Bug hunt 2026-09, items 8 and 12 — the two things the Plex player was measurably
lying about.
Item 8: picking a subtitle track showed nothing for a long time, and the reported
workaround was to stop/start until it suddenly worked. Measured on prod against a
17.06 GB MKV with two embedded SubRip tracks:
full pass, one track 154 s
full pass, both tracks in ONE run 111 s
-c:s copy (no WebVTT conversion) 143 s
from 1:00:00 to the end of file 66 s
a 630 s window at 1:00:00, both 8 s
So the conversion was never the cost: ffmpeg streams every byte of the container
between its seek point and its stop point, and the array delivers ~140 MB/s. The
only lever is reading less. Three changes follow from that:
* a window around the playhead is extracted and published FIRST (seconds), and
the full pass completes behind it;
* every embedded text track rides that same single read — picking Hungarian used
to cost a full pass and then switching to English cost another one;
* none of it happens inside a request any more. The endpoint answers 202 while a
background worker extracts, the player polls /status (carrying its position, so
the window follows the viewer), and one ffmpeg run finally has a timeout.
-copyts is deliberately absent from a windowed pass: with it ffmpeg ignores -t and
reads the whole container anyway (measured — a [0, 600 s] window still took the
full 145 s), so a window comes back on a zero-based clock and is shifted to
absolute time here. Cached tracks written by older builds have no coverage sidecar
and count as complete, so nothing is re-extracted after the upgrade.
The <track> is no longer mounted before the server has something to put in it; a
"Preparing subtitles: …" notice stands in, and a track that can never be shown says
why instead of leaving the viewer to conclude the picker does nothing.
Item 12: "Bitrate" read a constant 211 kbps on every remux, because it was the
master playlist's BANDWIDTH — which ffmpeg derives from the one stream whose rate
it knows, the -b:a 192k AAC track, plus 10%. It is a measurement now: bytes per
second of MEDIA from hls.js FRAG_LOADED, accumulated per fragment type and summed
(a multi-audio session's video and audio renditions cover the same media seconds,
so pooling them would report half the truth), and an honest dash until the first
fragment lands. The panel also finally names the audio and subtitle track in play.
Verified in the browser against the real Plex library, and every new test
mutation-checked.
The button deletes the local row and mirrors the un-mark to Plex, but it decided whether
to push from the previous STATUS alone (prev_status != "new") — and an in-progress item's
row is status="new" carrying a position, which is exactly how the importer maps a bare
viewOffset. So for the single case the button exists for, nothing was ever sent to Plex:
the offset stayed, and the next pull imported it straight back. The user cleared Protector
twice and it returned to Continue watching at 92s both times.
Push now when Plex holds anything to clear — a view count, or a resume point. "hidden"
stays Siftlode-only and pushes nothing, which is what this endpoint's docstring always
claimed and the status-only guard contradicted.
One unscrobble clears BOTH viewCount and viewOffset — measured against the live server from
a watched+offset state and an offset-only one, so the push itself needed no change. The
client docstring that claimed "clears viewCount" is what sent the first diagnosis down a
wrong path (a timeline write with time=0, which does not clear an offset at all); it now
records what the server actually does.
Verified end to end on the real Plex server: the button leaves viewCount=None viewOffset=None,
and a full 44,885-item re-import brings back no row for it.
Upgrade mode-3's 10-bit/HDR branch from "route to software libx264" (BUG 1's
behaviour) to a full-GPU pipeline: VAAPI decode → OpenCL tonemap (hable,
HDR10/HLG → bt709 SDR nv12) → h264_vaapi. Gen 9.5 (UHD 630) can't tonemap in
the VAAPI VPP (tonemap_vaapi fails), so OpenCL is the only HW route — proven on
the prod iGPU at ~4.2x realtime, ~1 CPU core.
- stream.py: `_select_encode` returns (hw, tonemap); a 10-bit/HDR HW-decodable
source picks the tonemap graph when the OpenCL runtime is present, else drops
to software. `_opencl_present` gates on a registered ICD. `_venc_opts` /
`_hwaccel_in_opts` gain the tonemap variant (named vaapi+opencl devices,
`-filter_hw_device ocl`, hwmap→tonemap_opencl→hwmap reverse). `_want_hw` kept
as the hw-half wrapper. The runtime HW→SW fallback still backstops a session
that emits no segment.
- Dockerfile: add the Intel NEO OpenCL runtime (intel-opencl-icd). It was removed
from Debian trixie, so it's pulled from bookworm (22.43 still supports Gen 9.5;
the .deb runs on the trixie base — verified live). Harmless without /dev/dri.
- route + FE: thread `tonemap` through the session response; the stats overlay
mode row reads "transcode · GPU · HDR→SDR" for the tonemap path.
- tests: tonemap command branch, the (hw, tonemap) selection matrix (auto/on ×
8-bit/10-bit × opencl), start_session tonemap wiring, and the fmtMode tag.
Non-h264 items (playable="transcode": HEVC/VP9/AV1/MPEG-2/XviD…) now play by
re-encoding the video to H.264 inside the existing HLS session, instead of the
old HTTP 501. VAAPI hardware encode (h264_vaapi, full GPU decode→scale→encode
pipeline) where the render node is present and the source is HW-decodable;
libx264 software fallback otherwise (yuv420p 8-bit, -threads reserve-one-core).
The re-encode mints a keyframe at every segment boundary (-force_key_frames) so
the HLS muxer still cuts independent segments and seeking works; everything else
— -copyts, the HLS tail, multi-audio renditions, the AAC audio path — is the
same machinery as remux, so hls.js/subtitles/seeking are unchanged. The session
route returns transcode/hw so the player can surface the active mode.
pytest pins both command branches (software + VAAPI shape) and the HW-selection
gate (render node present AND source HW-decodable). Browser-UAT'd on the XviD
fixture (Winning London): 501→plays, real 528×384 H.264 frames, 0 dropped, seek
lands clean; stats overlay Mode row reads "transcode".
Deep-review of the quickfix batch surfaced two data/preference-loss bugs plus
smaller items; all fixed with tests.
- watch_sync _pull_apply: don't let the Plex-authoritative pull overwrite a DIRTY
local row (a change whose immediate push failed) — that stranded the value
forever since _repush_dirty only retries dirty rows. Leave it dirty for re-push.
- PlexProvider / ChannelsProvider: a partial shared link opened in a fresh tab
persisted mount-time DEFAULTS over the account's stored scope/sort/filters
(base read before the account was pinned). Persist/keep only URL-present dims;
re-hydrate the omitted ones from storage.
- playback resume write-back: guard against out-of-order delivery (a superseded
older push now drops) and evict the throttle map so it can't grow unbounded.
- PlexPlayer: announce mid-playback buffering to assistive tech (role=status +
sr-only label); new plex.player.buffering (HU+EN).
- columnSort: hoist the shared key:dir sort codec used by both URL-state modules.
- Tests: dirty-guard + flag-settle + per-key throttle scoping + superseded-push
(backend); hold-repeat/suppress-click/unmount + partial-link no-clobber +
refetch-doesn't-clobber-undo (frontend). Backend pytest 475, FE vitest 519.
Make Plex the source of truth for watch state:
- Write-back during playback: item_progress now pushes the resume position to
Plex on the periodic checkpoint too (not only the final flush), throttled to
one push per item every ~10s (in-memory, single-process rate limiter). The FE
now also fires an immediate (debounced) push on seek.
- Faster incremental pull: 30 → 15 min (plex_watch_sync_interval_min).
- Plex-authoritative pull: _pull_apply resolves a genuine divergence to Plex's
state instead of last-write-wins; the _same_state + synced_to_plex short-circuit
still prevents a freshly-pushed row from bouncing. Removed the now-unused
_LWW_TOLERANCE_S / _sift_ts.
Tests: 5 new in test_plex_watch_sync.py (Plex-wins resume/watched, no-bounce,
throttle final vs periodic).
- Restore synchronize_session=False on the remove-bulk Core delete (the 2.0
default is 'auto'; keep the pre-conversion contract explicit).
- _episode_nav: list(...scalars()) instead of [r[0] for r in ...all()], matching
the house style used across the conversion.
- Extract app/plex/lookups.by_rating_key() and migrate the get-by-rating_key
pattern at 13 sites (imgcache x4, _shared.item_or_404, playback show/season,
browse x6).
- Coverage: add TestFacetsWithData (the converted wsq aggregation with real
data — the highest-risk untested builder), TestPlaylistAndCollectionEndpoints
(playlist CRUD + collections list), and an item-state playback test.
Full suite 256 passed, 2 skipped; ruff clean.
Mechanical 1.x->2.0 conversion of the self-contained plex modules, behaviour-
equivalent (the characterization net + existing plex tests stay green, 39
passed): app/plex/{sync(15),watch_sync(9),people(1),imgcache(4)} and
app/routes/plex/{admin(4),playback(8),_shared(1)}. Query builders become
select(); .first()/.all()->execute().scalars(); a bulk .update() ->
execute(update()); a single-column .first() -> db.scalar().
browse.py (61) + rollup.agg_subquery (the atomic unit with unified_library)
remain for wave 2.
R12 S5 item: the feed's FINISH_MARGIN_SECONDS (10) and the Plex player's
_FINISH_MARGIN_S (30) were flagged as drifted duplicates. They are a
deliberate divergence, not drift — the feed clears a short video's resume
bar, Plex marks long-form items (movies/episodes with credits) watched.
Cross-reference + document both so it reads as intentional.
Layering cleanup, no behaviour change (ruff clean backend+scripts, pytest 193):
- Invert the scheduler->routes dependency: reset_demo_state (+ its demo-seed
helpers) move from routes/admin.py to a new service module app/demo.py.
Both routes/admin.py and scheduler.py now import it from app.demo, so the
scheduler no longer reaches into the routes layer — its lazy import (the
routes<->scheduler cycle workaround) is gone, hoisted to a top-level import.
- Publish the private symbols that were imported across module boundaries (the
underscore convention was lying): feed._serialize -> serialize,
feed._to_tsquery_str -> to_tsquery_str, videos._insert_stubs -> insert_stubs,
videos._stub_from_playlist_item -> stub_from_playlist_item,
worker._uploader_url -> uploader_url, plex._shared._item_or_404 ->
item_or_404. Scoped renames — the 5 other route modules keep their own truly
private _serialize helpers.
- _release_asset moves from routes/downloads.py to app/downloads/service.py as
the public release_asset (asset bookkeeping is a service concern); the routes
call it via service.release_asset.
Cleanup only, no behaviour change (ruff clean + pytest 193):
- imports hoisted above `router =` and grouped/sorted (isort) across the split
files; ruff-format pass restores the 2-blank-line PEP8 spacing the generator
collapsed to 1.
- the shared on-disk cache root moves to a neutral app/plex/cache.py, so
subtitles.py no longer imports it from imgcache.py (drops the cross-import).
- the former plex.py module docstring's access-model note (read endpoints open
to any authed user; admin endpoints test/sync) is restored in the package
__init__.py.
R12 S1 step B. The 2011-line routes/plex.py becomes an app/routes/plex/
package:
- admin.py — connection test, catalog sync, owner watch-link config (5)
- browse.py — libraries, facets, collections, playlists, show/item, people (23)
- playback.py — image/subtitle proxies, HLS streaming, watch-state writes (10)
- _shared.py — the two genuinely cross-module helpers (_item_or_404, log)
- __init__.py — assembles `router` from the three sub-routers; the app wiring
(plex_routes.router in main.py) is unchanged.
Mechanically generated and proven behaviour-equivalent: every function/class
source relocated verbatim (get_source_segment equality) and the (method, path)
route set is identical to before. Endpoints keep the /api/plex prefix on each
sub-router. No SQL change (db.query untouched; 2.0 select() is the next step).
Gate: ruff clean, pytest 193 passed (pure-logic + DB lane).
peter