Revisiting my Xbox Series X for Plex, and I’ve run into an annoying issue of dropped frames during direct play.
The picture and audio quality are superb when everything works properly, but randomly throughout an episode or movie Plex will drop frames when direct playing. Doesn’t matter if it’s 4K or 1080p it seems to drop frames randomly throughout viewing.
Any help or tips on how to fix @Moussa would be much appreciated!
Anybody else having this issue?
I’m not sure if mine is frame-drops because the client’s info page doesn’t say so, but there is definitely some stutter sometimes… Usually rebooting the whole Xbox will resolve it, but I just cannot understand why only the Xbox has this issue, the TV App does not.
The Xbox is hard-wired to the same network as the Server, the TV is on Wifi.
Between this, Audio-Desyncing and PGS subs incompatibility, it seems like the Native Xbox Series client is the worst option now a days.
Yeah I noticed mine didn’t show frame drops when stuttering sometimes as well. However yesterday I had a pretty much flawless playback experience watching multiple shows/movies on my Series X with Plex. When it works properly it’s actually one of the best clients for Plex since audio passthrough support seems to be working properly now, and the picture and audio quality are very detailed compared to my Apple TV 4K. Maybe the new Plex app update fixed some issues on the backend?
I also made sure my external hard drive enclosure didn’t spin down any drives periodically, so that may have resulted in much smoother playback experience as well.
@Moussa any tips to optimize playback for users would be greatly appreciated! Especially those who are using audio passthrough and Direct Play. The current Xbox app is nearly the perfect Plex client, hope it keeps improving and the playback issues can be solved either by the user or with an update.
What’s the point of posting in the forums if not a single Plex employee who works on the xbox app will offer any tips, or try to help with issues?? @Moussa
If you guys don’t experience frame drops or lag, at least say “hey we are not aware of that on our setups”. Or maybe say what your setup consist of (TV, sound bar etc) so we can compare our setups and hopefully see what may cause it from time to time?
Absolute silence is completely rude especially for those who are actively paying, or have paid a lifetime fee for Plex.
I’m having the same issue with stuttering when in direct play on the XbX. Been trying to debug it but have yet to find a solution. The stuttering is intermittent and happening on a wide range of file sizes and resolutions. Although, lower res content seems to stutter a lot more.
The thing that is weird to me is sometimes playback is perfect, and other times problematic. And yeah the file sizes and resolutions don’t seem to matter much. For instance a super high bitrate 4K HDR mkv file will play perfectly, but a 1080p blu-ray remux will stutter. Then other times a 4K HDR file will stutter, and a 1080p blu-ray mkv file will play perfectly fine. Quite maddening and difficult to troubleshoot! Lol
Will do some more test later and see what I can uncover. Will try tweaking various settings to see what may cause this random issue.
I kind of wonder if this is an uprezing issue? We both have 4K TVs and this seems to be happening on lower resolution files. Like my old Seinfeld episodes have some of the worst stuttering.
I believe this is a problem with the current Plex player and the way it handles video and audio codecs. They likely won’t admit this but it seems to be the culprit. I also noticed green screen tearing on some blu-ray rips I’ve done.
@Moussa or whoever works on the Xbox app for Plex, the player is not functioning properly for Direct Play. Any update on a fix?
Using Plex for Kodi on Xbox seems to be the best solution I’ve found. The interface is a bit outdated but playback is smooth and doesn’t stutter or drop frames. It also direct plays (audio/video) some problematic files that I couldn’t even get to run on the native Xbox plex app.
I would say give Plex for Kodi a shot if you desire smooth playback atm on your Xbox.
Cool, I’ll check Plex for Kodi out.
Yes as I posted elsewhere, I have been experiencing stuttery playback on the Xbox One app for quite a while now. Maybe over a year now?
It’s really quite frustrating. The smart TV app playing the same files does them perfectly (2017 Sony Android TV). My friend’s Apple TV plays them perfectly. But the Xbox is just not smooth. Sometimes I can temporarily make it smoother by pausing and unpausing the video a few times in rapid succession. Even people not sensitive to stutter/judder comment on how bad it looks during panning shots.
The Kodi thing might be a decent hack in the meantime I guess, I can try that.
I haven’t played a 4k HDR file in Plex with an Xbox Series X. I tried recently, and I noticed a very slight stutter periodically. Direct play, ethernet gigabit connection on server and XSX client.
A couple months ago when I played a 4K HDR file, this was not a problem.
EDIT: Above was tested with a 4K HDR file with DDP audio. I tested another file containing 4K HDR/DoVi hybrid remux (plays in HDR) with TrueHD and no stutter.
Just wanted to add my experience to this, in case it helps others troubleshoot further or get a better playing experience…
I collect a lot of movies with multiple tracks, mainly audio, because I like commentary tracks and stuff like that. I’ve noticed that when I have DirectPlay and DirectStream enabled, playing these files on my Xbox One X results in heavy frame stuttering/skipping. However, I have tons of other content that is just a single video stream and a single audio stream, and that plays fine. My current theory is that Plex on Xbox One X doesn’t handle multiple stream files very well.
Only when I disable both, DirectPlay and DirectStream, does my framerate finally become stable. I suspect that this is the only way to force the server to essentially re-mux the file with only the intended video and audio stream before sending it to the Xbox One X, and in that situation the playback is smooth. It’s not super ideal, since audio stream switching now causes a longer delay before playback resumes, and also I feel like subtitles sometimes bug out and just decide to stop appearing, and I have to turn them off and back on again.
The one thing I’m not certain about is if doing this only causes Plex to re-mux, or if it actually wastes resources transcoding… my gut vibe is that it’s transcoding, because I notice a mild degradation in video quality. In my case, even if it’s transcoding, that’s not a huge deal, since I’m the only consumer of my content, but in other scenarios I can see this being a concern for those that have Plex servers that serve many concurrent users.
tl;dr: I experience the stuttering/frame-skipping on Xbox One X playing video files that have more than one audio track, disabling DirectPlay and DirectStream resumes smooth playback at the cost of transcoding resources and a bit of video quality loss.
I’ve been having the same trouble with mine. Turning off Direct Play and Direct Stream isn’t perfect, but definitely fixed it like 90% of the way. Not sure what the problem is, my CPU and GPU aren’t even hitting 50% when I’m watching something. Playback information on the Xbox swears it isn’t dropping any frames. The file that finally made me take to the forums is 720p, I’ll have to try an old Twilight Zone episode or something and see if it gets even worse.
Having the same issue as well. Sometimes turning off direct play helps, but usually have to disable direct stream as well. Seems to run at a smoother frame rate after that.
Could this problem be related to the bandwidth x264 video require vs that smaller bandwidth that x265 needs?
My 4k x264 files struggle to play but the same file 4k x265 file plays fine.
I have the same issue. Disabling direct play fixes 99% of the time. I only see this issue on xbox. It is simple to replicate per file, so I suspect the xbox player does not like something about these files in particular. Here is some data from a file that is choppy unless I disable direct play.
Media
Duration 21:43
Bitrate 4347 kbps
Width 1280
Height 718
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Video Resolution 720p
Container MKV
Video Frame Rate 24p
Video Profile high
Part
Duration 21:43
File REDACTED.mkv
Size 675.64 MB
Container MKV
Indexes sd
Video Profile high
Codec H264
Bitrate 3963 kbps
Language English
Language Tag en
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Location topleft
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Coded Height 720
Coded Width 1280
Color Primaries bt709
Color Range tv
Color Space bt709
Color Trc bt709
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Has Scaling Matrix true
Height 718
Level 3.1
Profile high
Ref Frames 2
Scan Type progressive
Width 1280
Display Title 720p (H.264)
Extended Display Title 720p (H.264)
Codec AC3
Channels 6
Bitrate 384 kbps
Language English
Language Tag en
Audio Channel Layout 5.1(side)
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Display Title English (AC3 5.1)
Extended Display Title English (AC3 5.1)
Recently Plex on my Series X had started having really bad judder playing stuff, and I noticed it had started mode-switching from 120hz down to 24hz when the video starts playing.
Disabling “Allow Display Mode Switching” at least leaves the tv in 120hz mode so eliminates the jitter for 60hz content, but not allowing mode switching will suck for playing back anything not in 60hz
I have also experienced much of the same noted here by @MrFancyPants1999, @ceevee , @TheKojukinator and @tphilips. Random shudder/jittering, dropped frames, etc. A quick pause/play may help but only temporarily.
Below are the hardware/client details I am using, in addition to what settings I found helpful with references.
The below settings resolved roughly 95% of the issues I had when using the Plex client on Xbox. The other 5% of the time I may still see some shutter/jittering but not often. If so it’s resolved by pausing/playing.
I am also using an LG C1 4K 120Hz TV which comes with WebOS 2.0. I am currently testing using the Plex app for WebOS 2.0 and will report my findings here once complete. Thus far I have not had any of the issues I see on the Plex for Xbox app. This to me means the problem lies with the Plex for Xbox app.
NOTE: This is only for my personal use. I am not hosting as a server for multi-client use. Additionally, if a setting is not mentioned the default value is used.
Server Details:
Plex server Version 1.29.0.6244
Windows 10 Pro x64
Intel 12th Gen i7 12700K
Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR5
Gigabit ethernet cable/switch
Client Details:
Xbox Series X - using wired Gigabit connected to Gigabit switch
Plex for Xbox Client Version 5.47.1 / Platform Version 10.0.22621.2216
Plex Server Settings:
Plex Xbox Client Settings:
Xbox Settings:
Finally, below are the articles I used to find the above settings in addition to other useful information related to playback formats/support, encoding, etc.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/203824396-what-media-formats-are-supported/
This is reason, if i play 4k 264 with bitrate thats pushing 10 mbit on my friends internet which is 10-20 mbit because the router is default isp it stutters and loses frames, 4k hevc at 6000 plays flawlessly
