Help me figure out my annoying streaming issue
-
I have a Plex media server which I use to watch a (very) long running series. I have run into a very annoying situation with Plex which I have tried to debug but failed (for now, at least).
Every episode of this show stops to buffer when there are exactly 30 seconds left to the episode. This is very consistent. (I could be off about the number, but whatever the number is, it is very consistent). It pauses, buffers, and finally loads the video.
I'm watching an H265 stream, so I thought it might be the number of CPUs. So I increased it and now Plex Server finishes the transcode a few minutes before the video ends. Still happens.
It's not bandwidth.
I even thought it might be my hard drive falling asleep, but that doesn't quite fit.
So I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas?
-
@Captain said in Help me figure out my annoying streaming issue:
watch a (very) long running series.
What is your source of videos?
Also, does it happen with your own content?
-
@Tsaukpaetra it's official crunchyroll h265's, but it seems to happen with any h265 video that's about 22 minutes long.
I don't usually encode h265 so I don't know if it happens to my stuff.
It seems to be close in symptoms to https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/7xmxc4/plex_keeps_buffering_at_the_end_25min_of_all/, but that's a 3 year old post and I'm using a current-ish version of PMS (1.21.XXXXXXX)
This has gone on for a long time. I am having some vague memories of trying to debug it maybe last year too.
-
@Captain said in Help me figure out my annoying streaming issue:
but that's a 3 year old post and I'm using a current-ish version of PMS (1.21.XXXXXXX)
How entertaining that you'd expect issues to get fixed simply because time has passed and version numbers increased....
-
Only thing I can think of is to capture the command-line it calls to encode the video for your client, run it by hand to see any better output.
My bet is a program crash when it's reaching the end of the file and thus the buffer doesn't get sent to the output, eventually Plex realizes this and starts the encoder up again.
-
Which client? Does it happen with multiple clients?
-
@loopback0 my roku clients for sure. The models I have can't tranacode on their own. I don't know if a better roku would do better. Will try web client tonight.
-
@loopback0 I watched on a local web client, no issue.
I'll try what @Tsaukpaetra suggested RE: the command line, but htop didn't let me grab it when I tried so I'll have to try again later.
-
It works okay with a different model of Roku. I guess I will upgrade the lame one for Christmas.