I am facing an issue where videos in MKV container with h.264 video codec and EAC3 audio codec wont play in Plex web player (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, android, Plex iOS, and Roku Ultra. Plex shows that video is trans-coding and buffering but eventually it shows the “There was a problem playing this item.” error. There are other videos on the Plex server in mkv container with h.264 format but AAC audio format and they work just fine.
Plex server is on Unraid’s binhex-plexpass docker image. It has been updated to the most recent version in the plex pass channel.
I have checked the file permissions and everything seems to be in order. It is just that specific video/audio combination that doesn’t work.
The secret idea is to give your server the least amount of work.
Transcoding makes it work harder. So create/convert your media to a format that your client’s media don’t have to be transcoded.
If you are serving one client and your server is going crazy transcoding - so what that’s it’s job!
But with some “format finessing” your CPU gets to work less and opens up more streaming options!
Others will argue but for me any movie over 3-4GB is overkill. (and I have a 65" TV)
You can get down to that with many different compressing settings.
One to start with is the bit rate anything over say 4000kb/s is also wasting space and resources.
Currently I am converting mkv movies that are over say 4-5gb to 3000kb/s bit rate - that brings them down to a 2-3gb MP4 that play on everything I want!
