Server Version#: 1.18.7.2438
Player Version#: Mainly browser
Hi, I’m not very good with tech so if anyone could explain what’s happening in simple terms that would be great.
Essentially I’m just trying to figure out why when watching movies at home, everything seems to run really fast, however if I’m at work or in a different country it’s almost impossible to watch.
Is this to do with my server choice? If I spend more money on a better server would this improve viewings from outside my house? I don’t understand how Netflix works fine anywhere but my plex server doesn’t.
Just to add, (not sure if this helps). But most of my movies are roughly 2gb’s and are formated .m4v
When watching at home they load instantly and I can scrub through them really fast, however when I go to spain (with relativly fast internet), its literally unwatchable.
The Remote Quality on the client has a default setting of 720@2 or 4Mbps - depending what you have.
That’ll guarantee a transcode if your material is heavier than that.
Change the Remote Quality in the player app to Original. That’s the Hail Mary Pass to the EndZone that might achieve a Direct Play. I doubt your ‘server’ has enough horsepower to transcode.
2G per 90 minutes is probably in the 3000kbps bit rate neighborhood. Remote Quality at 1080 @ 8 should catch it, but Original will tell the tale. Your upload bandwidth at the server and the download bandwidth at the client will need to be able to deliver the full bit rate (and 40% more) to avoid a transcode.
There’s a number of potential sources for your playback issues… the most common ones are:
Your network connection
Most internet providers give you a fast download speed but only a slow upload speed. Usually this doesn’t matter because you only download stuff from the internet (e.g. when you’re streaming a movie from Netflix).
If you’re watching a video with Plex from a server in your home, this will however depend on how fast the video data can be loaded from your network over the internet to your client device.
Poorly configured Remote Access
Occasionally, the Plex remote access is not able to immediately establish a connection from outside your home network to the Plex Media Server. In such cases, Plex could fall back to use a so called “indirect” connection. This will use a component from Plex, routing all communication through a “relay”.
Indirect access is limited to 1 Mbit/s (2 Mbit/s for Plex Pass members). In any case this is not enough to play higher quality videos.
Transcoding
If your plex client is not able to play the video as-is or you have configured it to reduce the playback quality (in the client settings: video quality > remote/internet playback), this will result in Plex transcoding the video to meet that restrictions. It’s like Plex is further compressing the video to match the applied restrictions.
The WD My Cloud is not super powerful when it comes to transcoding media. That being said… if your video is in mp4/m4v format and approx. 2 GB in size, you should be ok to set your client to max/original playback quality anyway.
I have the exactly same use case as you. I have local stream and sometimes I have simultaneous access from another country (my family watching my movies) and I haven’t had any problem. I think the problem is your uploading speed.
Thanks everyone. Did some more testing and I have to admit, just setting the videos to original quality seems to have had a big effect. It’s still no where near as quick as watching movies on netflex, but maybe thats due to my 10mb/s upload speed at home? Seems fast enough to watch movies without it constantly pausing though.
