Plex General Discussion And Troubleshooting Thread (1 Viewer)

[John Dirk]

You're right, that should be more than enough I think. If you're experiencing slowdowns and pauses only on the HTPC and everything else plays back fine I would look into any AV software you have loaded. You may want to try and exclude those drives or folders that contain your media from scans.


I'm not very familiar with Synology either. I do use one at work as a backup target for my desktop, but I rarely have need to read from it.
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I think I've found and resolved my problem with Plex running slowly. Turns out the Synology was configured for automatic hibernation after a set period of inactivity. The slowness seems to have been the discs spinning up after such a period. Since disabling this option, the delay and initial jitter are gone.

 

[ScottHM]

Turns out the Synology was configured for automatic hibernation after a set period of inactivity. The slowness seems to have been the discs spinning up after such a period.

Glad to hear it. I know my USB HDDs do that, but I didn't realize a NAS would do that. Hopefully the rest of your Plex bumps will smooth out as easily.
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[Ruz-El]

I think I've found and resolved my problem with Plex running slowly. Turns out the Synology was configured for automatic hibernation after a set period of inactivity. The slowness seems to have been the discs spinning up after such a period. Since disabling this option, the delay and initial jitter are gone.

I have a 4 bay expansion on my Qnap that does that. So certain libraries take an extra moment to become playable. I live with it as I have older media on their that isn't watched as regularly.

One thing not mentioned in here is if your adding or moving a lot of media, especially at set-up, it's worth also manually running the media tools to clean things up under "Manage Server"

Run a full scan, empty trash after it
Clean bundles, empty trash when done
Optimize data bade, empty trash when done
Run a fresh scan of all libraries, and empty trash when done.

Helps to clean up lingering metadata and whatnot. The software is supposed to do this on it's own periodically, but I find it can help if things are looking/acting wonky.

 

[DaveF]

Thanks John!

...

In the near future, I want to learn what Blu ray drives I can use to rip 4K UHD discs. in looking at the Plex forums, there is a lot of drives, but they need firmware updates to make them capable of ripping 4K UHD discs. It’s a bit overwhelming and confusing. And as I noted above, I want to look at replacing my Mac as the server with a NAS and possibly using a newer Mac, maybe Mac Mini as the computer so it’s a dedicated computer for Plex.

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Buy from Billy. I had to replace my original blu-ray drive which was not working with new 4K discs. I bought a flashed drive from this fellow and it was easy.

Billycar11 Selling Flashed Pioneer UHD Drives USA only, Remote Flashing,Tested & Makemkv Discount Code - www.makemkv.com

 

[Nelson Au]

Buy from Billy. I had to replace my original blu-ray drive which was not working with new 4K discs. I bought a flashed drive from this fellow and it was easy.

Billycar11 Selling Flashed Pioneer UHD Drives USA only, Remote Flashing,Tested & Makemkv Discount Code - www.makemkv.com

Hi Dave- I just saw your reply. Thank you for the recommendation! I’ll let you know what happens. I’m not in a hurry, but this is a great start.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, I have a question that isn’t exactly Plex directed. It’s about MakeMKV, which is what I have been using to rip my blu rays and DVD’s into my Plex library. It’s been working out great so far in the 5 and a half years or so of using it.

My question concerns duplicate files when ripping the 1966 TV series Batman on blu ray, this is the first boxed set release. I’ve encountered duplicates before for films and TV shows and it’s usually due to a different audio track such as an audio commentary or for TV shows, a version with the original commercials included. On Batman, the duplications are identical. I did check the MakeMKV forums and based on a couple of posts discussing duplicates not specifically mentioning Batman, it’s likely because of the way the discs are authored for the Play-All options verses just playing one episode at a time. An annoyance for ripping purposes, but if that’s the case, it is the way it is.

 

[John Dirk]

@Nelson Au

Just wanted you to know I'm [personally] not ignoring your question, it's just above my pay grade.

On that note, I have another question I'm hoping to get a little guidance on. It's a minor annoyance but, Plex keeps creating these "collections" whenever I have similarly titled films like, for example, the Mission Impossible series. I don't like the collections concept. Is there a way to disable this?

 

[Al.Anderson]

Is there a way to disable this?

Movies > Manage Library (3 vertical dots) > Edit > Advanced > Minimum automatic collection size --> Set to 'Disabled'. (You can still create your own collections.)

 

[Nelson Au]

@Nelson Au

Just wanted you to know I'm [personally] not ignoring your question, it's just above my pay grade.

On that note, I have another question I'm hoping to get a little guidance on. It's a minor annoyance but, Plex keep creating these "collections" whenever I have similarly titled films like, for example, the Mission Impossible series. I don't like the collections concept. Is there a way to disable this?

No worries, John. . I was hoping for some information. But it seems to come down to how a blu ray was authored.

Looks like Al has answered your question of “collections”. I can see advantages as you have one place to go to find a film in the series, such as Mission Impossible. But I get that not everyone likes that. I haven’t gotten around to setting up a collection.

 

[John Dirk]

Movies > Manage Library (3 vertical dots) > Edit > Advanced > Minimum automatic collection size --> Set to 'Disabled'. (You can still create your own collections.)

"A thousand thanks," sir!

 

[John Dirk]

No worries, John. . I was hoping for some information. But it seems to come down to how a blu ray was authored.

Looks like Al has answered your question of “collections”. I can see advantages as you have one place to go to find a film in the series, such as Mission Impossible. But I get that not everyone likes that. I haven’t gotten around to setting up a collection.

Yea, I can appreciate the intent and it's a nice option to have. In my case, collections were sometimes created in error based on two entirely separate films that just happened to have similar titles.

 

[Nelson Au]

Yea, I can appreciate the intent and it's a nice option to have. In my case, collections were sometimes created in error based on two entirely separate films that just happened to have similar titles.

I see. So far, that has not happened to me. Good to know.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m too late to offer the help John was seeking but just to throw it out there, on my Plex setup, I disabled nearly every single possible “automatic” option in the settings menus when I first set it up.

I understand why those options exist and I imagine they’re useful and enjoyed by more casual users (if someone going to the effort of setting up their own media server could ever be called “casual”) but for people like us who are used to curating and organizing our own physical media, I found that those auto settings got in the way of me setting things up the way I liked it. (It would sorta be light buying a bunch of discs and then letting someone else decide how they go on your shelf.)

And at this point, my Plex is basically “locked” - I’m not importing many new things into it anymore. So for me specifically, it was important to not have it do anything automatically because it’s already organized the way I want it and I don’t need the software trying to “help” me. There’s no right or wrong approach, just what works best for each of us as individuals.

 

[Mark-P]

I think I've found and resolved my problem with Plex running slowly. Turns out the Synology was configured for automatic hibernation after a set period of inactivity. The slowness seems to have been the discs spinning up after such a period. Since disabling this option, the delay and initial jitter are gone.

Synology's claim is that hibernation mode saves wear and tear on the drives, extending the lifetime, but there is conflicting information about that in discussion forums. It seems to me that having the drives spinning 24 hours a day would wear them out faster, but whatever works for you. You can set the hibernation to engage after as much as 5 hours.

 

[John Dirk]

Synology's claim is that hibernation mode saves wear and tear on the drives, extending the lifetime, but there is conflicting information about that in discussion forums. It seems to me that having the drives spinning 24 hours a day would wear them out faster, but whatever works for you. You can set the hibernation to engage after as much as 5 hours.

Agreed, which is why I initially enabled the feature. Over time, however, I realized I was accessing the NAS more frequently [automated backups, management tasks, Plex, etc.] than thought. Drives are [relatively] cheap. It's the data they contain that matters. I'll accept the risk of replacing them sooner by having hibernation disabled if it means better performance.

 

[Mark-P]

So while I am not yet a Plex user, I do have a Synology NAS array and rip and store lots of movies and TV shows using Apple TV. Of course this means I have to re-encode my rips into a format that is compatible with Apple. I've been watching all my personal library of content for years, and would you believe I just now discovered I don't have to scroll through all my alphabetized content to find the program I want to watch? There was a search button inside the Computer Content App all along that will search the downloaded and ripped content on my computer. I only discovered this because I was thinking maybe Plex would be an easier interface to use for accessing content, but for now I'm happy with Apple as my interface. Of course Apple won't let you stream your downloaded content when you are not on your home network, but it's really easy to copy downloads to your devices to take with you.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

If you’re using local storage / local playback only, that kind of setup works pretty well - I did something like that in my pre-Plex days for video projects I was working on or had finished so I could easily view them at home.

Plex has the advantage of you not having to transcode anything into different formats and being able to use it remotely but the way I see it, if you’re happy with what you’re doing, if it ain’t broke…

 

[Mark-P]

Can I just add one more reason why ripping the discs you own onto a hard drive is a good idea? I just found another one of my blu-rays that won't play back. My Olive disc of Sands of Iwo Jima is toast after just 10 years. God knows how many of my 3000+ discs are coasters now.

 

[Mark-P]

Anybody heard of MKV playlist obfuscation? What a pain. I found out about it the hard way. Watching one of my rips from the Woodfall: A Revolution in British Cinema box set, I noticed a bunch of scenes were out of order. BFI in trying to thwart piracy, uses playlist obfuscation, so that when you open a disc via MakeMKV there are several hundred files to choose from, each the same length, but only one of the files has the scenes in the correct order.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Anybody heard of MKV playlist obfuscation? What a pain. I found out about it the hard way. Watching one of my rips from the Woodfall: A Revolution in British Cinema box set, I noticed a bunch of scenes were out of order. BFI in trying to thwart piracy, uses playlist obfuscation, so that when you open a disc via MKV there are several hundred files to choose from, each the same length, but only one of the files has the scenes in the correct order.

Yes, it's a pain. Flicker Alley has used it on their recent Laurel and Hardy silent Blu-ray sets but only single titles appear in MakeMKV with the correct runtimes. You can use a resource like DVD Compare to confirm those times to determine which titles to select. If your BD is old enough to be in their database.