What good is the .ts format if we can’t fast forward or rewind? Are we being FORCED to watch commercials now!?
Not being forced. I use mcebuddy to cut commericals so I’m not watching them. Setup some post processing to cut commercials so you don’t have to fast forward/rewind and convert ts file to whatever format you desire.
I am also finding no CC being present in the new .ts stream.
@johnm_ColaSC said:
Not being forced. I use mcebuddy to cut commericals so I’m not watching them. Setup some post processing to cut commercials so you don’t have to fast forward/rewind and convert ts file to whatever format you desire.
I have to disagree there. If you need to use a third party tool (that by the way only works on Windows, a big problem when Plex Server is meant to run on a variety of systems) in order to be able to fast forward and rewind then that MASSIVELY affects the useability of Plex.
I think the big issue is that the Plex engineers seem to really be struggling as to how to get around the issue of the broadcast signal needing significant transcoding to either watch live or record and when you’re doing some of this simultaneously then the problem is massively magnified.
@johnm_ColaSC said:
Not being forced. I use mcebuddy to cut commericals so I’m not watching them. Setup some post processing to cut commercials so you don’t have to fast forward/rewind and convert ts file to whatever format you desire.
I was being a bit sarcastic about wondering if Plex was forcing us to watch commercials by “unintentionally” taking away the ability to FF/REW with the .ts file…I am very annoyed by it however.
With an mkv container all I have to do is click the ring on my Nvidia Shield remote to the right and the video immediately jumps ahead 30 seconds. With a few clicks I am through the commercials…couldn’t be easier.
On the other hand, if I attempt a FF/REW with the .ts file, the video just starts over from the beginning (this is an improvement Plex?). If I change the quality - forcing the video to transcode - FF/REW works, but with latency and reduced sound quality (who wants that?).
Sure I can “just recode the files”, dump them in an mkv container or “just edit out the commercials”, but I would prefer to spend the time required, doing other things. I don’t think the majority of Plex DVR users want to do that for shows they DVR.
Going out on a limb here, but most folks want to DVR shows and just watch them, while fast forwarding past the commercials…the .ts format has taken that ability away from me.
@bradbart948 said:
With an mkv container all I have to do is click the ring on my Nvidia Shield remote to the right and the video immediately jumps ahead 30 seconds. With a few clicks I am through the commercials…couldn’t be easier.On the other hand, if I attempt a FF/REW with the .ts file, the video just starts over from the beginning (this is an improvement Plex?).
(Sarcastic mode: ON)
With a .ts container, when I watch a Chinese movie, all I have to do is click on the “Subtitle” button on my Logitech remote, and the movie is instantly understandable… couldn’t be easier.
On the other hand, if I attempt this with the remuxed .MKV file, nothing happens, and I am stuck listening to a language I don’t understand…
Going out on a limb here, but most folks want to DVR shows and just watch them, while fast forwarding past the commercials…the .ts format has taken that ability away from me.
Going out on a limb here, but most folks want to DVR movies and UNDERSTAND them. The .MKV format has taken that ability away from me…
(Sarcastic mode: OFF)
Sure I can “just recode the files”, dump them in an mkv container or “just edit out the commercials”
At least you have the option to fix it, whereas with the change to .MKV container the subtitles were irrevocably lost with no possibility whatsoever of getting them back, rendering the recording 100% useless.
Touché @HeartWare42. Sounds like we both have valid grievances here.
Going out on a limb myself, it would seem reasonable that a PVR should record live TV such that during playback it can be fast forwarded and rewound, CC/subtitles enabled during playback, and of course it can actually be played back! And here’s the thing, since PMS upgraded to 1.7.6 and the recordings are being made in MPEGTS format, my Plex client on Android and Android TV refuse to play the recordings back - I just get the spinning orange circle forever more… Yet if I open the same .ts file with SPMC (KODI fork) it plays fine. So a file that Plex Media Server records cannot be played back by the Plex client? It makes me question the amount of QA/testing being performed (I work in the software industry myself) BTW, I am running PMS and the Plex client on NVIDIA Shield TV Pro with both at the latest versions, but the Plex client on my Android 7 phone has the same issue with playback.
Can someone tell me how to drop back to PMS V1.7.5? When I go to system apps->PMS and select “Uninstall Updates” it prompts me as to whether I want to uninstall the PMS app which I certainly do not want to do. I just want to drop back to the 1.7.5 version which at least worked.
Blueskies, Paul
@jayz78 mcebuddy uses comskip , ffmpeg, and handbrake all of which are available on other platforms. All mcebuddy does is provide a nice interface to configure how your shows are processed. So you can setup post processing using the same tools mcebuddy uses as others on this forum have done. I perosnally don’t want to deal with commercials, using mcebuddy I get a commercial free converted file in my Library 3-11 minutes after recording based on show length and whether SD or HD.
@bradbart948 as @HeartWare42 pointed out the forced switch to mkv affected a lot of users that have hearing disabilities who were then unable to enjoy any recordings because the closed captioning/sub titles did not work. This went on for several releases without a fix. I assume the only “fix” the Plex team could come up with was to revert back to the ts container. I also assume that Plex is still planning to bring back the mkv format at some point once they figure out the issue with getting closed captions/sub titles included in the mkv file. Otherwise they probably would have added the remux option back to the device settings in the DVR config so users could get the mkv. Since they did not I believe the mkv format is going to again replace the ts file at some point when the problem is resolved.
@paulblueskies I outlined a process for downloading the previous Plex releases in several threads. Here is the link to one of them: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1478537#Comment_1478537
@johnm_ColaSC said:
@paulblueskies I outlined a process for downloading the previous Plex releases in several threads. Here is the link to one of them: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1478537#Comment_1478537
Thanks @johnm_ColaSC, and that would be great except that I am running PMS on the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro and there is no option for that on the downloads page so I cannot determine the URL for that version to even start to edit it for the previous version…
Downgrading on the Shield is a tricky business. First, you need to find the apk. Some apk site host it, but you need to trust this site. You need to uninstall all updates, that will also flush the database. There is no way to re-install it. You need to go in shield security setting and permit “install from external source”. Then, from a file explorer, install the apk. Make sure to disable autoupdate.
After that, you need to start from scratch and rebuild all you libraries.
So I copied the .ts DVR files from my server to my desktop and then ran them all through mkvtoolnix (and survived…relatively painless). Now they work just fine, through Plex. All videos were Tucker Carlson episodes that are 1 hr 4 min in length, at 720p with English and Spanish 5.1 AC3 tracks.
In the .ts container the files were 4.2GB in size. After running them through mkvtoolnix (keeping everything) the file size of all videos dropped to 3.83GB. What’s the extra, approximately 400MB of file size, in the .ts file there for? Seems the .ts files are taking up a good bit of extra space unnecessarily.
The .TS file format is verbose in order to be resistant to intermittent errors (bad reception). F.ex. some error-correcting information. Also, each and every part of audio (and video) is time-stamped individually in order to be able to recover from a break in reception. This information takes up some space that is not needed once you have it on your PC (where it is assumed that you get a 100% correct reproduction of the bytes you saved to your hard drive).
This should not be rocket science… I had a box 15 years ago… called… um… TIVO… and they managed to figure this out…
@dragonmel
Indeed! I am coming from the TiVo world as well (we have no choice here in Australia where TiVo is going away). It shouldn’t be that hard.
BTW, when I select “Transcode” in the DVR settings it does play in the Plex client, but the wide-screen then comes out squashed into 4:3 format…
@rouq said:
@paulblueskiesDowngrading on the Shield is a tricky business. First, you need to find the apk. Some apk site host it, but you need to trust this site. You need to uninstall all updates, that will also flush the database. There is no way to re-install it. You need to go in shield security setting and permit “install from external source”. Then, from a file explorer, install the apk. Make sure to disable autoupdate.
After that, you need to start from scratch and rebuild all you libraries.
Thanks @rouq - I guess I’ll just leave it for now and hope that Plex sort this whole thing out, at least getting the Plex client to play the bloody .ts files that the PMS creates! In the meantime we’ll just have to watch the .ts files with SPMC - ludicrous!
Blueskies, Paul
@paulblueskies
Out of curiosity, you have an ac3 capable receiver so the ts file direct play on the Shield?
I don’t have an audio receiver and my tv doesn’t accept ac3 on hdmi. So PMS transcode the audio stream only in the ts file. I don’t have issues skipping commercials using the 30s skip. I guesss this is the result of this transcoding.
Hi @rouq , yes my receiver is ac3 capable. The non-transcoded .ts file plays fine using SPMC/KODI but the Plex client cannot play it - just a spinning orange circle. If I select “Transcode” in the “CONVERT VIDEO WHILE RECORDING” selection for the DVR then the Plex client can play the transcoded recording but the aspect is forced from 16:9 to 4:3. Blueskies, Paul
I hope the MKV option makes a return before the start of the fall tv season. .ts sometimes is painfully slow to skip forward on my Shield TV presumably due to the on-the-fly remuxing.
I don’t have a Shield device, but I would think it should have enough power to play the native TS file. I’ll bet if anything it is trying to change the audio format. Are there any settings in the player that allow you to set audio type? Maybe you could play around with that to see if anything changes.
I guess it could also just be the Plex app on that platform isn’t able to decode a TS file for some reason. Plex really needs to unify the capabilities of these apps across the various platforms.
