When do "buffer" events get triggered?

General Discussions
1

I’m trying to figure out how the Now Playing state works with regards to buffering.

I forced my Android client to the maximum quality and then tried to stream remotely to force a buffer event to see if it shows as “buffering” in Now Playing like I’ve seen before.

While the phone was buffering all the time not once did I see it showing as “buffering” in Plex Web’s Now Playing, the state was always “Playing”.

I repeated the process using Plex/Web for playback with the same result, constant buffering on the client but Now Playing just says Playing.

When are buffer events triggered? I’m pretty sure it used to happen but I can’t seem to be able to trigger it myself. Does it only trigger if the CPU cannot keep up with transcoding?

These tests were done with the PMS preview build 0.9.12.10 (the Android test) and using 0.9.12.8 when doing the test in Plex Web. Both are Centos 64 bit servers.

TIA

Update:

I simulated a slow connection by adding a limiter to my router and then streaming from a remote server. These are my results.

Clients that DO show buffering state:

  • Roku (Preview Channel)
  • PHT (Mac)
  • iOS

Clients that DO NOT show buffering state:

  • Android (never shows buffering)
  • Plex Web Chrome (seems to show when starting a stream but then not again)
  • Plex for Samsung Smart Hub (thanks davehobson)
  • Plex for Windows Phone (thanks davehobson)

Those are the only clients I have now to test with.

2

Fairly sure you can add Orca’s Samsung app to the DOES NOT list and the Windows Phone App too.

3

@davehobson said:
Fairly sure you can add Orca’s Samsung app to the DOES NOT list and the Windows Phone App too.

Fairly sure or tested and confirmed?

4

@drzoidberg33 said:
Fairly sure or tested and confirmed?

Yeah sorry I definitely get NO buffering reports on either device.

5

@davehobson said:

Thanks. Added to the OP.

6

The windows 8.1 app gives a connection too slow message in the app itself, but I haven’t checked in Now Playing to see what it says. I’ll see if i can repro and report back.

7

Thanks @WilhelmStroker.

Both Android and the web app also show a warning on the client side when the connection is too slow.

Would be great to hear from a ninja on this. I just want to know if this something the client needs to do on it’s end or if this something the server is currently trying to detect and is there a internal issue on this?

8

Where all the ninjas at?

9

Bump. Any ninjas around today?

10

I haven’t been able to reproduce the buffering on the windows app btw.

11

@drzoidberg33 iOS shows buffering too.

12

@Bartlomiej Baraniec said:
drzoidberg33 iOS shows buffering too.

Thanks! Added to the list.

13

@drzoidberg33 Plex For Sony (Opera TV Store) and PS3 app also showing buffering events in the Now Playing portion of the Web App.

-Shark2k

14

I know this is an old post, but on sync’ed music on an iOS client (iPhoneX in this instance) i get alerts from PlexPY that each track is buffering. I get approx 5 alerts per track. Not sure why the client would indicate its buffering locally stored content though.

15

Sorry I asked this a while back and now I’m getting annoying forum notifications to mark this as answered :smile: