Plex latency

[Salacious B Crum]

I placed this here as I'm not sure where the issue is, so I am running an unRAID server (i7 6700) on my network and I have some latency issues when starting up some channels but I did a little test and opened 6 video streams and only got stuttering after 5 so I think it's safe to say i'm good for 5 1080p streams which is about accurate based on my CPU so is my bottleneck the channel buffering, the server or the hardware? some channels videos will start next to immediately so I inclined to think that it's just the channel but would like some input from folks who have a similar situation or are aware of a thread that might discuss this issue

[leadeater]

What OS is being used on the Plex server itself? If it's Windows start up Resource Monitor and watch CPU, RAM and Disk utilization stats.

 

Are all streams playing in Original content quality or are any of them being transcoded?

[NelizMastr]

And also, how many resources are allocated to the Plex server? Oh, and if it's on Linux, install/run Top or Htop from the command line to see the usage.

[Salacious B Crum]

42 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What OS is being used on the Plex server itself? If it's Windows start up Resource Monitor and watch CPU, RAM and Disk utilization stats.

 

Are all streams playing in Original content quality or are any of them being transcoded?

 

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

And also, how many resources are allocated to the Plex server? Oh, and if it's on Linux, install/run Top or Htop from the command line to see the usage.

Ah missed that its a linux based os unRAID server v6.3.5 (current) don't know what kernel not good with linux stuff or line code for that matter as far as transcoding I'm not changing anything outside of the settings in plex is there a particular setting I should be looking at for example I have "make my cpu hurt" could that cause a bottleneck with just one request from a channel? As far as I know it has all resources available it is running on all 4 cores 8 threads from what I can tell the resource monitor on the server shows almost no pressure. The server is headless so I do everything through the web GUI

[NelizMastr]

Ah I assumed you ran the Plex container or a separate VM. You're running the Plex application instead, am I right?

 

In that case, yeah, it'll run all cores and threads UnRAID can see. 

 

Next suspect: your network. 5-6 1080p streams are quite hard on the network connection. Can you paint a picture of what your network looks like? Is everything connected to Wi-Fi, is everything hardwired to ethernet, have you provided any measures for QoS so your video streams get priority etc.

[Salacious B Crum]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

Ah I assumed you ran the Plex container or a separate VM. You're running the Plex application instead,  I right?

 

In that case, yeah, it'll run all cores and threads UnRAID can see. 

 

Next suspect: your network. 5-6 1080p streams are quite hard on the network connection. Can you paint a picture of what your network looks like? Is everything connected to Wi-Fi, is everything hardwired to ethernet, have you provided any measures for QoS so your video streams get priority etc.

Plex is running as a docker and the network is all ethernet I'm gonna say all cat5 the isp is fiber to the house then coax to the router but you did get me thinking and I realized that unRAID actually has a resource monitor if you will built right in so I opened up 6 streams that were running at max in this case 720p and all is good it was using between 80-100 percent on the cpu but only 22-24 percent of the memory, I really think the latency is related to the channel because for example I was using the CBS channel and it is relatively quick at load up and play whereas other channels have latency here is a before and after screenshot of 6 streams running at 720p without any lag or stutter:

[brwainer]

so you are specifically having issues when watching a lot of channels from a tuner card/device, and you haven't been trying to watch a lot of streamed files? Are you using a tuner card, USB tuner, or a network tuner?

[Salacious B Crum]

19 minutes ago, brwainer said:

so you are specifically having issues when watching a lot of channels from a tuner card/device, and you haven't been trying to watch a lot of streamed files? Are you using a tuner card, USB tuner, or a network tuner?

Sorry may not have been clear enough I'm having latency issues when starting up certain channels in Plex I don't see any latency during streams just on some channels it takes a bit to "boot" if you wil I ran the 6 streams test to show there is no issues on that front, trying to narrow down if the startup latency is hardware based or software as in the settings in plex

[brwainer]

48 minutes ago, mrbilky said:

Sorry may not have been clear enough I'm having latency issues when starting up certain channels in Plex I don't see any latency during streams just on some channels it takes a bit to "boot" if you wil I ran the 6 streams test to show there is no issues on that front, trying to narrow down if the startup latency is hardware based or software as in the settings in plex

ok, but my question is still relevant and you didn't answer it. so you are specifically having issues when watching a lot of channels from a tuner card/device, and you haven't been trying to watch a lot of streamed files? Are you using a tuner card, USB tuner, or a network tuner?

[Salacious B Crum]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

ok, but my question is still relevant and you didn't answer it. so you are specifically having issues when watching a lot of channels from a tuner card/device, and you haven't been trying to watch a lot of streamed files? Are you using a tuner card, USB tuner, or a network tuner?

So no again I'm only having issues with some channels taking a longer than acceptable time loading there is no hardware other than the unRAID sever as the host and my laptop and 3 desktops as the clients so actually the reason I didn't post a response to your query regarding additional hardware was it was not relevant but thanks for the effort.

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, mrbilky said:

So no again I'm only having issues with some channels taking a longer than acceptable time loading there is no hardware other than the unRAID sever as the host and my laptop and 3 desktops as the clients so actually the reason I didn't post a response to your query regarding additional hardware was it was not relevant but thanks for the effort.

please define what you mean by "channel" then, if you don't mean something that is using the Plex DVR functionality to connect to a TV tuner. Do you just mean multiple video streams?

[Salacious B Crum]

2 hours ago, brwainer said:

please define what you mean by "channel" then, if you don't mean something that is using the Plex DVR functionality to connect to a TV tuner. Do you just mean multiple video streams?

Um like channels?

 

[brwainer]

5 minutes ago, mrbilky said:

Um like channels?

 

Ok I’ve never really used those. My understanding is that they are installed on the server, and get copied to the client when you launch them. And then the client has to start running the code for the channel, and load video streams. I’m sure there is a lot of possiblities for what could be causing latency.