New to Plex on a Mini, trouble streaming 720p

[randy98mtu]

I'm having some trouble streaming my 720p movies. My setup has a 2.93 GHz iMac with multiple MyBook externals hooked up through Firewire400. I'm running through a wired network (not gigabit though) to my Mac Mini. They are talking fine, I can transfer files, I can see files. I added a bunch of 720p movies (encoded in Handbrake for ATV) to my Plex library. It sees them fine, but when they are remote it just says "Error opening file" when I try to play them. There is 1 that will play for some reason. But I copied another one directly to the Mini and the local copy plays but the remote copy still won't. I bumped up the cache to 20 seconds which is when I found that one movie would play, but none of the others will play yet.

I'm just starting out on Plex this week. Any help would be great. I'm loving it so far, but hoping I don't need to shuffle my drive strategy too much. My plan was to only keep MKV's local to the Mini. Thanks for any help.

Edit:

I just started looking at file sizes. The one that works was 1.79 gig and the rest were over 2 gb. I found one that was 2.02 and it plays. Is there a way to resolve this within my current configuration?

 

[Alucardx03]

When you say "remote," what exactly do you mean? Are you streaming from a NAS? What's your network setup like?

 

[randy98mtu]

When you say "remote," what exactly do you mean? Are you streaming from a NAS? What's your network setup like?

No. Just an external drive plugged into the iMac via fw400. Remote as in the drive is not plugged into the mini that plex is running on.

 

[Alucardx03]

No. Just an external drive plugged into the iMac via fw400. Remote as in the drive is not plugged into the mini that plex is running on.

If all of the files play locally, there is obviously something weird going on with your network configuration.

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience streaming from another computer, just a NAS. I know Plex has a very active forum community, so I would try to find an answer there.

 

[srexy]

No. Just an external drive plugged into the iMac via fw400. Remote as in the drive is not plugged into the mini that plex is running on.

What kind of network share do you have? are you using SMB or AFP? I ended up having to mount my network share and point Plex to the mounted drive in order for Plex to play from it smoothly. I have to re-mount occasionally on my MBP after it has slept etc.

 

[randy98mtu]

What kind of network share do you have? are you using SMB or AFP? I ended up having to mount my network share and point Plex to the mounted drive in order for Plex to play from it smoothly. I have to re-mount occasionally on my MBP after it has slept etc.

Thanks! That seems to have done it. I was using an SMB share. I mounted it and now I can play all my movies.

One more question. What kind of temps are you seeing on your Mini's? Mine when idle with Plex not running is in the 40's. With Plex running doing nothing, the CPU is at 30% and the temp is 75C. Playing a 720p movie put me around 50% and the temp climbed into the 80's. Playing a 1080p MKV (raw from the Bluray, just put it in the MKV) I was in the 80-90% range and my temps were approaching 90. This is on a brand new Mini 2.26 GHz. Base model with no changes made to it so far.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[srexy]

Thanks! That seems to have done it. I was using an SMB share. I mounted it and now I can play all my movies.

One more question. What kind of temps are you seeing on your Mini's? Mine when idle with Plex not running is in the 40's. With Plex running doing nothing, the CPU is at 30% and the temp is 75C. Playing a 720p movie put me around 50% and the temp climbed into the 80's. Playing a 1080p MKV (raw from the Bluray, just put it in the MKV) I was in the 80-90% range and my temps were approaching 90. This is on a brand new Mini 2.26 GHz. Base model with no changes made to it so far.

Thanks again for the help!

Yep - Plex is a CPU hog. I just put my Mini in a cupboard and forget about it.