Plex and XMBC are like "busy boxes" for people with OCD (1 Viewer)

I have both Plex and XMBC on my Mac Mini media server and they are incredibly frustrating. The menu screens are never ending. I keep finding more. And setting one setting can change what you had another setting set to. It's like trying to juggle keeping everything going smoothly.


Lately, I have been trying to play PAL video MKV files created by MakeMKV on my NTSC system. Plex stutters. XMBC gives combing artifacts. If I transcode using HandBrake, it comes out smooth as silk. Why is the re-encoded copy cleaner than the original? Don't ask me.


Frustration.

Discovered a very well hidden menu in Plex that allows for different deinterlacing patterns. It fixed the problems, but I made so many adjustments to things in trial and error, my settings are all out of whack now. It's going to take a day to get it back. Whew! I wish I could make settings using the computer instead of going through back and forth with the Apple remote.

I say ditch the MacMini and go Raspberry Pi. I use them no problem and you can control them with a phone instead of that horrid Apple remote. It's especially nice if you have less then technologically capable people using your setup without you.

My problem isn't the remote. I have a Harmony that puts it conveniently in my phone. My problem is the myriad of technical settings, many of which employ themselves by default. For instance, my problem here was that I was playing 25fps PAL rips. Plex defaulted to trying to interlace it with an interlace pattern designed for 30fps. I have everything set to play progressive, but for some reason, when I go to play PAL, Plex insists on interlacing it. The only way to fix it is to start playing the program, then pull up the playback menu, pause it, go right all the way to the monitor settings, select interlace OFF, then go back and hit play again. When the program is finished playing, the interlace settings don't stick. You have to manually reset the interlacing for every PAL program you play.


It took me FOREVER to figure this out, and I tried changing so many settings in the Preferences, Plex was tied in a knot and wouldn't play anything right. It took me the better part of an afternoon to get all the settings back to working again. Very frustrating.

I have no idea why you are playing things through Plex when you are using XBMC. I have Plex on an ubuntu server and use Kodi in a Windows PC. For Kodi I directly play the media and let my computer process it. Doing this doesn't task the server freeing it for other processes. Check out the Smooth Video Project. I use Plex for my upstairs TV with a chromecast and mobile viewing.

I installed XBMC to see if it played PAL out of the box better, but it was exactly the same. I'm used to the Plex interface now, and I've entered a bunch of custom info, so I don't really want to start all over unless there is a real reason for it.


Unfortunately, I am on a Mac so Smooth Video Project won't help me. I'll check and see if there is something similar for Mac.

Have you asked at the Plex Forums? I don't use Apple so I am very little help but I know tons of friendly folks over there would be happy to help.

Well I solved the problem by simply turning the interlacing off. But I have to do that every time I play a PAL TV show. There's no way to make no deinterlacing for 25fps material the default.


Another problem I have is getting custom tags to stick. Sometimes when I update the library, it wipes all the info I entered by hand, even if I do have it locked. The only way to fix it is to laboriously change the database it uses for TV info to User Generated for each and every file.

I use Kodi/XBMC daily, and really love it. Besides about 5 minutes of initial setup, what needs changing that makes it so annoying?

I have material sourced from foreign DVDs... different frame rate, different interlacing than in the US. Some programs like Handbrake correct for this automatically and put out perfectly smooth motion, but Plex and XMBC are dumb about how they handle 25 frame PAL video. They try to interlace it as if it is 30 frames NTSC or 24 frame American movies. This produces stutters and jitters in pans. The only way to fix it is to go in manually every time you play something and find the menu 20 clicks down and change the interlacing setting while it is playing back. If you stop it and start it again, Plex and XMBC forget the setting and you have to go in and set it all over again. There is no way to set them globally. They really should just play the video at its native frame rate, but for some reason they don't.

I don't watch much content that hasn't been corrected already, so I haven't run across that issue. I would probably post in the Kodi forums and ask for help. I know it's possible to send remote commands that toggle something far back in the settings. Perhaps you could find a way to toggle it with a single button press?