Direct stream Plex problems via mount

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I am having issues playing back high bitrate 4K content via Plex. At odd points throughout the affected movies, playback will stop for a few seconds and if I check the dashboard on Plex web the bandwidth has dropped to zero.

My setup is a Raspberry Pi4 with 4gig of ram for my Plex Mount and a Shield TV Pro that hosts the Plex server and is used for playback. Both devices are connected directly to the router. I have a Virgin media fibre connection with about 400mbps down and 39mpbs up.

The Shield accesses the Mount on the Pi via a samba share.

For the most part this setup works brilliantly, but the occasional pauses when playing back my 4K rips is frustrating to say the least.

I'm a bit confused as to how much bandwidth is required and also how much is needed. I was trying to watch Gandhi today, which Tautulli says is 61.3Mbps. As I understand it Plex needs more bandwidth than this (Tautulli estimates 128.7Mbps) however if I look at PlexDash there are peaks at 200Mbps and worse still if I check the network usage of the Pi using webmin, it peaks around the 300Mbps mark!

Is there anything in my mount configuration that could be problematic with this setup? Or could it be the set up itself?

What is your rclone version (output from rclone version)

rclone v1.52.3-290-g82975109-beta

  • os/arch: linux/arm64
  • go version: go1.14.6

Which OS you are using and how many bits (eg Windows 7, 64 bit)

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1015-raspi aarch64)

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive

Plex Mount settings

[Unit]
Description=PlexMount Service

[Service]
Type=notify
Environment=RCLONE_CONFIG=//home/craftyclown/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
KillMode=none
RestartSec=5
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount "RichFlixCrypt:/Encrypted/" /media/data/Skull \
  --allow-other \
  --buffer-size 256M \
  --dir-cache-time 72h \
  --log-level INFO \
  --log-file /home/craftyclown/logs/PlexMount.log \
  --poll-interval 15s \
  --timeout 1h \
  --umask 002
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -uz /media/data/Skull
Restart=on-failure
User=craftyclown
Group=craftyclown

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

hi,

  • as a way of test, can the shield see dlna servers on the lan?
    if so, what happens using rclone server dlna instead of rclone mount
    both with and without --vfs-cache-mode=full

  • i am sure you know know that the beta has new vfs flags, that might be helpful.

  • on the beta, if you use --vfs-cache-mode=full, do you run into problems.

1 Like

I'd forgotten about the new vfs cache. Let me try playing with that first.

Would something like this work?

[Service]
Type=notify
Environment=RCLONE_CONFIG=//home/craftyclown/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
KillMode=none
RestartSec=5
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount "RichFlixCrypt:/Encrypted/" /media/data/Skull \
  --allow-other \
  --buffer-size 256M \
  --dir-cache-time 72h \
  --log-level INFO \
  --log-file /home/craftyclown/logs/PlexMount.log \
  --poll-interval 15s \
  --timeout 1h \
  --umask 002 \
  --cache-dir=/media/data/Cache \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --vfs-cache-max-size 500G \
  --vfs-cache-max-age 336h
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -uz /media/data/Skull
Restart=on-failure
User=craftyclown
Group=craftyclown

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

i am not an expert but you can try --magic

read this and see what others are doing.
Testing for new vfs cache mode features

i like to learn by trying different commands and flags, making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.
being a fool, i can only learn from making mistakes :upside_down_face:

1 Like

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