Plex Buffers a lot :(

[vikhyat modgil]

I went over to someone's house and tried to show them a movie on my Plex server, which is hosted in my house. I could only get a 480p stream going and if I went to 1080p if refused to even load the movie. In my house, the movies loaded fine in 1080p.
(I am new to FreeNAS)
Speed test:
My house: 60mbps - Upload
Gf house: 150mbps - Download

My pc specs should be in the signature.

Thank you in advance :)

 

[SweetAndLow]

Signatures are not visible when someone is using a mobile device.

Are any of the systems using WiFi?

 

[scrappy]

Is your Plex server converting the video format to the remote player? Are your stored videos in HEVC (h.265)? This might be more of a problem with the client if I were to guess.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

 

[vikhyat modgil]

Signatures are not visible when someone is using a mobile device.

Are any of the systems using WiFi?

Yes the laptop which plex was being streamed on was on wifi but it was also getting 150 Mbps down


Cpu - i3 4130
Ram - 8Gb ddr3
Hard Drive 1 = External 4Tb Seagate
Hard Drive 2 = Internal Western Digital 1Tb
Motherboard = Dell Mini Atx
PSU = Dell Stock
Network Card = Onboard Motherboard
Dell Optiplex 3020 (modified)

 

[vikhyat modgil]

Is your Plex server converting the video format to the remote player? Are your stored videos in HEVC (h.265)? This might be more of a problem with the client if I were to guess.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

This is what the video is stored as
VLC media file (.mkv) (.mkv)
Baby.Driver.2017.1080p.WEB-DL.H264.AC3-EVO

This is stored on 4Tb USB 3.0 Drive Seagate
To stream it i was using the plex web link on the laptop

 

[diedrichg]

What is your FreeNAS hardware configuration?

 

[Jailer]

This has nothing to do with FreeNAS and would be better asked in the Plex forums.

 

[nightshade00013]

The one thing I can say is that 8GB of ram could be hampering your stream especially if it is transcoding. 8GB is the bare minimum to run FreeNAS and that does not include running Plex on top of that. I also have to guess you have other jails running.

Also storing it on a external drive is not ideal and could potentially cause issues.

 

[marcevan]

Plex does buffer a lot on 1080p files from my NAS to my TV on a wired, cat6 network. If my TV shows are say 3.4GB it will buffer 10-12 times in a 44 minute show. The only thing I can think of is transcoding which in the plugin cannot be turned off.

I'm ready to abandon this whole thing as I've had a network engineer come to my place and test each component and as well simulate a typical bandwidth usage in my home and he's stumped why Plex buffers so much until I showed him the server settings which have zero ability to turn off transcoding. Plex will always think it needs to transcode because it doesn't know the end unit's ability, in my case a Marantz 7.2 on the same rack as the NAS, all hardwired, and a Sony OLED TV wired to the Marantz.

 

[anmnz]

Plex will always think it needs to transcode because it doesn't know the end unit's ability

I don't think that makes sense. The Plex client that is playing the video must be telling the Plex server what formats it can play, otherwise the server wouldn't have any idea what to transcode to.

But as @Jailer said, it sounds like you'd get further with this issue by looking for help on a Plex forum rather than a FreeNAS forum.

 

[marcevan]

Yeah, currently it's actually a Roku Ultra which is limited to 100 mbps ethernet though more stable than wifi. Still no reason it should buffer when the output from Roku is the Marantz and if I have a dolby digital piece of media, I can set the Marantz to Dolby Digital. Therefore it should not transcode, but it still buffers a LOT. FreeNAS Plex Server to Roku to Marantz gets limited to lowest ethernet speed (100 mbps) but a 3.4 GB file over 44 minutes should be about 1.2 mbps needed.