0:qlavarvjm4e7ml086gq31sux which is using transcoder slot. Used slots is now 0
Aug 30, 2020 23:05:58.179 [0x7f65b3fff700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Terminated session 0x7f65cc005ff0:qlavarvjm4e7ml086gq31sux with reason Conversion failed. The transcoder exited due to an error.
First, how do I “set one of my local devices to convert”? I mean what does this even mean? You are aware that the problem is with a server that is a 5-hour drive from my house - my friend’s server. It’s not my local server. My local server works fine.
If you mean to start streaming and then go in and say I want a different resolution or whatever so that it is transcoding you do realize that I can’t even get into my friend’s server at all. The Plex client says that the server is not available (when it’s obviously available in my browser, just not on my Plex client on the Vizio TV or the Plex client in the PS4).
And IIRC my friend’s Plex server is running on some NAS in a Docker container. I could ask him about his log files but it still doesn’t make sense that it could play on my desktop in a browser window but not on my Vizio TV directly with the Plex client there.
My idea is based on an assumption that the server that is 5 hours away is having to transcode the files you are wanting to watch. But, if you watch those on your local server, it doesn’t need to transcode them, so it works.
If you are watching say in your web browser this is where you change it to convert automatically. That should force it to transcode the video file. But, it is always possible we have 2 different issues.
Yeah sure, if I had the files locally I could just stream it from my home Plex server. But that kinda kills the idea of sharing media with friends doesn’t it? Let alone there’s no easy way to download the files. Sync only syncs to a phone and then transferring it to the desktop so that my local Plex server sees it is a bother.
Or are you saying that the remote server is having to transcode the file to play it to my Vizio TV but it doesn’t have to transcode it to play it in a browser tab? Because it already works in a browser tab. Changing the resolution in the browser tab does nothing to it. It still streams without issue.
My problem is not only that it doesn’t stream to my Vizio TV but I can’t even get into the remote server on the Vizio TV. IOW I can’t even get to the point to selecting a video to stream. Plex on Vizio (and Plex on PS4) never resolves the server itself. I cannot even browse libraries on that remote server! All it says is that the server isn’t available.
So I figured I’d show that server a thing or two! Since I can play it in a browser tab I can cast it from my desktop browser tab to the Vizio as my Vizio had a built in Chromecast. But when I do that it spins it’s wheels for a while then says “Something went wrong”. It doesn’t say “Transcoder exited in error” or anything like that. It just fails to cast. Note, I can cast YouTube videos from my desktop browser to the Vizio’s Chromecast without problems.
When you cast, you’re telling the target device “go get this URL and play it”. That means the TV still needs to be able to communicate directly with the Plex Server. No sneaky tricks for you!
Are you using the Early Access version of the Vizio app, or regular? Whichever one you’re using, try the other one. There’s a great active thread for reporting issues in Early Access.
Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat… While casting usually means telling the target device to go get this URL, if I instead Cast my Desktop and not just the tab then that works because my desktop is getting the material and then it’s casting it to my TV. But alas, the sound isn’t casting…;-(
I was on the Early Access version of the Plex app.
Did I mention that this used to work just fine?
I played with the Allow secure connections and even set it to Disabled but that didn’t help. I can ask my friend to try those settings.
Ah! It appears to be an early access issue! Turned that off and it’s working again! Thanks. While I did like a lot of the early access I didn’t like the transport controls. With the old app, you could easily scrub by 10 minutes to easily get back to the middle of a movie or the like.
Marked this as a vizio-preview issue.
TV Model: M65-F0
Chipset: SX7B(2)
Any ideas on the PS4 client? I didn’t see any way to leave any kind of early access and I tried re-installing it and it still doesn’t work.
Yeah, yeah. Can’t outsmart technology that’s trying to be stupid tho’.
Good, because there’s a perfect topic thread to bring this up.
I don’t think you want to permanently disable secure connections completely. But there are a lot of ways SSL negotiation can fail. It would be interesting to see if relaxing the server-side settings helps. (Edit: maybe? for the PS4 too. Somebody who has one can give better advice.)
).
No sneaky tricks for you!
