Plex audio cutting out during large file transfers via SMB

[Jazmac]

So basically as the title says, whenever I'm transferring files through SMB i.e. I'm moving a file/set of files from my Windows PC to a drive on my Unraid server through windows explorer; I or others watching something through Plex, experience micro audio cut outs that last around a second and occur at random intervals. Is there any way I can mitigate this problem?

If there's any specifics you need to know about my setup just let me know and I'll provide that info, thanks.

[trurl]

attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread

[Jazmac]

Here you go.

jazmac-nas-diagnostics-20220617-2000.zip

[trurl]

Maybe unrelated, but less than ideal. Your appdata and system shares have files on the array.

 

Also, why do you have 50G docker.img? Have you had problems filling it? Usually half that would be plenty, though you are currently already using nearly half that. A common reason for filling docker.img is an application writing to a path that isn't mapped.

 

Which user share are you writing?

 

How do you have mover setup? Was it running at the time?

 

 

 

 

[Jazmac]

This was quite a while back so you'll have to forgive my memory on this but I do recall increasing the docker.img capacity at some point in response to adding more and more docker containers. Having a look at the container sizes themselves, with the exception of Tdarr which is using 3.38GB for its container (I'm looking into why that is), the rest are no no bigger than 2GB individually at the larger end.

I don't know what a typical docker image size should be or if those are all way too big and should be smaller? I've attached an image of the sizes that they are for the largest ones.

 

Mover was running at the time I created that diagnostic report. It currently runs on a daily schedule but also in response to it reaching a certain capacity threshold.

 

As for which user share that I'm writing to when the issue occurs. I'm writing to the media share when transferring files across.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

Edit - Having looked into what files from the system and appdata share are on the array. For system it seems to be the "libvirt.img" file which from what I've looked up is used for VMs, which I don't use but it seems to create this when you have VM services enabled.

As for the appdata share it just seems to be a few straggling files (may have been leftover from something when I originally configured my cache) and it's basically one small log text file from a container I no longer use and I think some kind of icons folder from my krusader container (no idea how either of those are stuck on the array but I'll look to get them moved).

Edited June 17, 2022 by Jazmac

[trurl]

19 minutes ago, Jazmac said:

docker image size should be

You may be OK with that many dockers. If the usage isn't growing don't worry about it.

 

20 minutes ago, Jazmac said:

Mover was running at the time I created that diagnostic report

I was wondering if it was running when you had the problem.

[Jazmac]

It very likely does (I don't actively check it). I have my cache capped so that it never completely fills.

So basically I have an unusual thing going on where my cache is is used as my transcode directory for my plex server to make it faster and more responsive. Things like video thumbnail generation etc. are essentially stored on the cache and left there. This has the consequence of it slowly permanently filling up over time as more stuff is getting added to my media share for plex. So the mover is more frequently running every time I use up that ever dwindling space on my cache. It's a 500GB nvme SSD but around only 200GB of it is actively usable outside of the plex storage use I've mentioned.

 

I do intend to have two cache's going whenever I get around to buying the hardware needed to do that so I can keep the Plex transcode stuff and just general media/data transfers separate. But do you think this is what's causing the problem? Could it be the case that as someone is watching something and transcoding media on the SSD cache that when I transfer files over and the mover gets invoked because it's filled up, this is causing some throughput problems and thus audio stuttering? Although video playback doesn't seem to be affected, just the audio.

 

I don't fully understand exactly how it all works so I'm probably mistaken on some things that I've said.

Edit - I just tested this and the audio cut outs occur even when the mover is not active.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Jazmac

[trurl]

Personally, I don't bother with Mover Tuning plugin. If you set things up correctly mover will do the job well enough on its own.

 

Mover is intended for idle time. Default is once per day in the middle of the night. Usually making it run more often won't really help anything. The general rule is to not write more to cache at one time than cache can hold. It is impossible to move from fast cache to slower array as fast as you can write to cache.

 

One thing you might consider is not caching some shares. For example, scheduled backups and queued downloads might not justify caching, since nobody is waiting on them to complete anyway. So these can be written directly to the array.

 

Multiple pools is also a good solution. Here is a part of another thread where I discussed how I do things: