r/PleX

I have a lifelong friend, we live on opposite sides of the country now, great friends and all that. But these days the majority of our texts are just him asking if I can add something on Plex. It's maybe like once every 2 weeks. No biggie. I mean, I rarely text with most of my good friends anyway. Everyone moved and got busy, classic stuff in your 30s.

Anyway, just kind of a bummer lmao. But we still catch up sometimes and see each other when we're in town.

Also, getting ahead of it, I don't want to set up Ombi or anything (tried it and I didn't like it). I really don't want to give people any freedom when HDDs are so expensive or deal with the security or explaining how it works etc.

Just curious if anyone can relate. I know the solution (if I even feel like saying anything), it's just nice to hear someone can relate.

I have a PMS + Tailscale that I use to stream music, and now movies. I recently found out about plex's restrictions to stream my own content over my own established connection. The entire reason I set this up was to not pay for streaming, is this any way around this or should I just switch to JellyFin?

After several months of development, I've decided to open source a project I've been building for my own Plex server called Server Manager Portal.

The goal was to provide users with detailed statistics and insights into their viewing activity on a Plex server.

Server Manager Portal is a self-hosted web application that provides a complete management and analytics layer for Plex servers.

Features include:

• Setup Wizard that walks you through first time setup
• Set a date for each shared users access to be revoked (default is unlimited)
• Personal user dashboards with viewing statistics, rankings, streaming habits, binge tracking, top movies and shows, watch patterns and yearly wrap-up style analytics.
• A live admin dashboard with active session monitoring, user management, server leaderboards and audit logs.
• Automated access management including temporary access periods, invite links, automatic expiry dates and inactivity cleanup.
• Personal invite links that guide new users through an automated onboarding process, allowing them to create an account, connect their Plex account, accept your server invitation and gain access with minimal manual intervention from the server owner.
• Plex OAuth authentication with no passwords stored locally.
• Automated access cleanup based on inactivity, allowing you to automatically detect and manage users who rarely use the server, for example users who have not streamed within a defined period of time.
• Automated emails for welcomes, invite reminders, expiry reminders, inactivity warnings and newsletters. (required SMTP to be set up)
• Discovery pages showing trending content across the server, all time favourites, weekend viewing trends and hidden gems.
• User analytics dashboards with visual graphs showing viewing activity over time, watch history trends, most watched content, and breakdowns of usage patterns on the server. (requires Tautulli)
• Sonarr and Radarr integration including release calendars, queue monitoring and history views.
• Public status pages for Plex, request systems and download services.
• Mobile friendly responsive design built to work properly on phones and tablets.

All analytics and statistics are generated exclusively from activity that occurs on your own Plex server. The application does not access or analyse a user's wider Plex account activity, viewing habits from other servers, or any data outside of your own environment.

The entire application runs using flat JSON files so there is no database dependency to manage.

It is built with Node.js, Express, React and Tailwind and supports Docker deployments including Unraid templates.

The original aim was to remove as much manual administration from running a Plex server that I share with my friends and family while giving my users a better experience and better visibility into their own activity on the server.

I'd be interested in hearing feedback from other Plex and self-hosted users, particularly around features you would want to see added or improved.

GitHub: https://github.com/jl94x4/Server-Manager-Portal

https://preview.redd.it/24ix9v1uyfbh1.png?width=498&format=png&auto=webp&s=46d2d4961214dbccae0a3df1d001fbc29c1eb6af

Hi y'all, so I've been tryna crack at this for just over a week now and I'm stumped. I have this server running on my windows 11 work computer, here are the specs:

- 64GB DDR4 at 4800 MT/s

- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070

- The media is on a windows storage pool spread across a few m.2's and a couple hdd's. Not ideal but it's temp. OS is on a separate M.2

- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core Processor

This is at an office building that does web hosting, so pretty reliable internet with fallbacks, and I get about 400/400 up/down avg across various servers and speed tests. I know that's not going to be accurate to my connection to my remote clients, but I'm not sure how to test a direct connection between devices. Closest thing I've found was my FireStick TV has a debug mode that let's me see plex's bandwidth, and I can watch it occasionally chill at 9-10mbps, but then it drops down to about 1-2mbps and stays there. Strangely I've found swapping subtitles briefly brings back the 9-10, but then it usually goes back down and I have to repeat this "trick" every few minutes to keep the video actively playing and not buffering.

I've tried watching from my phone on my home network, which gets about 40mbps download, should be more than enough for my 1080p 15mbps media. I've tried watching from my phone on cellular, I've tried 2 different TV's I have at my home, I tried 2 different computers at my home. I've had 3 different family members try to remote in, be able to see everything and scroll, but then not be able to watch from their various devices either, and their on various different networks across the states.

I find it hard to believe transcoding is an issue, my hardware should be more than up to the challenge and I've made sure most of my videos are compatible anyways(MKV x264), the only thing I've seen it occasionally transcode is the audio of some that have DTS, but it buffers even on media that it can directplay the video and audio(AAC). I've confirmed this on my tv and computers dashboard and in the debug while playing, and generally it seems like for some reason plex specifically just has a reduced bandwidth or some kind of throttling going on?

tried dropping to 720p. Plays for a bit longer periods but still hits constant buffering when the bitrate drops to the 1-2mbps. I've tried running it through a vpn, I've tried changing the port, I've tried restarting my computer, my client devices, plex media server. I'm able to watch other streaming services like netflix, disney+, youtube, amazon video, etc. just fine on all other devices. Also local playing of the media works fine, no buffering perfect clear beautiful video. It's just remote with issues. I've also disabled the relay connection and made sure they're direct, so it is a direct connection despite somehow being a really low expected bandwidth. My home and office are less than 20 miles apart.

There's more I've tried that I can't remember right now, lol, it's a long list, but I'm frustrated and running out of ideas. I just wanna be able to watch this stuff from home man, paid for plex pass for the remote and doesn't really feel worth it if all I get is 1-2mbps of usable bandwidth.

Really appreciate any and all help, and if need be I can try and provide logs, just not sure how to upload them. Also not sure if they'll help explain what seems to me to be some sort of network issue, but I'm just baffled at what that issue could be.

Attempt to watch on iphone cellular since I'm at the office rn. I'll do another test when I get home on my network

the results I get from my phone on cellular, quite a bit greater than what I'm getting on plex.

Tautulli dashboard from the cellular phone stream test, cuz why not?

That speed test is setup on my server, on the same port as plex, which is the default 32400. If I'm reading this right, I seem to get decent enough connection even on my phones cellular right now to be able to stream this in og quality of 14.9mpbs, yet plex is getting 1mbps. Seems to me like the ports forwarded properly if the speedtest worked on the same port, and the speeds seem to be there. I can do another test when I get home to actually see my home networks speed to the server, but seems like this demonstrated somethings up.

Every video is way quieter than it is if I'm playing through VLC at 100% volume. I checked, they're mixed the same through the mixer and VLC is set to 100%.

I have a Bose TV soundbar connected to my tv via HDMI / eARC.

When I cast music to the TV using PlexAmp, the music plays through the soundbar fine.

When I cast amovie with Plex, Netflix or Youtube, the audio sounds weak, low and tinny.

I've tried power resets on both the tv and the soundbar, no fix.

My only clue the soundbar isn't broken is that audio plays fine when using PlexAmp.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what my issue might be?

I know they "dropped support" once it stops working it stops working, I know regardless of support from people they're ignoring it, but another to the pile.

Small thing- But rewatching Cyberpunk Anime S01 with my Dad, whom prefers dub, I prefer sub.

It syncs video, but lets the individual users choice audio type and if subtitles or not seperately, its a small thing, but damn is that ever fantastic.

Consider this a acknowledgment of the dev(s) that designed this and thank you for even thinking about the smallest of details like that, even if it never comes out on the new crap app version, thank you for it existing to begin with, but also COME ON PLEASE KEEP IT AND BRING IT BACK TO THE OTHER DEVICES YOU KILLED IT FOR!!

I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction because I’ve run out of things to try.

I’m running Plex in Docker using the LinuxServer Plex image on an Ubuntu VM inside Proxmox. Certain media files are failing immediately with:

Conversion failed. The transcoder exited due to an error.

This started with certain newer media, but now some older media I had watched before is randomly getting the same error.

Things I’ve already tried:

• Turned off subtitles
• Deleted the media file Plex points to and re-imported from the qBittorrent hardlink folder
• Deleted both copies and grabbed a different release
• Repaired the Plex database
• Rebuilt the Plex codec folder
• Disabled and re-enabled hardware transcoding
• Disabled hardware transcoding and HDR tone mapping completely
• Rolled Plex back from 1.43.2.10687-563d026ea to 1.43.1.10611-1e34174b1-ls306

None of those fixed it.

The important part from the logs seems to be this:

videoDecision=copy
audioDecision=transcode
sourceVideoCodec=hevc
sourceAudioCodec=eac3

Then Plex Transcoder immediately fails with:

Error opening input: Invalid argument
Error opening input file /data/movies/Hokum (2026) ... .mkv
Error opening input files: Invalid argument
Plex Transcoder exit code 234

So it does not look like a normal hardware transcode failure. Plex is copying the HEVC video and only trying to transcode EAC3 audio to AAC, but it fails immediately when opening/parsing the MKV.

I also found a similar scanner error on another file:

Could not parse media file ... error=-22: Invalid argument

Docker does have /dev/dri mapped:

/dev/dri -> /dev/dri

And disabling hardware transcoding made no difference anyway.

The file path exists and Plex sees the item in the library. The failure happens when playback starts. Some of these files may be hardlinked from qBittorrent/Sonarr/Radarr imports.

Has anyone seen Plex Transcoder fail with Error opening input: Invalid argument / exit code 234 like this? Is this usually caused by a bad MKV container, hardlink/filesystem issue, EAC3 parsing issue, or something specific to Plex Docker/Linux?

Any guidance on the actual fix would be appreciated. I’m trying to avoid more random testing unless there’s a clear direction.

Maybe I'm missing something easy but I'm stuck...so been building out my Plex server on a new NAS and copying files/correcting Plex entries, etc. Now doing music videos from live concerts/events and sometimes, the videos are split up into multiple files. Plex only seems to play the first file even though they are all listed in the Info section. I'd like them to play sequentially. I can merge them all into one big file but is that necessary? I'd like Plex to treat the individual files like an album...hit play and they play in order. Not sure what I'm missing?

Hi folks, this is a minor annoyance and I could force the right metadata by copying it over but i want to figure out how to scrape this the way it's meant to.

I've set up most of my TV shows as the Show name and inside that folder i have subfolders Season 1, 2 and so on.

The AMC series Interview with a Vampire which is now airing season 3.. seems to have changed things up a bit and retitled themselves as The Vampire Lestat.

Try as I might, I can't get the Season 3 metadata to come through. Seasons 1 and 2 are there just fine.

I've tried the conventional way above.. and it doesn't come.. it just generic pulls episode 1, 2 as numbers but not the episode summaries and titles.

I thought that maybe with the renaming, it should be a new series called The Vampire Lestat... and i tried it listed first as Season 3 and then as Season 1.

Does anyone know how I can set it up so it pulls over the information right?

Have ripped in Mp3 at various bt rates historically (128 - 320) but am about re redo everything in flac.

Do I need to do anything to make sure everything else, playlist etc are preserved. Do I need to ensure exactly the same filenames etc?

I have used xcopy to copy the folder and file structuer and am ripping to that copy as it works well and I can work through, I plan to over paste often listened to stuff as I go, but may do the rest later in one, once I have sorted tags etc.

Do I need to do anything specific, I think the above works but will take some time so wanted to ask rather than do a redo.

So I'll start with the TL;DR, then expand.

TL:DR
Watching episodes of CSI or House of the Dragon on my Chromecast in bedroom, at some point during the episode, it stops the current episode and begins loading the next episode. Does not happen on Hisense TV with Plex app in living room.

Long Version
I have a 3rd gen Chromecast connected to my bedroom TV. It will play most of my TV shows without issue. But I first noticed when I started watching the first season of CSI Vegas that it would play for a few minutes, then automatically jump to the next episode. Every episode did this.

I tried watching it downstairs on my Hisense TV with the Plex app, and it played the whole episode through. Now House of the Dragon is doing it.

I have my suspicions but it doesn't make sense that it works on one device and not the other if the issue was related to 'mistaking' the commercial break cuts as 'end of episode, next episode' triggers. Also might be the way the file is encoded? Both of these series are in x265.. other series that do work (Law n Order, Your Honour) are x264.

My PLEX server uses hardware transcoding on a 3060ti. The server shows no signs of struggle when playing the file. There is no stutter or issues with the episode.. just the instant out of the blue 'Next Episode' jump coming out of nowhere.

Happens when launching PLEX through either my Android phone or my wifes iPhone so it's not localised to a phone model.

Help?

I recently moved my music library to a Raspberry pi and it's been working great. Only caveat is that i had to start the new library with fresh metadata, meaning I've lost all my play history and my Tautulli data as well.

Seeing as I have an existing music library with all of the same data (same files, same artists, same tracks), is there a way to move this metadata over to the new library or am I forced to just suck it up?

Hi All

I have read a few posts on this subject after searching but I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or not.

I want emails when new tv shows are added to Plex. The Tautulli notifications I have set up work fine: media type is episode or media type is season.

However I'm also being told every time an episode is upgraded which seems to happen a lot with new shows. I've read in other threads that when episodes get upgraded Tautulli sees them as totally new because they have a new ID. Is there a way to filter out the upgrades and just tell me about new show episodes once?

Sure I'm resistant to change, but IMO the new interface is tedious and nonsensical.

Just my 2 cents.

ETA: Yesterday it was as it's been (left side library folders). Today it took 5 minutes to realize I had to choose "Browse" to find my actual library, not just the recent additions.

Does anyone else’s iOS app just absolutely refuse to connect to their server? I know it’s not a problem with my computer/server, because I can connect just fine on my apple tvs, other computers, etc. It’s only an issue with the iOS app. Anyone else having this issue, or have any advice how I can fix it?

Running Plex on Synology 920+ and it works well, but every few months the database seems to reset and my “recently added” and all my custom matches for files that couldn’t be matched automatically disappear.

It’s tiring and I am lost - I am sharing the files via network from another server that hosts the files.

And suggestions what I could do? 😞

With the shutdown of TV Time, I thought some people might have questions about either product. I have good insight into both with regard to technology/development, history, legal, business decisions, and some financials (mostly on TheTVDB side). I did ask the mods if I could post this, and they graciously approved. I'm hoping maybe it'll stave off some of the repeat posts.

I am working today, so I'll answer when I can. There are a few things I won't be able to answer because of potential legal restrictions or company secrets (existing products). Ok...

I’m the original creator of TheTVDB, which is the metadata source for many apps and sites like TV Time and Plex. TheTVDB was acquired in 2018 by TV Time, which later became Whip Media after an acquisition of Mediamorph. While at Whip Media, I was the lead engineer for TheTVDB, managed the rewrite of TV Time’s website, and lead engineer for their enterprise data analytics platform. I remained at Whip Media through approximately 4 rounds of layoffs from 2022 to 2024 and then left in late 2024 for a more stable position.

Some points of interest:

1. TV Time had a team of around 30 working on it at its peak. TheTVDB had a team of 5, plus fractional staff, a few paid offshore moderators, and an awesome group of volunteer moderators. TV Time is down to maybe a couple of fractional resources (a developer, devops) as they wind it down.
2. Whip Media made a big play with its acquisition of Mediamorph, including aggressive hiring and taking on a lot of debt. The big play (a predictive "content rights marketplace") didn’t pan out, which factors in heavily to this shutdown of TV Time.
3. Whip Media’s CEO while I was there is the former CEO of MySpace and Demand Media. Super wealthy, super smart, and super charismatic. During layoffs, he did his best to help people find other jobs when he could. He lives up the hill from Dr Dre, and we had a few work parties at his house (his pool is AMAZING). He's also friends with Tom Brady, who lived next to him, and who joined one of our work meetings via teleconference to chat with us.
4. TheTVDB has averaged around 30 billion hits on its API every month for a decade, and at its peak exceeded 1PB of bandwidth usage. Kodi/XBMC was always the top API user, by far. Plex, Apple, and other commercial users effectively subsidized Kodi's use (which those companies were aware of and supported).
5. We had a VERY high level TV executive casually mention that he used TheTVDB/Kodi for his pirated content during a meeting with us. It was hilarious.
6. TheTVDB’s past commercial clients included Google, Apple, Plex, and many more. Apple was rad to work with.
7. TheTVDB was originally going to be shut down as well. After I told Plex, they stepped up in a huge way to try preventing it from happening. The efforts that Plex and I put in didn't pan out in the way we desired/expected, but Plex deserves a ton of praise for a purely benevolent move to support the community (go sign up for Plex Pass).
8. Petitions to keep TV Time running aren’t going to work, unfortunately. I've known about the shutdown for 6 months. This isn't a reactionary decision. There are a lot of smart businesspeople with a lot of financial and analytic information at their disposal that made the decision.
9. I don't know what the current status is, but even if TheTVDB is safe for right now, it may not be longer term. There was huge pushback on membership models for TheTVDB a few years ago, and those were intended to support TheTVDB and TV Time. If there hadn't been complaints about that with regard to TheTVDB, a paid model for TV Time might have been more likely. None of us like paying for stuff, but take this as an opportunity to consider your support of existing sites like TheTVDB and systems like Plex.
10. I think I could architect a more cost-effective version of TV Time and TheTVDB. I don't have time to build it, but I'm happy to talk through scalability and barriers.

Ok. Ask me whatever you'd like. Happy to try my best to answer them. Just as a note, though... some of you all get aggressive/demanding in your responses. Take a deep breath before you respond. :)

edit: Just as a very important note, I have no official relationship with TheTVDB, TV Time, or Whip Media anymore. Anything I say is entirely my opinion and not guaranteed to be accurate.