I used mkvtoolnix to remove the audio and eac3to for all the audio conversions. I will give and MP4 container a try, everything I did was MKV.
I tried a 4K HEVC/AC3 in an MP4 container and it used Direct Play for a couple of minutes but kept buffering, eventually it went Direct Stream for audio and video which really means fully transcode with HEVC. My Plex server is running on a Intel NUC connected via GIG-E to my Router which also has my Xbox One X connected via GIG-E. I have seen in this forum buffering on Xbox One is a common issue so I assume that had something to do with it. Bottom line is it looks like the HEVC implementation on Xbox One is bugged and needs work.
I did get a reply from Moussa indicating that he was able to duplicate the issue using the sample file I provided him, but he said his development box was on a preview release of the Xbox OS that had a known issue so he wouldnât be able to research/fix the issue until that was resolved. He didnât really provide a timeframe, so it might not be soon. Or it might be. Who knows? 
hi guys i removed multiple streams of audio and subtitles from a 4k MKV, and buffering started then HDR switches off again. I used MKXTOOLNIX⊠problem still exists.
@TheRealDeria said:
I did get a reply from Moussa indicating that he was able to duplicate the issue using the sample file I provided him, but he said his development box was on a preview release of the Xbox OS that had a known issue so he wouldnât be able to research/fix the issue until that was resolved. He didnât really provide a timeframe, so it might not be soon. Or it might be. Who knows?
thats promising he is aware of it. no timeframe not so promising. lets hope they fix this, its so annoying.
Oh, I agree, it is somewhat frustrating. I would love to be able to use Plex again on my Xbox One (its my preferred platform) but it simply isnât possible right now due to this issue. Iâm fortunate that I can use my Shield TV, but that platform has its own issues that need addressing. There is no perfect solution available for Plex at this time; all we can do is try our best to help Moussa sort this out by providing the samples & logs he needs.
I do think that it would be a good idea for the powers that be to add this to the list of known issues and maybe provide some insight as to what is preventing the issue from being diagnosed/resolved, since people keep posting about this issue, but if I was a software developer (well, actually I am) I wouldnât want to add âdoes not work at all for 4k/HDRâ to the known issues list of a release that was specifically intended to support 4k/HDR.
So frustrating. I am considering moving to Emby.
i should make mention also, when i went to âOptimiseâ a version of the file via Plex server, it took 4 hours to do, I set the setting to âOriginal Qualityâ and what it did when complete was totally remove HDR from the picture. SO STUPID. THE WHOLE IDEA IS TO FU*KEN OPTIMISE MOVIES SO YOUR STUPID PLE TRANSCODER DOESNT PROCESS.
Maybe thats a hint 
It optimized the HDR out, what does that tell you?
@nrobson04 said:
thats promising he is aware of it. no timeframe not so promising. lets hope they fix this, its so annoying.
The reason Moussa cannot provide a timeframe is because the issue is in the framework and occurs on layers below the media player. This effectively means all he can do is report the issue to Microsoft the same as we reported it to him.
@kqmaverick said:
I tried a 4K HEVC/AC3 in an MP4 container and it used Direct Play for a couple of minutes but kept buffering, eventually it went Direct Stream for audio and video which really means fully transcode with HEVC. My Plex server is running on a Intel NUC connected via GIG-E to my Router which also has my Xbox One X connected via GIG-E. I have seen in this forum buffering on Xbox One is a common issue so I assume that had something to do with it. Bottom line is it looks like the HEVC implementation on Xbox One is bugged and needs work.
Direct play falling back to transcoding means the media player on the Xbox ran into an error with the video/audio stream and so the app progressively asks the server to try other methods.
Above you said it went to direct stream for audio and video, this means neither the video or the audio was transconded at all. Your HEVC would still be an HEVC stream and the AC3 would still be AC3 only the container would change. HEVC should only ever transcode now if you have burned in subtitles (either forced burn in or picture based), you manually tell it to transcode, or you are hitting a bandwidth limitation from the server (Which shouldnât happen unless your server is incorrectly being identified as remote instead of local)
The buffering issue is an issue that has been reported to Microsoft for a fix. I have the same issue on 4K media where I get an initial buffering on video start it plays for around 5 seconds and then it will sit buffering indefinitely.
@jmckee said:
The buffering issue is an issue that has been reported to Microsoft for a fix. I have the same issue on 4K media where I get an initial buffering on video start it plays for around 5 seconds and then it will sit buffering indefinitely.
Well, there are two (or maybe three) issues actually.
- The buffering issue you describe.
- The issue in which playback starts, then about 60 seconds later stops, does a buffering pass, then resumes as a transcode even though it was direct-playing fine before.
- The issue in which HDR turns off after buffering.
I do understand that in some cases weâre at the mercy of Microsoft, but even then it would be nice to know if Microsoft has acknowledged the issue or provided any insight into what might be happening on their end. As it stands right now, the Xbox One Plex client is just not useable with 4K content.
@TheRealDeria said:
Well, there are two (or maybe three) issues actually.
- The buffering issue you describe.
- The issue in which playback starts, then about 60 seconds later stops, does a buffering pass, then resumes as a transcode even though it was direct-playing fine before.
- The issue in which HDR turns off after buffering.
Issue 2 and 3 should be the same issue and issue 2 should be leading into issue 3 (And possibly 1 leading to it as well)
Issue 2 means that during playback something in the file gets rejected by the media player framework. The app gets the error message from the media player and then instead of simply crashing attempts to transcode the problem stream so it can continue playing. (This is the part that leads to 3) Because it falls back to a forced transcode you see the results from transcoding from HEVC to h264 (One of which is the no HDR in h264).
The big question would be what is causing the issue. If it keeps happening at a specific spot in the video (Like the exact time stamp) it could be something in the video. Not necessarily something wrong with the file, but rather something that the media player just canât handle. In other clients I have seen it during large bit rate spikes that cause a panic from the media player being overloaded.
It could also be indirectly caused from issue 1 where the media player is getting starved/stuck in buffering. (But I donât have access to a dev console to check something like that out)
A good way to check would be to turn on the app logging to server. This would be done on the Xbox One (S/X) and when activated will have the Xbox send debugging logs to the Plex Media Server.log. In there you should be able to see if the media player is throwing an error to try and determine why itâs falling back to transcoding.
@TheRealDeria said:
I do understand that in some cases weâre at the mercy of Microsoft, but even then it would be nice to know if Microsoft has acknowledged the issue or provided any insight into what might be happening on their end. As it stands right now, the Xbox One Plex client is just not useable with 4K content.
Sadly, this is the part that there isnât anything we can report back. Plex themselves rarely give timelines of an issue (I try and post acknowledged issues so people know itâs being looked at), but not a lot of feedback the Ninjaâs can besides stating whether or not something is being looked at. It getâs more complicated when the issues go beyond Plex as developers canât forward on their results from reporting/testing bug fixes which means all the developers can tell us Ninjaâs is that itâs been reported and all we can pass back to the users is itâs been reported. Typically, if a Microsoft patch fixes the issue we canât report it back until it hits the public beta testing rings. And by that time it gets reported pretty quickly around the different Xbox news places with the patch notes (IE Reddit, Forums, etc)
Shorter answer, I wanted to make sure you guys knew it was something that was being investigated along with the different causes we can try and narrow it down to.
I an not entirely convinced a Direct Stream is actually that when working with HEVC. When my stream decides to go Direct Stream for both audio and video instead of Direct Play i check the CPU usage on my Server and i see the transcoder sitting at 100%. If it was truly just changing the container then CPU usage should be minimal. I know my system can handle other direct stream operations because it does so fine with non HEVC media and the processing power between quality should not matter in a direct stream since the video/audio is not being transcoded in any way. As I said in a previous post I believe I read on these forums somewhere that Plex is currently incapable of doing a true Direct Stream of HEVC and falls back to an H264 transcode which would explain the high CPU usage as my system is not powerful enough to do HEVC decoding on the fly.
@kqmaverick said:
I an not entirely convinced a Direct Stream is actually that when working with HEVC. When my stream decides to go Direct Stream for both audio and video instead of Direct Play i check the CPU usage on my Server and i see the transcoder sitting at 100%. If it was truly just changing the container then CPU usage should be minimal. I know my system can handle other direct stream operations because it does so fine with non HEVC media and the processing power between quality should not matter in a direct stream since the video/audio is not being transcoded in any way. As I said in a previous post I believe I read on these forums somewhere that Plex is currently incapable of doing a true Direct Stream of HEVC and falls back to an H264 transcode which would explain the high CPU usage as my system is not powerful enough to do HEVC decoding on the fly.
It is possible the display isnât reporting correctly what is happening. You Plex Media Server.log would be the best place to check what is happening during this fall back. If it is indeed displaying the wrong information we can get that looked at so it is displaying the correct thing.
What you read was old information. HEVC was not possible with the old media framework, but once the app was updated to the new framework HEVC was added to the direct streaming list. This change was made to the Xbox One app a few months ago. The only Xbox Oneâs that now can no longer direct stream HEVC is the original Xbox Oneâs (The S and X models both can). There was a problem when it was first changed that would cause direct streaming to fail and transcode instead shortly after release, but this was fixed shortly after in a patch.
@Tdawg410 said:
Maybe thats a hintIt optimized the HDR out, what does that tell you?
Hence âOriginal Qualityâ setting mate. shouldnt be doing that.
@jmckee said:
@nrobson04 said:
thats promising he is aware of it. no timeframe not so promising. lets hope they fix this, its so annoying.The reason Moussa cannot provide a timeframe is because the issue is in the framework and occurs on layers below the media player. This effectively means all he can do is report the issue to Microsoft the same as we reported it to him.
I understand that, but some responses in this forum from Plex would be good to update their users.
@jmckee said:
@kqmaverick said:
I an not entirely convinced a Direct Stream is actually that when working with HEVC. When my stream decides to go Direct Stream for both audio and video instead of Direct Play i check the CPU usage on my Server and i see the transcoder sitting at 100%. If it was truly just changing the container then CPU usage should be minimal. I know my system can handle other direct stream operations because it does so fine with non HEVC media and the processing power between quality should not matter in a direct stream since the video/audio is not being transcoded in any way. As I said in a previous post I believe I read on these forums somewhere that Plex is currently incapable of doing a true Direct Stream of HEVC and falls back to an H264 transcode which would explain the high CPU usage as my system is not powerful enough to do HEVC decoding on the fly.It is possible the display isnât reporting correctly what is happening. You Plex Media Server.log would be the best place to check what is happening during this fall back. If it is indeed displaying the wrong information we can get that looked at so it is displaying the correct thing.
What you read was old information. HEVC was not possible with the old media framework, but once the app was updated to the new framework HEVC was added to the direct streaming list. This change was made to the Xbox One app a few months ago. The only Xbox Oneâs that now can no longer direct stream HEVC is the original Xbox Oneâs (The S and X models both can). There was a problem when it was first changed that would cause direct streaming to fail and transcode instead shortly after release, but this was fixed shortly after in a patch.
So I retested a MP4/HEVC 4K HDR/AC3 file and it did not switch to Direct Stream but it still had some momentary buffering. i tried checking logs but did not see any sort of cause or error. Everything is GIG-E and USB 3 for the hard drive so buffering should not be coming from hardware.
If anyone would like to test on their own here is what i did:
- Use eac3to (useac3to for GUI) to convert audio into AC3. (I had to extract the audio first using MkvExtract in useac3to first).
- Use mkvtoolnix to remux the MKV file with just the HEVC video and AC3 audio, removing all other streams.
- Use ffmpeg with the following command to switch from MKV to MP4:
ffmpeg.exe -i input.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4
@nrobson04 said:
@Tdawg410 said:
Maybe thats a hintHence âOriginal Qualityâ setting mate. shouldnt be doing that.
Perhaps I was too soft in my response.
The reason why the optimized version doesnt include HDR any longer is because Plex knows its a problem so they intentionally remove it when its optimized.
What better way to optimize something than to remove the components you know are a problem?
@Tdawg410 said:
@nrobson04 said:
@Tdawg410 said:
Maybe thats a hintHence âOriginal Qualityâ setting mate. shouldnt be doing that.
Perhaps I was too soft in my response.
The reason why the optimized version doesnt include HDR any longer is because Plex knows its a problem so they intentionally remove it when its optimized.
What better way to optimize something than to remove the components you know are a problem?
All good mate. they know its a problem⊠so make sense what you are saying. lets just hope they fix this crap soon.
So we got nothing back from Plex on this issue? Even an official acknowledgement of the problem? Should we all just cancel our Plex memberships and go to a better 4k stable media service?
