Xbox One S - 4K MKVs Pause Intermittently

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
1

Hi all,

First up - for any Plex people reading this want to say Plex is quite possibly one of the greatest inventions of the 21st Century ^:)^ . If I can get this one problem resolved on the Xbox One app I will never doubt my decision to pay for a lifetime membership… even though the extra features it pays for aren’t really needed right now - it just didn’t seem fair getting to use all this for free!!

Now for my problem - As directed I have recorded a Log while playing a movie through the Xbox One S.

Movie is stored on a WD Network Drive, with everything connected via ethernet cables. Movie plays fine on my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 model) where the server is set up. One the Xbox One S it plays for a min then pauses for a few seconds, plays some more than pauses again - this continues with never more than a minute or two between pauses. I’ve read previous posts about movies doing this 45mins in however this is from the start, happens constantly, and stopped and starting doesn’t make any difference.

I want to avoid buying yet another device for playing 4K downloads… the XB1S could be the perfect 4K media player, with UHD HDR BD player and with the incredible Plex streaming 4K downloads - just need to get them streaming smoothly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Rob

2

I have the same issues with my XB1 and MKVs. Playing on other devices seems fine.

3

Its pausing because its transcoding. Plex needs to update their app to support 4k content.

4

I don’t believe that’s right my friend. Xbox App is set to do direct streaming and given it’s 4K capabilities this should be the case. No transcoding should be taking place - when the video plays it does play in 4K and with full TRUE-HD sound. Aside Plex already states that it supports 4K and promotes this with Nvidia Shield and Android TV where the TV is 4K compatible. It displays the 4K picture quality in the library. They have also played successfully via Plex on the Minix Neo U1. It is a streaming issue not a transcoding issue. No different to streaming services pausing during play back when I had a slower internet service.

5

this is what the Xbox ONE app supports. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/sections/200642446-FAQ-Plex-for-Xbox-One

having direct play enabled does not mean it will direct play everything. it means it will direct play what it can. 4K is only a resolution and only one of the many aspects a file.

to be clear if is streaming from your computer to your XBox locally it has nothing to do with your internet speed.

we would need to see server logs and app logs to see why/if it is transcoding or to begin to figure out why it may be pausing to buffer for you. Please read the community guidelines link at the top of the page which among other things outlines some info we need for bug reports

6

Thanks for your response BigWheel. I did attached the Plex Server Log in my post. I enabled it in Xbox Settings, then played the file for awhile with it pausing periodically, and then attached the Server Log as instructed. Is there something else I’m supposed to be providing? Xbox doesn’t have an app log does it?

The file itself is in an MKV container and used a H.264 codec for the video. Full codec shows as H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10)(avc1) when viewed in VLC. It is a DTS audio file, so I guess the audio is having to be transcoded, but not the video.

I’m starting to think Plex is just not all it’s cracked up to be. I also have it on my Apple TV gen 4, and just went to play a standard HD 1080p file. It played for 5mins then said the network wasn’t fast enough to stream it. Switch apps to Infuse and Infuse played it immediately with no issues at any time. If Infuse can stream the file just fine via Apple TV, if the WD Live device never had a problem streaming these files, then when Plex has issues, it’s not hard to determine where the problem lies.

Will cross my fingers Infuse releases an Xbox app in the near future.

7

@mrrob@me.com said:
Thanks for your response BigWheel. I did attached the Plex Server Log in my post. I enabled it in Xbox Settings, then played the file for awhile with it pausing periodically, and then attached the Server Log as instructed. Is there something else I’m supposed to be providing? Xbox doesn’t have an app log does it?

The app has a setting in the options to log to the server log. So if you enable logging in the xbox one app additional log entries will be created in your Plex Media Server.log The log you provided actually takes affect after the transcoding has already started so all we can see is the progress of the transcode and not the initial calls (With your processor though it really shouldn’t matter if you’re transcoding video/audio or both though).

The file itself is in an MKV container and used a H.264 codec for the video. Full codec shows as H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10)(avc1) when viewed in VLC. It is a DTS audio file, so I guess the audio is having to be transcoded, but not the video.

Any DTS audio will have to be transcoded on the Xbox One until Microsoft releases a DTS decoder for 3rd Party developers. The video should direct play or stream, but without the transcoder calls when you start playback we can’t be sure that is what is happening.

I’m starting to think Plex is just not all it’s cracked up to be. I also have it on my Apple TV gen 4, and just went to play a standard HD 1080p file. It played for 5mins then said the network wasn’t fast enough to stream it. Switch apps to Infuse and Infuse played it immediately with no issues at any time. If Infuse can stream the file just fine via Apple TV, if the WD Live device never had a problem streaming these files, then when Plex has issues, it’s not hard to determine where the problem lies.

Unfortunately, it looks like your server is struggling to keep up with the transcode. Your log has a lot of speed values of less than 0. What this speed value actually means is how fast your server transcodes in realtime. So anything less than 0 means it is taking longer than 1 second to transcode 1 second of video. The tricky part here is because your speed value occasionally bounces above 1 into around 1.5-1.7. This has the effect that you are seeing where it will play for a bit, buffer, play, buffer. From the logs there isn’t a way to tell what is actually causing the slow transcode. (IE hard drive speed, slow CPU, Other things using the CPU, network congestion, etc).

The first thing I would try is setting up a temporary folder on your Mac with the problem file, add that folder to a test library, and then playback the file in your test library. This will help you eliminate network congestion from the process. Typically, when you have an above average CPU and low transcoding speed values the main cause is disk speed or network congestion. With your media all setup on network storage and a transcode happening the server has to pull the file from the storage location, transcode the file, and then send the file to the xbox one. Because the speed values are bouncing between 0 and 1.7 the problem isn’t with sending the file to the xbox and has to be with either pulling the file from storage or transcoding. This is why the above test is helpful in narrowing it down.

The other thing I would check is to make sure that everything is negotiating at proper speeds. IE is your iMac and network drive bothing reporting a 1Gbs connection. If you’re negotiating at 100Mbs you may be running into a lot of network congestion.

8

Appreciate the help. Question - can it really be the speed of the network drives or network connections causing the issue if the WD Live can play files from my network, and the Infuse app on Apple TV is also able to play them (talking about the issue with the 1080p movie now, and via Apple TV, not the 4k movie via Xbox). I’m also confused by the fact that even if the 1080p file did need transcoding, it means Infuse would be having to transcode it as well, which it did fine and accessing the file from the same network drives/connections.

I can only suggest again that Plex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be if my 2014 model iMac, with its 4Ghz Intel Core i7 Processor, & 16GB of 1600 Mhz DDR3 memory, can’t be doing anything other than running the Plex server when wanting to watch a movie. It almost sounds like everyone needs a powerful computer dedicated to being a Plex server in order for everything to work properly. My Mac confirms a link speed of 1 Gbit/s in the Network Utility tool. The network drives are all WD My Book Live drives and are all connect via ethernet. I did temporarily have a Minix Neo U1 and it played the 4K files without a problem - likely because no transcoding was needing to take place, but confirms the speed from network drive to devices is fast enough - it seems to be the transcoding.

I will try to restart the Mac and with nothing else running see how it performs but that’s not a permanent solution.

Can you advise if the Nvidea Shield I’ve ordered will solve all these issues? It sounds like it has the ability to run the server directly, but I’m confused as it still notes that you need a PC or Mac to set the server up. Can you please advise how it will work - will the server copy across to the Shield and run from there. It advertises that it has the power to transcode and stream multiple movies at once.

9

@mrrob@me.com said:
Appreciate the help. Question - can it really be the speed of the network drives or network connections causing the issue if the WD Live can play files from my network, and the Infuse app on Apple TV is also able to play them (talking about the issue with the 1080p movie now, and via Apple TV, not the 4k movie via Xbox). I’m also confused by the fact that even if the 1080p file did need transcoding, it means Infuse would be having to transcode it as well, which it did fine and accessing the file from the same network drives/connections.

Infuse most likely is not transcoding and is using it’s own decoders instead of the devices built in decoders. So it is most likely just direct playing the video. (I don’t have infuse so I cannot tell you for sure, but if it’s not a Plex client and you haven’t setup a DLNA profile for it then it won’t be transcoding).

The tricky part is figuring out where the bottleneck is. The reason I suggest that it is either a network or hard drive issue is because your speed values do actually jump up to above 1.5. To me this suggest that the transcoder is dropping down to below 1 because it isn’t getting the data fast enough to for the transcoder to convert it. The reason why this is a very real possibility is that your server is pulling the original file from the WD, transcoding the file, and then sending out a new file to the device. Inititally the server is able to use as much of the available bandwidth as it wants. Once the device starts playing the file that’s transcoding, the server is going to need double the bandwidth half for the file going in and half for the file going out, in addition to everything else that may be running on that machine (Other streams, updates, backups, internet browsing, etc). The test I suggested above about moving a file directly on the server is just the easiest way to eliminate a network issue.

The next step would be looking at a drive issue, because besides a CPU those are the only things that will cause an i7 processor to have the speeds your logs are showing.

Can you advise if the Nvidea Shield I’ve ordered will solve all these issues? It sounds like it has the ability to run the server directly, but I’m confused as it still notes that you need a PC or Mac to set the server up. Can you please advise how it will work - will the server copy across to the Shield and run from there. It advertises that it has the power to transcode and stream multiple movies at once.

While I do not have a NVidia Shield, It is one of the better clients currently for 4K playback with HD Audio and one I do plan to get to complement my own home theater setup. It is possible that using the Shield as a server and player can improve the situation while playing directly on the Shield, if you try and play to other devices you might still see similar problems. This is because I suspect it to be a network problem. However, if it is indeed a problem on the Mac server itself, then I would 100% expect the Shield to solve that problem.

As for needing a PC or Mac to setup the server. It will be because after you install the server and run through the initial setup you will need to access the web portal to manage the libraries and server.

This is the link for the server setup on the shield:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/221099988-Setting-Up-and-Managing-Plex-Media-Server-on-NVIDIA-SHIELD

10

Okay… did as you asked and sure enough it’s playing smoothly but while it might pinpoint the issue it doesn’t resolve it.

The whole point of Plex is to have network drives of media isn’t it? It doesn’t even seem to be able to handle 1080p movies and it seems unreasonable to think these WD My Book drives are just not up to the task.

Focussing on the 1080p movie for a moment, while you don’t have Infuse you suggest it’s simply playing it direct. If that’s the case it means that the file can be played direct on the Apple TV. If that’s the case there’s no reason why Plex should need to transcode it either right? So I don’t understand why Plex would say the network can’t handle streaming the file and to choose a lesser quality, but Infuse handles it just fine. Just how fast does the drive and network need to be for Plex to be happy?

On the Nvidia Shield if I can attached a large HDD and access it over the network I will be happy to have all my 4K media directly attached to the Shield and with the server also there it should all work perfectly. I’ll just give up on the Xbox. Thanks for your time trying to sort this out.

11

@mrrob@me.com said:
Focussing on the 1080p movie for a moment, while you don’t have Infuse you suggest it’s simply playing it direct. If that’s the case it means that the file can be played direct on the Apple TV. If that’s the case there’s no reason why Plex should need to transcode it either right? So I don’t understand why Plex would say the network can’t handle streaming the file and to choose a lesser quality, but Infuse handles it just fine. Just how fast does the drive and network need to be for Plex to be happy?

This goes up to a previous statement I made. Plex uses the devices built-in media player which means that player can only play what the device natively supports. A lot of competitor apps use additional software decoders to make up the difference. This allows other apps to play additional formats that the device doesn’t natively support. Plex’s flexibility comes from the fact that if the device doesn’t support a file the server will convert it automatically on the fly.

For the error message, that simply means the player isn’t getting data to play the file back smoothly. All the player can tell is that it isn’t getting data, but looking at your logs we were able to narrow down to what was actually causing the data flow slow down.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer to what speed the network drive would need. The bare minimum would be fast enough to send the file to keep the buffer full for either the media player or the transcoder. While it seems that it can send the file fast enough when it is only sending it to the media player, it seems other network activity is slowing the network down enough where the server can’t keep the transcoder buffer filled when both locations need. Personally, I am not a fan of using network drives as a source for a Plex server as they do add in a whole extra section of things to go wrong. But I also understand why some people want to use them, and I do have a myBook live in my setup. I only have miscellaneous stuff on it that doesn’t need to be on the main server (IE Classic TV Shows) that I know won’t be accessed as much. But I also have tested my network out to see how fast the server can send and pull data to make sure that it won’t cause a major slow down.

12

You mentioned everything is connected via ethernet cables. I’m curious, what make/model network device is switching all of these devices (router/switch/hub/etc)?