Troubleshoot playback

Most playback trouble comes down to one of four things: the connection path, the server running out of conversion headroom, a device that can't play what the file contains, or a setting doing exactly what it was told. This page goes symptom by symptom. How playback works explains the machinery behind it.

The stream stutters or keeps buffering#

• Check which path you are on. Stutter on the sofa usually means the app is streaming through the relay instead of your own network. The relay is capped and shared; local playback is not. Local, direct, or relay shows how to tell and how to fix it.
• Leave the quality on Auto. Auto reacts to a stall by dropping to a quality that actually fits the measured connection, then climbs back carefully. If you pinned Original on a thin connection, buffering is the expected outcome.
• On your own network with big files, wired beats Wi-Fi, and a congested 2.4 GHz network can struggle with a high-bitrate 4K remux no matter what the server does.

Quality looks worse than it should#

• Auto dropped it for a reason. If the connection recovers, it climbs back within a couple of minutes. If it never climbs, the path is the bottleneck, see above.
• A per-person cap may be set. Admins can limit each person's maximum quality under Admin, then Users. The player's quality menu won't offer more than the cap allows.
• The relay caps bandwidth. If you are on the relay path, quality is limited by the relay allowance, not by your server.

"The server can't convert this fast enough"#

The machine ran out of transcoding headroom, and the app tells you rather than buffering forever.

• Lower the quality for that stream, or pick a version of the title closer to your target quality.
• If your machine has a supported GPU, set up hardware transcoding. It multiplies how many conversions the box can do, and it is free.
• Check the playback dashboard for other active transcodes. One heavy 4K conversion can be the whole story on a small CPU.

A title won't start at all#

• Try another title first. If nothing plays, the app is probably not reaching the server at all, which is a connection problem, not a playback one. See Local, direct, or relay.
• If just one title fails, the file itself is the suspect. Check Admin, then Logs around the time you pressed play; the reason is usually spelled out.
• If the same title fails on one device and plays on another, the failing device claimed a capability it doesn't have. The apps detect this, remember it, and renegotiate on the next attempt, so trying again often just works.

HDR looks washed out or grey#

• On Apple TV, turn on Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate under Settings, Video and Audio, Match Content. Without them the Apple TV stays in whatever mode it booted in. Watch on your devices has the full walkthrough.
• On a screen that can't show HDR, the server tone-maps to SDR automatically. That costs a transcode but the colors should look normal. Washed-out colors on an SDR screen are worth a support report with the file's details.

Subtitles made everything harder#

• Text subtitles (SRT, ASS and friends) are drawn by the app and never cost quality or server load.
• Asking for subtitles to be burned in forces the video to be re-encoded. If a stream unexpectedly shows "Transcode", a burn-in request is a common reason.
• A subtitle track that never appears, or drifts after seeking, is worth a report. Subtitles covers what plays natively and what the known limits are.

Audio is missing, wrong, or stereo when it should be surround#

• Files often carry several audio tracks. The server prefers a track your device can play natively; on a stereo device that legitimately means the stereo track wins.
• Surround formats the device can't decode are converted to stereo so playback never blocks on audio. If you have a proper surround setup and still get stereo, check which track the player selected in the audio menu before filing a report.

When you report it#

Grab the title, the device, the time it happened, and what the playback dashboard said, then see Getting help & feedback. Admin, then Logs usually has the reason line, and including it saves a round trip.