Plex app has poor streaming on LAN with TrueNAS-SCALE-22.02-RC.2

[Dan Rimer]

Some background:
I've recently upgraded to the RC2 version of Scale on my home media server. For some reason, the upgrade broke the Apps system and it claimed that no Apps were running. After faffing around trying to fix it, I decided to do a clean install. I kept my pools during the install but nuked the ix-applications dataset. I saved the plex server data since I didn't feel like going through the whole media list (again).

The problem:
Plex has always worked fine with my nVidia shield TV box. Since moving (from unRAID) to SCALE, the streaming has been "choppy". Since moving to the RC2, streaming is almost unusable. The videos appear to be transcoded as if the system thinks i'm accessing the server from a remote LAN. I've added my local LAN to plex's settings so it considers 192.168.111.x as local.

I haven't checked, but I suspect that the traffic is going out and then into my router, using the internet traffic. Fibre internet isn't great here so that would limit the throughput to around 3M bits (i have 30M down and 8 up). This would certainly match what i'm seeing on the screen of the TV.

My questions are:

1. Is there a direction I should be heading in order to fix this?
2. Is it possible to assign the plex server a local IP?

My hardware specs are in my footer - specifically the Media server. As you can see, it's not underpowered (before the update, I had it transcoding 4K down to 720p in realtime).

Thanks for any input!

 

[Kris Moore]

How did you setup the Plex app? Through the pre-built App, or did you do a custom container? I had similar issue where Plex was trying to stream to my local network as if it was remote and always transcoding. Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me, so that Plex runs on the NAS IP directly and can identify which things are local.

 

[truecharts]

How did you setup the Plex app? Through the pre-built App, or did you do a custom container? I had similar issue where Plex was trying to stream to my local network as if it was remote and always transcoding. Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me, so that Plex runs on the NAS IP directly and can identify which things are local.

Or the TrueCharts App, that's also a possibility...
Either way, anyone wanting to help kinda needs to know how you running plex @Dan Rimer

 

[Dan Rimer]

How did you setup the Plex app? Through the pre-built App, or did you do a custom container? I had similar issue where Plex was trying to stream to my local network as if it was remote and always transcoding. Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me, so that Plex runs on the NAS IP directly and can identify which things are local.

Hi Kris

Thanks for your reply. I installed it using the official charts version under Apps/Available Applications. I used defaults for everything other than specifying the locations of data/config/transcode.

Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me

Sorry, how do I do that? I've read about it (and I know that's what I want). Is that the setting that's show in my picture? I've enabled that in the past (on other apps) without noticing a difference...

Thanks

 

[Dan Rimer]

The really odd thing is that if I go to the plex URL on my browser at WORK, I can see everything and it all works fine. So much so that I go home announcing that plex is fixed, only to be greeted by nothing working! Is it possible (likely?) that it's the shield's latest update that has broken it?

 

[Dan Rimer]

OK. The "host networking" button appears to have fixed it. Plex is also accessible from outside my home network too (I didn't realise it wasn't!)

So the Shield STB was still not working. So I restarted it and then went into the menu within plex. There's a setting under "VIDEO QUALITY" named "Adjust Automatically" which was set to "On". Switching it to "Off" has fixed the issue...

So not sure what happened overall. Perhaps it was just bad luck on my part because the shield update occurred at about the same time as my update to RC2. Did the shield update change the auto adjust property? Who knows... perhaps it was me, clicking aimlessly at any option that might fix it...

anyway, it's fixed and my family is happy again. phew!

 

[dirtyfreebooter]

in the plex settings under network, you can tell plex what the local networks are, just in case its on a separate network or whatever.

"LAN Networks"

 

[Dan Rimer]

in the plex settings under network, you can tell plex what the local networks are, just in case its on a separate network or whatever.

"LAN Networks"

View attachment 52619

thanks. I had already done this but it was the auto adjust function that finally fixed it for me.

 

[indivision]

in the plex settings under network, you can tell plex what the local networks are, just in case its on a separate network or whatever.

"LAN Networks"

View attachment 52619

Odd. My install of Plex has very different settings in this section. How did this happen?

 

[indivision]

@Kris Moore I ran into this same issue with "Configure Host Network" being unchecked and causing streaming issues.

I believe a large proportion (if not majority) of Plex server users stream locally. So, I would suggest that this option should be on by default. Or, maybe configure the host network by default and add an option to "disable host network"?

 

[mabearce1]

How did you setup the Plex app? Through the pre-built App, or did you do a custom container? I had similar issue where Plex was trying to stream to my local network as if it was remote and always transcoding. Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me, so that Plex runs on the NAS IP directly and can identify which things are local.

OMG! Thank you Kris...I FINALLY came across this post after days of searching...fixed my issue! thank you!

 

[EliteSpud]

How did you setup the Plex app? Through the pre-built App, or did you do a custom container? I had similar issue where Plex was trying to stream to my local network as if it was remote and always transcoding. Enabling the "host" networking option fixed that for me, so that Plex runs on the NAS IP directly and can identify which things are local.

Fixed it for me too. For anyone stuck on where this option is, in TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin here's how you do it

- Open TrueNAS SCALE web UI
- Navigate to "Apps" on the sidebar
- Open Kebab menu on top-right of the Plex app card
- Click "Edit" on the new drop-down interface
- Within the new modal that has appeared on the right, there should be a checkbox for "Configure Host Network" under the "Networking" section
- Tick this checkbox, scroll down to the bottom of the modal, and click save
- If the Plex app shows it has stopped, click the "Start" button and wait a moment for it to come back online

A bit verbose but hey

 

[Corsair_Pass]

Fixed it for me too. For anyone stuck on where this option is, in TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin here's how you do it

- Open TrueNAS SCALE web UI
- Navigate to "Apps" on the sidebar
- Open Kebab menu on top-right of the Plex app card
- Click "Edit" on the new drop-down interface
- Within the new modal that has appeared on the right, there should be a checkbox for "Configure Host Network" under the "Networking" section
- Tick this checkbox, scroll down to the bottom of the modal, and click save
- If the Plex app shows it has stopped, click the "Start" button and wait a moment for it to come back online

A bit verbose but hey

Thank you all so much! been on this for days now.
Finally fixed it

 

[truecharts]

We want to highlight that such "fixes" are not required for our version of the Plex App.
As we've done some work on implementing different ways forcing plex traffic the right way.

 

[Corsair_Pass]

We want to highlight that such "fixes" are not required for our version of the Plex App.
As we've done some work on implementing different ways forcing plex traffic the right way.

This weekend i migrated my Core installation to Scale, and as i go, learning Kubernetes, Docker & TrueCharts.
That said; i realize now that i installed the official plugin, and not the Truechart version.
I will replace this because i also want to try out the Truecharts Homepage. Looks amazing!
Thanks for the comment!