I have found 2 movies (so far) that cause issues when they are remote streamed. I have to set the max remote stream bitrate to 15 Mbps because I have limited upload. I run it through an AWS Nginx server to bypass issues with my ISP messing with remote access. This works perfectly for most of my stuff, except these 2 movies.
I keep all my stuff in AV1 format using variable bitrate. These two movies transcode fine and start at a low bitrate, then about a minute in jump up in bitrate. As soon as the bitrate of the original movie increases, they start buffering for the end users. I can watch the chunk size going through my nginx server go from around 1MB (no buffering) to over 10MB (terrible buffering). This happens on at least Android and Roku clients.
My server hardware is more than capable: Ryzen 9 5950X, 64GB RAM, and an A770 GPU, so there’s no transcoding bottleneck on the server side. I’m running Plex Version 1.43.0.10162.
The workaround has been to create a second version at a fixed constrained bitrate of around 9 Mbps. I’m fine with the workaround because it allows me to add HDR10+ to the 2nd version so my remote users can then direct stream with HDR10+. I just find it odd that a VBR source would cause streaming issues even with the remote quality setting set so low.
