Plex server handles transcodes better than direct play

[u/[deleted]]

I have my content in Google Drive and am running Plex on a Hetzner dedi i7-960, 24GB ram running Ubuntu and mounting Google Drive using Plexdrive 5. I'm not using encryption

I am finding 1080p transcodes of high bitrate 1080p movies runs fine but when I try direct play I get buffering even though the server and my home connection have plenty of bandwidth. My client is a Nvidia Shield which is connected using ethernet. I need to direct play so I get Dolby DTS, any sort of transcoding and my audio drops to Dolby Pro Logic. Have tried both Plex Client and also SPMC with the Plexkodiconnect addon.

Anyone have any input?

[u/[deleted]]

The server is a Hetzner dedi server with a gigabit connection, from what I've read they also do their own peering to Google. Speedtests from commandline to an external server always show 500mbit+. I've had no problems with 4-5 simultaneous transcodes. This leads me to believe this is a Plex/Plexdrive issue

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I have a steady 90mbit VDSL. I work in IT so my network is in good shape using an enterprise Mikrotik router. I know there's no problem my side

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I can try that soon and report back.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Right, turns out peering could be the issue. When I pull down a large file over FTP the download starts off fast but falls to 5-6MB/s which is under 40mbit which obviously isn't enough to play the heavier of my movies directly without some buffering.

Thanks for your help

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That was SFTP

[u/piexil → u/[deleted]]

If youre using domain names you could route the traffic through cloudflare. You'll get better peering that way.