Server Version#: 1.101.0.223-94fa57b7
Player Version#: Fetch STB 4.1.1 Batemans Bay
Plex is working fine on PC and Samsung TV and working with both .MP4 and .MKV file types.
However, when tring to play any .MKV movie, the audio works, but get a spinning circle ( buffering ?) for the video. This is for both the Fetch Mighty and the Fetch Mini.
To me it look like the Fetch App is not the most up to date, which maybe the issue. Fetch is on the latest version as of a week ago.
What is Fetch?
I am not aware that there is a real Plex app for a platform of that name. Which might mean that you are using the DLNA portion of Plex. Which hasn’t been updated in years and probably won’t be ever.
I guess you’re talking about one of those streaming boxes?
They should be running on Android TV. Sadly their user guides are a bit limited when it comes to their playback capabilities / restrictions. Android TV boxes should be capable to play MKV containers… but those can contain all kinds of video formats/codecs, some might give the box trouble.
Can you verify the version of the Plex app that’s running on your Fetch devices? The current version of Plex for Android TV is 10.21.0 which has been released approximately 10 days ago.
While you’re on it… can you verify some more details on how the problematic videos are streaming? You should be able to check the “now playing” tile for that playback on the Plex server dashboard — I’m specifically interested if the audio/video are direct playing or being transcoded. Maybe you could attach a screenshot of that dashboard. https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/
PLEX for Samsung is 5.88.1 – Platform Version 3 (Samsung TV)
PLEX for Fetch is 5.88.1 – Platform Version 1.0 – Renderer : WebGL (Fetch STB )
OK So I think I have captures what you are after – see below. Basically any .mkv file does the same thing. I tried changing the setting on the Fetch Player (for the movie in question) to “Force Direct Play”; Disable “Allow Direct Play” and various combinations but to no effect.
Do you get the same issue if you disable hw transcoding on your server?
On what kind of machine is this server of yours running (e.g. which version of Windows, CPU, dedicated GPU)?
Hi Tom80H,
I’m not sure what has happened now. I was prompted to update the Plex Server and now running Version 1.41.0.8994
Anyway since then I can ONLY view any movies on the Windows client. Nothing will show on the Samsung TV or the Fetch box. Its totally stuffed. I can navigate around but as soon as I try to “Play” any movie ( not just MKR, but MP4, AVI) it freezes the circular “loading” thing after about 3-4 circles.
I may have tried changing a few settings to try and get it to work but nothing drastic.
I think something must be corrupt, but don’ want to loose my DB as I have spent hours with correcting titles etc.
I have attached a log from today after I was not getting anywhere. I hope this might help, but maybe yo need a more “controlled” version of the log, if so let me know what you need doing.
Not super much to see in those logs.
It appears there’s a problem with transcoding – specifically the server fails to write to a temporary folder used for transcoding. From the server’s perspective, it doesn’t have access to that folder.
I assume your Windows client can play the videos as-is while the Fetch box and Samsung TV depend on the server transcoding your video. With transcodes failing, those clients will fail to play the videos in question.
It’s been some time since I’ve worked with Windows machines, so not quite sure what might be causing this.
I’d verify the available free space on drive C: first.
Then look at Settings - Server - Transcoder and see if something is in the input field “Transcoder temporary directory”. Verify that this path is existing and the Windows user account under which Plex server is running has full access permissions.
I also noticed that you store your tv shows as a subfolder of your Movies folder. Don’t do that. It will never work as you expect it to.
Well this was useful info. Firs off C: is a 512 GB SSD with 50% free, so no issue with space.
You were right in that the “Transcoder temporary directory” seems to have been cleared after the recent Server Update. I created a new “PlexTranscoding” directory in the Plex Server user account and made sure it was available. Added the full address for the “Transcoder temporary directory” and the Samsung TV worked fine.
FETCH on the other-hand still persists in trying to display video ( audio is fine) - but then it gives up after a while saying it encountered an error. My uneducated gut feeling is the Plex server is doing what it is supposed to do but the FETCH Plex App is unable to process the stream. I thought for a moment it was because the MKV is in 4K, but the FETCH doco says 4K is supported in the FETCH " Mighty" ( what I have been trying) but not supported in the FETCH “Mini” (I think I will have to buy a new “Mini” as that is what I want to use - but for now I’m going with the “Mighty”)
Is it worth me trying with the FETCH STB and then grab the logs for you ?
