Plex buffering on Itunes(Tuneskit) files only ?

happyhiker

HI,
I've been using plex with bluray rips for a while no problem Server is a QNAP TS251. I've recently bought Tuneskit to strip the drm from Itunes file for plex. This gives me an MP4 with an AAC and AC3 sound track and subtitles and H264 video.(I used mp4 lossless convert)

For some reason when I play these files via plex, even on direct play it stutters and buffers all over the place. All other files converted via handbrake are fine.

Anyone else have this issue, or know what I need to do to fix it ? I assume its soemthing to do with the type of file produced, though it looks fine and play s on pc fine.

next010

Most likely whatever funky things that software is doing to the video to strip it of drm is messing with the video bitstream (the guts of the video).

What are you playing the files on via Plex as typically Plex clients are often just skins to a stock video player, can you play the video from USB like TV and is it the same as via Plex ?

happyhiker

I'm using various clients. Roku, RasPlax and Apple tv. None have a usb port but the files play fine in VLC on a PC. They do stutter over DNLA to roku.

I've got a sort of workaround, If I get Plex to optimise the video it works. Sometimes the optimizer fails but then I have to run handbrake for 6 hours.

Anyone know how I can do the equivalent of a plex optimize moutside of plex ?
I probably need to learn ffmpeg...

next010

VLC is a software decoding player it can bypass any quirks or oddities in the video, hardware decoding players like most of your playback clients cannot bypass such things or have very little leeway in this area.

The optimizer converts the video into another format, making a hidden shadow copy of the video that is then fed to the Plex client.

It definitely sounds like the tuneskit software is the cause to me. As to rectifying that well that's tricky, you could try contacting the tuneskit people but they may say nothing, you could try running the M4V files it outputs through MKVtoolnix and remux the video into an MKV container, it's a longshot but sometimes MKVtoolnix can detect errors in the source  video/container and correct them.

Other than that you need someone who understands video internals a great deal particularly Apple encoded ones. MrMC is a AppleTV fork of Kodi made by one of the former main devs of XBMC (now Kodi), Davilla responds to support requests on their forum, try playing the video in MrMC (which has built in Plex support) and see if it stutters, then post with logs from MrMC, tell them the video source, tuneskit etc. At best they may be able to make MrMC play it or how to correct the video.