Wasn’t sure whether or not this was the correct place to post my request for help or not. Was hoping for some help directing me to what my issues may be. So summary of equipment being used in this situation. UnRAID running Plex Server. Xbox running Plex. HTPC running Plex and Kodi. I am mostly playing 4K content but not exclusively. When I try to play a 4K movie (fairly large files) on the Xbox Plex for the HTPC Kodi it can’t play. It starts showing it is getting the Atmos audio and 4K video but hangs after 30 seconds and starts again then hangs almost immediately. While doing this I was monitoring the server and network. There wasn’t any spikes in CPU, memory, network, or any other parameter I could detect. Same goes for my HTPC Kodi setup. My HTPC vitals never spiked either while playing/hanging up. The outlier and strange part is the HTPC plex player played without a hickup. Can anyone point me in the right direction for why Xbox plex and HTPC Kodi is having a serious issue and HTPC plex isn’t??? Any details I need to clarify to help?
Are they both connected gig-e? Are both set to play original quality?
yes, everything is on a 1 gig connection.
i need to check the xbox plex but Kodi is definitely set to play original and not transcode. what was interesting was HTPC plex player was set to transcode and never had an issue with hanging. I just changed it to Not process any video but it wasn’t having an issue anyways.
still not fixed and not sure what is the issue. all three players seem to have the issue so i’m thinking it is either the network or Unraid/plex server
It sounds like your server could be trying to transcode 4K. Have you tired disabling transcoding?
to be clear and please correct me but the server settings isn’t where disabling transcoding happens right? it is at each player’s settings where you uncheck the transcoding option? I think i have a couple bad movies which is part of the problem. the other part of the problem i just verified is if my server is downloading anything or is repairing/unpacking a download the players hickup every 5-10 seconds. when i pause the downloads the hickups stop (on good movies). Even thought the processor on the server never goes above 60% usage. It stinks I can’t see the server bottlenecking via it’s components stats. Does that make sense?
Where does the metadata and whatnot live on your server? Where does the content live?
I’m not sure. but I can say that the Unraid only has one array and all my files are sorted in folders (Media, Pictures, Music, etc) in that array (mech drives). I assume the metadata is on that array with the media content. I have a nvme write cache but I had to temporarily abandon that use case until I figure out what settings I have wrong so I doubt any data is on that drive.
Can you send us some screenshots of your Unraid array config, along with the docker container config?
I think I have it down to when the server has activity on SABnzbd and the processor is hitting 50% or whatever it is at and I try to watch something on PLEX it stutters. Especially when SABnzbd is unpacking and the processor is really getting hit nothing is watchable. Does that make sense?
Anything pinned so far as cpu cores go?
No, i don’t have any cpu cores pinned. I thought an E3-1270 would have been enough to handle these situations…
It is. However you can still prioritize/reserve so that when it’s maxed (like unpacking) it doesn’t affect other things.
i tried pinning 4 then 6 threads to Plex. it said no cpu pinning available due to no VM’s but it let me anyways. this didn’t help either because it actually didn’t pin them or this isn’t what you were referring to when saying reserve\prioritizing. I am trying to play rather large files. 30-80GB movies. smaller ones don’t have an issue. but i have a nice setup and wanted to play as native as possible files to reduce compromising audio/video. Really appreciate the help here!!!
I was thinking more like pin sab to less than max cores.
apologies, i don’t understand what that means. i have 8 threads and currently pinned 6 of them to plex. Are you saying pin 1 to sab instead of 6 to plex?