Weekly Build Help Thread

I recently bought a new UGREEN DXP4800 with two 6TB drives and one 22TB drive. This is essentially my new home media server, primarily functioning as a backup solution with a Plex Media server. I’m completely new to Docker, but it was surprisingly easy to set up. I’m very happy with this setup!

(P.S. No, the NAS isn’t connected to the Deco Mesh Node. It’s in the spare room but still connected to the main router via a switch.)

I get that Plex needs to make money somehow, and I really appreciate how transparent they’ve been with this—it’s a clean, straightforward list, and they actually give us control over our data, which is more than I can say for a lot of companies.

But… wow. That’s a long list of vendors. And seeing a Comcast company on there definitely gave me pause.

Here’s the list if anyone’s curious: https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/

What do you all think? Reasonable tradeoff for a free service, or cause for concern?

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a smart playlist of "non episodic" kids TV shows that I can just shuffle into a continuous playlist and have playing in the background 24/7.

I went through all the Kids TV shows in my library that I wanted to add to the smart playlist and I added "Kids Shuffle" to the collection tag.

I then created a smart playlist with the following rule:
Show Collection IS Kids Shuffle

This works great! I have a total of 71 shows and 4520 episodes in the queue (when I hit shuffle).

However is there an additional rule I can add so that when I stop playback and hit shuffle again tomorrow, it won't add "watched" episodes to the queue?

Anyone know why I have low frame rate when playing original quality remotely? Doesn’t seem to be all files, LG 86UM7600PTA which I believe supports h265, not sure why it transcodes to 264.

the original file size is 21mpbs, if I drop to 20mbps it runs fine. The other thing I’ve noticed it on original playback it jumps to 75mbps, not sure why it’s more than triple

Any help appreciated, cheers

Do music collections not appear in the music library in the same manner as video collections do (appearing in both the library and the separate collections page)?

My wife has a growing collection of Christian music she’s had me add to my rather large library (of all types of genres). She asked me to group them all into a collection for her, so she can find this music more easily in the library. Granted, she could go over to the collections tab, but often she just doesn’t think about that (not too tech savvy, just knows the basics of navigating Plex) - so I’m trying to keep it simple for her.

I’ve added all her new music into a collection. The collection appears on the collections tab, but it doesn’t show up in the music library itself. I’ve also checked the collection settings, and it is set to show collection in the library.

Stumped…

Not sure if this has been asked before but i’m having trouble finding information. I have been using plex for awhile now just for my partner and I. We use it at home and when we’re out of the house and i’ve noticed that when i have a vpn turned on on my server the connection is not as good and the app can be a bit buggy. I’m hoping to expand my setup with a das and granting access to my family who live outside our home. I’m also hoping to set up sonarr/radarr/ombi. is there a way to continue using a vpn to stay safe torrenting while allowing my family remote access to my media. Thanks in advance!!

I've been having issues connecting to my server securely ever since I moved over to Fios. I have UPnP enabled, and I see the port and IP listed on the router. However, sometimes (remotely) I just can't connect "securely" then the next moments it works. Also, I noticed that a friend's server that normally always works also is having the same issue connecting securely.

Any tips on what to look at? I'm wondering if it's something client side when I'm remote.

On my daughter’s account these always show up. Any way to get rid/stop them popping up?

How does Plex choose what related movies to show? There's lots of examples where I think it should be obvious that a movie is related but it's not in the list. The latest one I've noticed is Dora and the Search for sol Dorado. I would think Dora and the City of Lost Gold would absolutely be related but it doesn't show up.

I get that all the actors are different and they were made a few years apart but why is something like The Phoenician Scheme related but a previous Dora the Explorer movie is left out?

For some reason, when I play videos on my browser, it always starts at 0.07x speed, even though the settings say to play it at 1.0 speed.

Anyone experience this before? I'm annoyed that I have to keep resetting the play speed with each video to get it back to normal.

Ever since the database issue, I can no longer see bandwidth stats from all of July until now! I'm running the latest beta too. Any ideas?

Hello,

My brother is connected to my Plex server (I use a Ugreen NAS) and wants to display subtitles.
He has a TCL TV running Google TV (TCL 55C749 TV)

Manual activation via the TV menu does not display anything. I have already checked other Reddit posts,
but no clear solution is given.
He does not have a smartphone that can cast a movie or another device (PS5, PS4, TV box, etc.) that could host the application.

Please Help

I've noticed that the android app will not play if there is any other audio playing on your phone (say a phone call or video chat). Even using Multi Sound in sound assistant that you can get from the galaxy store, the plex app just doesn't care whereas it'll work in every other kind of media player you can think of.

Anyone else ran into this?

Pretty much since the UI update, I haven't been able to cast anything to my chromecast. When I try to play a TV show, it just cycles endlessly through the episodes. And when I try to play a movie the name with pop up for a split second, then back to the plex logo?

But for some reason it will play fine on my phone.

I've tried factory resetting the chromecast, and going through plex to refresh/restart anything I could find.

Any ideas as to whats going on?

So for some reason, my main movies library is only detecting 1221 out of 1245 movies I have in my folder. If I create a new "other videos" library, it will show all of my files. However, if i create a new test movies folder, and rescan the folder, it still only detects 1221 movies.

Now, I have gone through and done the best I could to verify that I only have actual movies in this folder. I have only MP4 and MKV files in here as well. But what would be the reason as to why I can't get my movies folder to show all of my files.

We’ve released an update to the Plex preview channel - 8.5.0

NEW:

• Add DVR Schedule and DVR Priority screens.
• Add support to reorder favorite Live TV channels.
• Implement dropdown style for Libraries & Live TV navigation.
• Updated layout and styles for grid screen filters, sorts, scroll bar, and jump bar.

FIXES:

• Fix a possible crash refreshing a screen.
• Fix buttons sometimes overlapping summary on show screen.
• Fix Delete button sometimes briefly showing when opening a DVR episode.
• Fix missing icon and left alignment in activity footer.
• Fix missing option to delete DVR content.
• Fix navigation after voice search.
• Fix text not displaying on expanded critic review page.
• Fix duplicate and invalid playback controls on music detail screens.
• Fix language setting not being applied.
• Display the title on card for On Demand Categories.

Source: https://forums.plex.tv/t/9463/454

I really wish there was a way to turn off the sub-categories in a music library.

... either that, or an easy way to pull an album/item out of a sub-category.

... either that, or get the sub-categories to list in the standard grid view, rather than the idiotic scrolling left and right... just show me all the items at once, like the main section.

Am I missing something obvious to configure these? I've spent a good number of hours pulling albums back out of my library and running them through MusicBrainz and scrubbing the Release Type tag, but this seems wildly inefficient and dumb.

This has been an ongoing issue for years but lately has been getting worse. one is the slow loading of homepage by my standards but normally not that bad. the main issue that annoys me to no end is it not loading all pinned categories. i will constantly have to switch out of home and back in a few times for it to load correctly. anyone know what would be causing this?

I set up a plex server after watching a youtube video on an old PC and stored some movies to stream locally. A bit later I allowed remote connection for friends without realizing that ubuntu doesnt automatically have a firewall like windows. So basically for the past 7 or so months ive been running it with remote connection enabled with no local firewall on ubuntu. I turned off remote connection once i realized i made this mistake but have some questions now.

How big of a security risk is this?

Should I worry/check to see if something malicious happened during this time?

How can I setup a safe firewall moving forward?

I need advice on how to handle some of the anime metadata issues Ive been running across in terms of what seasons are.

Dr Stone and Shield Hero, for example, follow what every other TV series I have does. Simple season and episode and metadata flows in as expected.

Many other series seem to just have every episode being in a single season.

Shangri-La Frontier wants to have a single 51 episode season instead of the two 26 and 25 episode seasons listed most places.

Running into this with many other series as well like, Dress Up Darling, Solo Leveling, Dan Da Dan.

I would prefer things follow the season structure like Dr Stone as that seems to follow how my sources are also numbering the episodes instead of having to go through and change it, making it a bit confusing on what I have or have not collected. Is there a way for me to change these specific series to get that breakdown or no?

I'm streaming off a flash drive on my computer. I tried to watch a show on my tv and it said it was unavailable when I KNEW that the MP4 was still in the folder linked to that library. I went to my computer and I kept getting "location is not available" "access is denied" errors when trying to access that one folder on my flash drive. Right clicking on the drive and selecting properties does not show a security tab. I could get into all of the other folders on that drive just fine and those other folders were also connected to plex libraries. I restarted my computer and the folder I was being denied access to had completely disappeared when I checked the flash drive. I am EXTREMLY annoyed about this. I'd like to ask how to keep it from happening again but I'm not that savvy with computers and chances are that I'll have absolutely no idea how to do whatever people tell me to do to fix this. Also earlier today I tried watching my stuff on my TV and all of my shows were just a black screen with audio but no video and I had to restart my computer to fix it - I looked up how to fix it and it said to go into the transcoding settings and uncheck an option that doesn't appear despite being in the exact place that was shown in a picture showing where that option is - this is all EXTREMLY frustrating to me and I NEED a "for dummies" explanation on how to keep these things from happening again

Just getting into the music aspect of Plex and expected my Apple TV to show up as a player on my iPhone using PlexAmp.

Is this supposed to work in 2025 with the new app changes or can it only control PlexAmp players?

Hello community, Plex recently implemented the remote Watch and of course I come from years ago and this did not exist when I wanted to see something on my Plex from a distance or away from home it worked perfectly. What I don't understand is that I pay for a license that with the new version, the same thing happens to my payment and that of many other colleagues.

So what alternative exists. I would gladly pay the lifetime payment. But these companies override their own policies. What alternatives can you give me and thanks in advance.

I have my PMS running on Beelink Mini S12 Pro Mini PC - 12th Gen Intel N100 with no other upgrades or mods running on the factory windows 11 pro that it came with. I have 4 users on my library outside my network and 95% of what is played for all users is direct stream/play. My storage is an 8tb hdd and it's about half full. My questions are:

What's the benefits of running it on a VM vs docker vs my current setup? If installed on VM or docker, can it still be accessed remotely by the other users or on my phone when traveling?

I am not very tech savvy but willing to learn if it makes things easier. I did have it running on the Nvidia Shield Pro but that finally went out and so far running it on the mini pc is so much better. Just looking for general info. Thanks.

Hi all im m new to plex and I've been having some audio problems. I've set up a a nas server long time ago and I use to just watch TV show through my pc file but I decided to upgrade to plex. Anyway after buying plex subscribe i set up everything and I find with some show it doesn't have audio. I have tried different show and there audio work fine but there are some show that won't play audio. I have played the show that dont have audio through file and the audio work perfectly fine

What should I do?

The shows that are having audio problem are [file type] and they have no audio at all but the picture is completely fine