Plex media server on Raspberry Pi 3 issues

[esbroma]

Hi all,

I bought my first Raspberry recently and I became addicted to it, I installed several things but mainly focused on making it become LOCAL Plex Media Server, by local I mean that it should not need to transcode anything.

I followed the steps on this tutorial with the difference that the media (shows and movies) are not stored in USB disk connected to the RPI, the disk is connected to a router that shares it. To be specific the router is a D-LINK Archer C2.

My Plex client and where I play the videos is a Samsung ue55h6400

Ok, so the issue is that, with videos with not very high quality it works perfect, no issues at all, but with 720p sometimes at the beginning it stops and shows the loading symbol for some seconds and then continues. With 1080p videos, it happens much more often...making it impossible to watch them, the thing is.......sometimes! another times even the 1080 videos are played without issues.

The question are:
- Can I do what I plan to do? (no transcoding remember) I think is perfectly possible
- How can I detect what is happening that provokes this "loading" issue?

RPI is running Raspbian Jessie, and installed apart from Plexmedia server, monit, deluge, couch potato and RPI-Monitor. Also PiHole is installed but nothing pointing to it at the moment.

Thanks in advance

[epoch1970]

Plex transcodes when it wants to, it's a bit hit-or-miss. It is sensitive to media characteristics and client settings. I would set the clients to request for original format/quality, and PMS to never transcode on subtitles + use the lowest transcoding quality. That should reduce the chances the server wants to transcode, and reduce the impact (except visually perhaps) when it decides it does need to.

If your Pi / the HDD are connected wirelessly, I'd suggest to try with an ethernet path.

(To see what is happening, the 1st thing would be to run "top" in the console. If the Pi's CPU is pegged when the client waits, then change your transcoding settings/client settings. If the CPU load is perfectly normal, look at your router's networking graph/stats: there is a chance the data burst at the beginning of a movie is too much for the network bandwidth --esp. if you're using wifi.)

[slpi]

also check what format your media is in, if the video is mkv plex will transcode the video 99.9999999% of the time. Ideally you want the video to be mp4 with (2 channel) AAC audio, almost all devices are able to play this format natively, so plex won't have to transcode the videos.

if you're using a windows machine, check out MkvToMp4, it's a super easy frontend for converting mkv to mp4.

if you're using debian or ubuntu, try using avconv or ffmpeg, there's plenty of tutorials for converting with either of these.

i use MkvToMp4 with the following settings:
Audio - One track (English) AAC 2.0 with Normalize and 0.75 Quality
Video - Repack to Level 4.1 with Repack MPEG-4 Visual video checked; 07 - Fast preset and mp4 output format
Subtitles - don't load (causes plex to transcode if loaded)
Tags - don't load (can also cause plex to transcode if loaded)

i'm able to stream to a Roku, xbox 360, a samsung tv and 2 ipads without any transcoding going on, so it definitely possible for you to do the same, just try different options until you get it right

[esbroma]

Thanks for the help guys,

one clarification, I almost always see my videos with subtitles (not good enough english yet) so, if I use subtitles plex will always transcode? that's really bad news...

[epoch1970]

Thanks for the help guys,

one clarification, I almost always see my videos with subtitles (not good enough english yet) so, if I use subtitles plex will always transcode? that's really bad news...

It won't transcode with srt subtitles, as long as the client supports displaying srts.