Hi I run a Plex Media server on a Readynas Pro 4 bay NAS running the latest firmware. I have it on my home wired network and when I try to play larger MKV files through the xbox one s plex app the video keeps stopping. If I switch over to my 2011 Mac Mini on the same network on the same screen through the same AV receiver it plays just fine. Really annoyed as I thought it was my old xbox one was the problem which is why I upgraded to the one S but it does just the same. Can anyone help.
We would need to see your Plex Media Server.log to see what is exactly happening. This support article explains how to get them from the server.
The only guess I could offer at this point is that when you use your 2011 Mac Mini the file is direct playing and when the Xbox One/S is playing the file it is transcoding which is causing your buffering. The logs would reveal what is actually happening though.
Thanks jmckee for responding. I am going to sound like a complete idiot here but I read the support article and I can’t provide the logs because in my plex web app when I go to the server settings as described in the article there is NO help section as the support article says. I will try and attach a screen shot to prove this.
With the older version of the servers you would need to manually pull the logs from the server.
According to the support article you should be able to locate them here:
/apps/plexmediaserver/MediaLibrary/Plex Media Server/Logs
Hi mckee,
I’m not sure where I should be typing that file path into to find the relevant logs is it on my Mac which I use to browse the readynas or is it in the Netgear ReadyNAS itself. If it’s the latter I don’t know how to access the software of the readyNAS other than through the Radar program you get with it.
Since looking into this matter and your comment on the older versions of Plex Server I am really disappointed to find out I am one of the people who have loyally supported Plex over the years and have been shafted as they no longer support my NAS with the 1.0 server software. talk about gutted.
As you are a Plex ninja maybe you could advise what my options are going forward? I have an Amazon Drive Unlimited account and I was considering running Plex through that as they have sent me a few email’s on the subject. Is this something I can do straight away or is it only in development?
Julian
Sorry about the delay had to find someone more familiar with the ReadyNAS for how to pull the logs. As far as they told me it would be to use ssh to connect to the nas and find the file(s) then use scp from your mac to copy them from the nas to your machine. Both of these might be a bit more complicated.
An easy way to check transcoding vs not is once a video is playing goto your server’s now playing page. You should be able to see the currently playing item and select the (i) to get more information which will tell you if the file is direct playing, direct streaming, or transcoding. If it’s direct playing you will see a single line, with the other two options you will see a line for both the audio and video.
If my assumption is correct and it is transcoding then there are only a few things that will cause a transcode on the Xbox One app. Unsupported format (This can be checked with your file media info), Enabled Subtitles, Bit rate limitation selected, or direct play and direct stream selected.
For Plex Cloud, it is currently in a closed beta status. There was an open invite in which a number of users were selected for the initial testing. As far as I know, that initial invite is done but there hasn’t been any notice when it will go either into an open beta testing or plex pass release.
Hi Jmckee, thanks for your time. As an alternative would I be able to run my plex server on my always on Mac Mini and use the shares on my NAS box to store the media?
Julian
@jools4merk said:
Hi Jmckee, thanks for your time. As an alternative would I be able to run my plex server on my always on Mac Mini and use the shares on my NAS box to store the media?
That is indeed possible. On my Ubuntu Box I ran out of room so I have some network shares from my windows box for some less watched content. There is two main ways to handle this:
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create a share from the NAS and then manually type that share address into your Plex Server when you goto add a folder. IE. If you create a shared folder called media\movie you would manually type it into the add folder box as something similar to: \MyNasNetworkName\Media\Movies
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Mount the share as a local area point on the Mac Mini. This involves mounting the share to a local folder so to programs on the Mac it appears to be a local folder instead of a remote share. This is the method I use as you can then browse the folders when selecting add a folder. In this example I created a folder called /mnt/media and then used fstab to mount the shared files into that directory. (I don’t have a Mac so I don’t know how to do this automatically for you)
*When using remote shares there is a problem with automatic updating of content. Because a lot of shares don’t update network locations when there is changes detected the automatically find new media option typically doesn’t work. To get around this you need to use the scan every xx minutes. When I had a lot of remote shares I would scan every hour. And if the show is not showing up you can also do the manual scan at any time to find the media as well.
