Plex Buffer

[Amelie Robertos]

Perhapseven more important, though, the wireless adapter in the first-generation Chromecast is very susceptible to network interference and low signal strength. Even if other wireless devices in the same room may operate fine, unless the Chromecast itself has an excellent connection with your wireless router, you may still experience issues.

Try switching the WiFi channel your router uses to a less crowded one. You may also wish to try testing with your wireless router and Chromecast device much closer together. Some users may wish to try to extend their wireless network by placing a second wireless access point closer to the Chromecast location. The Ethernet Adapter for Chromecast may also be useful.

Transcoding speed is almost purely based on the speed of the CPU in the computer running your Plex Media Server. The faster the CPU, the faster it can transcode. If your computer is several years old, it may simply not be powerful enough to perform the transcoding that you need.

Another common situation occurs when users run Plex Media Server on a NAS device. While NAS are great at storage and can be very convenient, most commercial NAS aimed at home users do not have powerful processors. Some are even so underpowered that transcoding has simply been disabled altogether in Plex Media Server.

Some apps can have other limitations that may affect playback. For instance, the Plex for Smart TVs and Plex for PlayStation app can experience memory-related constraints. If you try to play content at too high a bitrate, the app can run out of memory available to it, which can result either in crashing or in poor playback, which may manifest as buffering.

Several users have reported that their anti-virus or anti-malware software has caused interference with transcodes. This may be due to their real-time scanning having issues coping with the way that the transcoder constantly generates lots of very small video files for the streaming. Specifically reported products:

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Hey, I have a 100mbps downstream and I'm trying to get a 4k movie to stream via plex. My testing movie bitrate is 49.9mbps so one would assume I could play it without much effort, however short buffering occurs every 3-4 seconds after playing. If I pause the movie for a 1-2 mins I can get about 5mins of playback before buffering starts again. I've scoured these forums for tips on cache settings but can't get much better performance. Here are my settings:

EDIT: I increased the chunk size to --cache-chunk-size=32M which slows the start time but seems to work much better. The traffic monitor shows the bandwidth getting much closer to my available downstream too, should I assume doubling this again to 64M would perform even better?:

I'd read that can cause API bans. If this isn't the case then it'd make my life much easier to remove the cache altogether, however my understanding is that the cache specifically helped with media streaming.

Regardless of a cache or non cache, if you don't have enough capacity to stream a higher bitrate movie/show due to a slow connection, nothing can fix that as you either have to limit in Plex to a lower bitrate or get a faster connection.

Does anyone have any experience in this realm or have any other ideas on ways to troubleshoot? I am simply at a loss since it seems the shield tv is just refusing to ask for more bandwidth when it definitely can. All of the hardware tests to my eyes says this should not be a problem.

Sorry about that, I have been out of town this weekend, but I plan to head home tonight and take a gander at my settings. Unfortunately, if my memory serves me correctly, most of the settings you guys described I already had (mostly because I had to deal with plex during an internet outage), but we will see. I plan on trying to stream using another device connected to the same Orbi as the shield tv. I am also going to download VLC on the shield and see if that helps. And then finally I am going to put one of these files on a usb drive and see if I can just locally play it via the shield.

If this does not help, I think I might just factory reset and only install Kodi and try direct streaming from samba, back to the very basics, then move up from there, it seems that the Plex client as of late has a been an absolute crapshoot (at least according to Reddit), so if I could get Kodi working with pkc I would be happy.

My Plex Server buffers after 1min or so of playing 4k movies/tv shows on a local network playing original quality with no transcoding what so ever. I have the Plex Server running on my PC hard-wired 1.0 Gbps and my Tv on 5.0 Ghz (very close to the router).

Plex buffering & stuttering issues are not a new topic on Plex and othe related forums. No matter you're using Samsung TV, Xbox One, PS4, Roku, etc., you will find that Plex is prone to the issues, especially constant buffering issues with large files like 4K. However, as Plex involves quite a wide range of devices and different operations, it's quite tricky to diagnose the problems. To save your time and efforts, here we have gathered the most possible solutions to Plex buffering issues on local network direct play/remotely with 4K, Xbox, TVs, Roku, Firestick, etc.

Why does my Plex keep buffering? There could be tons of reasons why Plex keeps buffering on local network with subtitles on TV, Roku, Firestick via directly play or remote. Check for the following main causes and figure out how to fix Plex buffering issues.

To fix Plex buffering errors with 4K videos, don't forget to enable the hardware acceleration for streaming. The hardware transcoding is not a magic pill for smooth 4K viewing, but it can help fix some of the Plex 4K buffering issues. To get hardware acceleration for Plex, you need to have:

When your Plex playback keeps buffering and lagging, the first thing is to check if you're on Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Plex will detect the bandwidth automatically. If the internet is not strong enough for the media to work with, and the client has been set up to play maximum, then it will try to cram through whatever huge. Then stuttering occurs. In this case, you can:

If your Plex 4K streaming are buffering, use the Direct Play. However, you need to know that the Ethernet port on most TVs is only FastEthernet (10/100mbps). In other words, even you direct play the video without transcoding, the Plex will buffer for 4K streams and super high bitrates. 100Mbps port speed is not enough for 4K HDR and you need a peak bitrate way above 100Mbps. So first, check the post speed of your TV, and always select the Direct Play.

You can also switch the TV client or other built-in app to a dedicated player like Roku, Nvidia Shield, Apple TV 4K, or other more powerful streaming box. They are the better devices on the market to stream 4K videos without buffering.

What is Plex transcoding? It occurs when the format, resolution, bit rate, etc. of the coming videos are not supported by the client device. Then Plex Media Server will start to transcode the incompatible videos into a format playable on the client device. The transcoding speed relies on the CPU of the NAS or computer that runs the Plex Media Server. However, if the CPU can't handle the compute-intensive videos like HD 1080P and 4K, Plex buffering issue is inevitable.

The NAS drives usually used by Plex Media Player don't have a very strong processors. Only a small number of NAS devices are capable of transcoding 720P videos, and only some high-end modern models can offer enough power for 1080P and 4K transcoding. In this case, you'd better get a beefier NAS for Plex.

Image based subtitles like PGS, DVDRIP, VOBSUB may lead to constant buffering (BTW, also check if your TV or other client device support the subtitle format). Without subtitles or with text-based subtitles, Plex can play 4K videos without buffering. But for other subtitle types, the NAS CPU has to manually merge and burn the subtitles onto each video frame at that high bit-rate resolution, especially 4K. However, most of the time, the CPU are not powerful enough to offer real-time playback, which could easily cause Plex 4k buffering. The buffering imply that the server is not powerful enough for the transcoding. To fix, you can:

Similar to complex video settings, large audio file will also cause Plex to keep buffering. Both high-quality audio and adding subtitles will force Plex to transcode the media. For example, the 7.1 audio may play fine at home smart TV, but it will buffer a lot on mobile via remote access. If you're playing a 4k movie with 7.1 atmos sound make sure every piece of your equipment can play it natively. Otherwise you must make sure you set the audio track to 5.1.

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