Pi4 - Plex Media Server - Buffering issues on 4K

Soldato
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So I am trying to setup a Plex Media Server to stream a single 4K stream to an Xbox One S

I originally was using Raspbian but I was having issues with one movie that I had that would bigger ever few minutes or so.

I discoverd that the H.265 hardware decoder in the Pi won't work unless using Libreelec.

I have now moved over to this and I am having the exact same issue.

I have a number of 4K, HDR10 files that stream Direct Play to the Xbox with no issue at all.
The file I am having issue with is also showing as Direct Play being true. This is why I am stumped. CPU usage doesn't go over 30% on the Pi and other HDR10 content plays without issue.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
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There was one settings that I set that seemed to solve all the issues I was having when trying to play 4K to a Roku box.

May or may not work.... If you go into Plex on the Xbox and then go into "Settings" > "Video" > "Local Quality" and set it to Original.

This means that Plex won't decode/encode (whichever..) any films and will just stream it.
 
Soldato
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I haven’t used the Xbox Plex app before, but in the settings of the app, is there a setting called something like Audio Passthrough. Try enabling or selecting HDMI for it.
 
Soldato
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Moved over to Jellyfin and not added any 4K media that is over 25mbps and everything is OK so far.

Not sure why it wouldn't be able to handle 40mbps 4K direct play? Using an external HDD on the USB3 connection. Happens with both ethernet and wifi
 
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They are mostly MP4

Another question I have is I was experiencing some stutter with low bitrate 1080p stuff on Jellyfin.

I'm thinking it may be the swap file being full? How would I check something like this?
 
Soldato
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While I like a Pi and they can make excellent direct play media servers with the right usage case, mentioning h265 decode tends to suggest you aren’t doing that. What’s the source media stored on? Which firmware are you using? At one stage the thermal fix firmware introduced a USB issue, not sure if that’s changed, but downgrades were a thing for a while.
 
Soldato
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So have you checked if the latest firmware fixes the bug I referred to? Also Seagate has some historic issues iirc, but they were generally fixable in software rather than firmware.
 
Soldato
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I'd suggest you need to change your approach to this. You had a problem with one specific file, instead of looking at the file to work out what was different (encoding/format/bit-rate etc.) or why it was failing (logs), you changed OS to fix an issue that was irrelevant (direct play doesn't require hardware decode), then when that didn't work, you changed your media server software to one that's client was only 2 months old and clearly stated as beta.

Think of Plex as having three simple variables, what you do to one has an impact on the others.
  • Media - This is the free option, if you choose appropriate media that can direct play, your server and client can be pretty low end.
  • Client - If you can't curate media, you can compensate with clients that will direct play whatever you throw at them (default:Shield TV). This tends not to scale well and doesn't work with for example family who may want to use what they have, not what you want them to have.
  • Server - If you can't curate media, have a range of different clients and/or just CBA you can generally throw money at the problem, but this is your last chance. Don't transcode 4K and don't transcode 4K HDR though, the former is stupidly inefficient and the latter is the same of the former but with added fugly thrown in as tone mapping is broken.

This assumes bandwidth is a given and 4K REMUX can spike over 100MB/s, you have a client that has issues and a server that can't transcode, you need to make sure your media curation is on point.
 
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@Avalon - You're right.
I'm going to take the time to compare a movie that doesn't work and one that does.

I'll use Handbrake to convert to the same codecs that is used by the working movie and see if that makes a difference.
 
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So far I have worked out the 4K does not play nice at all with Jellyfin

Plex direct plays 4K HEVC on Xbox One from Pi.
HDR file is a no go though, but I don't have a HDR TV so that's fine.
 
Soldato
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Do you have any other devices that you can use to connect to the Plex server to test files with?

I understand that your end goal might be to play these videos on the Xbox but if you have a smart TV does it/can you get Plex on it and test the same videos on there. Or even a smart phone or a tablet with the Plex app and test for the same issues.

Are we sure it isn't just that certain formats/file types/ encodings don't play nice with the Xbox?
 
Soldato
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Xbox is the main one to use as there is one in the living room and one in the bedroom so that's what I'll be using to stream to as I don't want to drop any more cash.

The same 4K HEVC plays nice with my Pixel 3 in the Plex App
 
Soldato
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Wait, your OP said you could play 4K HDR ‘perfectly’, now you tell us you can’t play 4K HDR but it doesn’t matter because you haven’t got a screen that supports it. Why are you trying to play HDR? Obviously you can see it’ll look like crap as tone mapping is broken. Then JellyFin was fine with 4K under 25Mbit, but now it won’t play at all. Which is it? Just one of the known issues with the beta JF XBO client is it doesn’t do 4K HEVC yet and as it sees the client as an HTML 5 device things like subs also randomly force transcodes on all media types, but beta=beta.

I have to ask, if the goal here is just to direct play media, why are you specifically trying to get media servers that support transcoding working? Kodi seems like a much more obvious choice, it’s more mature and I’ll guarantee it *never* transcodes anything, it’s also not that hard to configure it with the obligatory eye candy/meta data.
 
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