Server: Latest stable version of Plex media server on a high-powered Linux box.
Streaming to: Vizio M65-E0 (has built-in Chromecast). I’ve tried both the native smart TV app as well as using the Android app to stream via Chromecast.
Network: All wired using Cat 6 and gigabit switches. TV’s ethernet port appears to be limited to 100 mbps.
The problem: I play a 4k movie (I can reproduce this issue with almost every 4k movie I’ve played). It’s loaded by Plex just fine, and everything is set to original quality, so I don’t believe any transcoding is occurring. But in the middle of watching, at some spots in the movie (the same spots every time, it’s reproducible), the sound will suddenly cut out. The video will keep playing without sound. The video may or may not start to stutter a bit too at some point a few seconds later. If I press “pause”, the video does not pause immediately, but rather will continue playing for a few more seconds before finally pausing. Then when I unpause it will usually resume properly and everything will be ok until I reach the next problematic scene.
I’ve noticed that the scenes in question tend to be when there’s a lot going on… a lot of action, or a sudden change in the colors etc. Which I assume are moments when the bitrate spikes quite a bit?
I’ve been dealing with this issue for around a year now… and it makes it impossible to enjoy 4k content via Plex. If anybody has any ideas on how I might resolve this, please chime in.
Raw 4K Files can have long periods of time where the bitrate is well over 100Mbit. When playing 4K, you’re far better off using a strong 5Ghz Wireless connection, unless you compress your 4K content (You can use Staxrip, I’ve found 25Mbit with 50Mbit peaks still looks miles ahead of 1080p, it will retain the HDR, and you can set it to move the AC3 file as the main audiotrack so that you don’t have to transcode audio, and you can switch to the HD or Atmos/DTS:X when you’re playing elsewhere on another device).
Thanks for the reply. I suspected it was indeed during these bitrate spikes… but this leaves me with two questions
Why does Plex do such a poor job of handling the bitrate spike, why doesn’t the video just pause and buffer instead of bugging the heck out?
Why is it necessary to compress away the bitrate? Why can’t buffering solve this problem? Is it that the local buffer is too small to hold the amount of data necessary to cover the length of the bitrate spike?
That’s a question for an engineer, personally on my TV, it buffered when I was hard wired (the Network Interface on my TV was also only 100Mbit). But, when I changed some things around with my network (snaked Cat-7 under the carpet along the walls from the living room (where Google Fiber was installed), to my bedroom (the offending TV is in there), and installed My Netgear Nighthawk X4 in the bedroom), I put my TV wireless so that it could benefit from the 5 GHz wireless speeds (1.7 Gbit), and now it works like a charm.
So there’s not only 1 way to do it, I compressed mine (even after changing to 1.7Gbit) because I wanted to do 4K remotely as well, I have several friends and family members with 4K TV’s, so they enjoy watching the 4K content I have on my server as well…
