Hi all,
First time poster so please let me know if I am not following the proper procedure.
I have assembled a low powered Freenas mainly to consolidate all my media files (TV shows, Movies and Photos). The hardware is low spec with:
• AMD Athlon 5150 Kabini Quad-Core APU @1.6 GHz
• 8GB of DDR3 ram.
• 2 x 3TB Toshiba HDD (mirror)
My Plex client is a Window 10 HTPC:
• Intel Core i5 3550 + 8GB DDR3 ram
I judged that it would be more than capable of handling streaming my video files.
Most of my movies are in .mkv format. Quickly noticed that I could not fast forward, skip nor rewind the video during playback. After some research I realized that it was not an isolated issue and found many posts online from people with the same struggle. An easy fix built in PMS was often referred to: Optimized Versions.
I started with one file as a test shrinking it from 1080p at 8mbps (approx. 5GB) to 720p at 2mbs (approx. 2GB). Launching the movie on my Plex client, I was delighted at how smoothly it played (didn’t care much about the loss in image quality). Then it just stopped! I was sent back to the Library page before the credits started rolling. I check my network and saw no interruption in bandwidth. Looking again at the files, I then realized that the duration of the latter was 10 min shorter than the former - meaning that the end of the video was actually missing from the optimized version.
I ran another test with a different file for control. I optimized the larger file (8GB) with the same settings leading to an even bigger discrepancy in duration between original and optimized: 2 hours against 44 minutes. After now several attempts on half a dozen files and with several different optimization settings, the result is still the same: the Optimized version is always shorter in length than the original video. I have also tried to restart the plugin, remove and reinstall it with no luck.
It has been impossible for me to figure out what could possibly be going wrong.
1. Has anyone ever encountered this issue before?
2. Could the problem be caused by my hardware? – during optimization the load on the APU reaches close to 100%
3. Is there a known fix someone could help me with?
Thank you