Audio keeps going but video stops during playback

General Discussions
21

I ran a check on my TV shows using MediaInfo and Format_Profile, out of 10512 episodes, 453 use L3, about 4.3%, and 73 out of 1949 movies, about 3.7%.
Unfortunately my kids shows, that I get from iTunes, have many L3 episodes, and playback issues, making this issue a big annoyance for me when they come complaining.

I never experienced any issues watching these shows in the past, but I had always used OpenELEC/XBMC / LibreELEC/Kodi, and it is only recently that I am trying to switch 100% to Plex, and now have playback issues.

So, 453 files, mostly randomly distributed, and not specific to shows or seasons, will make re-encoding an arduous task.

I would love, no really expect, for PMS to know that the L3 content needs to be transcoded on specific devices, and to not direct-play/stream.

22

I confirmed with the devs that Baseline 3.0 is supported. But your file is definitely encoded badly. Unfortunately, Plex cannot identify a bad encoding so it will try to play it anyways. If you force PMS to transcode the file, it will playback. You can do this in the Android app by going to Settings \ Advanced \ Player and disabling Direct Play.

23

@MovieFan.Plex said:
I confirmed with the devs that Baseline 3.0 is supported. But your file is definitely encoded badly. Unfortunately, Plex cannot identify a bad encoding so it will try to play it anyways.

Ok, forgive me for being a bit skeptical. L3 supported per devs, but reports of L3 being problematic by other users, and ffmpeg -v reported no problems with the file, and when copied to iPad3 using iTunes it works, and it is a commercially sourced file, so what exactly in this file makes it “definitely badly encoded”?

Can you share the tools and process that was followed to determine that the file was “definitely encoded badly”?
I would like to run this process against my library, and re-encode all badly encoded files.

@MovieFan.Plex said:
If you force PMS to transcode the file, it will playback. You can do this in the Android app by going to Settings \ Advanced \ Player and disabling Direct Play.

Ok, good workaround.
If PMS cannot detect badly encoded files, and it is not not a L3 issue, is there a way to tell PMS to disable direct-play/stream per file or season or show in PMS, a global option, not a per device per user option?