Andriod/Amazon fire TV are no longer direct playing MP4 and M4V files. They are showing as direct stream instead, they always direct played up until the most recent release. I have backing the release out, but it still doesn’t allow for direct play. Any help would be really appreciated.
Direct stream is nothing bad. (as long as it says both on Video and Audio streams ‘Direct Stream’ )
The difference is negligible.
Please show a Plex XML info of an affected mp4 file.
I think this is what you needed.
Media videoResolution=“1080” id=“234754” duration=“5850859” bitrate=“3804”
width=“1920” height=“816” aspectRatio=“2.35”
audioChannels=“2” audioCodec=“aac”
videoCodec=“h264” container=“mp4” videoFrameRate=“24p”
optimizedForStreaming=“0” audioProfile=“lc"has64bitOffsets=“0”
videoProfile=“high”>
Part accessible=“1” exists=“1” id=“236848”
key=”/library/parts/236848/1499805503/file.m4v" duration=“5850859”
size=“2782368008” audioProfile=“lc”
container=“mp4” has64bitOffsets=“0” hasThumbnail="1"optimizedForStreaming=“0” videoProfile=“high”>
Stream id=“491359” streamType=“1”
default=“1” codec=“h264” index=“0” bitrate=“3414”
language=“English” languageCode=“eng” bitDepth=“8”
chromaLocation=“left” chromaSubsampling=“4:2:0” colorPrimaries=“bt709” colorRange=“tv” colorSpace="bt709"colorTrc=“bt709”
frameRate=“23.976” hasScalingMatrix=“0”
height=“816” level=“40” profile=“high”
refFrames=“4”
streamIdentifier=“1” width=“1920”/>
Stream id=“491360” streamType=“2”
selected=“1” default=“1” codec=“aac”
index=“1” channels=“2” bitrate=“390”
language=“English” languageCode=“eng”
audioChannelLayout=“stereo” profile=“lc” samplingRate=“48000” streamIdentifier=“2”/>
Here is one for a mp4 as well.
Both files have optimizedForStreaming="0"
That’s why they are not Direct Played.
You can rectifiy this for instance with mp3tag
(right-click and ‘Optimize MP4’)
I’ll give that a shot. Why did it change all of a sudden this wasn’t an issue until recently.
Also if this is the WebOptimized piece through the GUI I create every mp4/m4v as web optimized. I use MetaX to do all my tagging is there a way to update the tag using that as well?
‘Optimized for streaming’ is not a simple tag.
https://rigor.com/blog/2016/01/optimizing-mp4-video-for-fast-streaming
In fact, it might be that you tagging your files is what removes the optimization, (if the file was optimized before).
I don’t know MetaX, maybe it can perform the optimization as well. You will have to refer to its documentation.
Yeah I checked and it does. The process just takes a fair bit of time to do compared to non optimized step. They call it Network Streaming on MetaX.
I just want to know why it would direct play up until the last update it seems. That is what is frustrating is having to go fix a thing that wasn’t an issue before for thousands files.
So finally able to test this fix and still getting direct stream from Amazon/Android streaming devices after updating the files with web optimized yes. So I guess it might be something else.
Then it might have something to do with the new Android app.
But, as I wrote above, the difference betweeen Direct Play and Direct Stream for both Audio and Video almost negligible, in terms of server load. It might not be worth the effort.
As I have worked through the issue it does seem to be on the Amazon/Android side of the house. I’m going to optimize going forward, but going back and doing it will probably not make too much sense. Thanks for all the help.
I just noticed this started happening on my Nvidia Shield. And while the quailty isn’t impacted from Direct Stream, it does introduce a noticeable lag when starting a movie as the Plex Transcoder process needs to spin up and start processing the file before the movie starts playing. Before, when everything was Direct Play, movies would start instantly.
@roshiforever , did you start a thread in the Android forums that i can chime in on?
