It is very unlikely. I can have him check the time and try reproducing the issue again with the failed movies and post back a new fresh set of logs.
Ok, so he played the 5 failed 4K files again just now (11/28 1:00 - 1:35 PM) and here are the new logs:
(File removed)
(File removed)
He also played Too Fast Too Furious and The Accountant and they again played just fine.
The client logs show playback occurring at 11/28 around 1:00 AM. Your father’s Fire TV is 12 hrs behind. I’m not sure this is the problem but something to get fixed either way.
I do see the error when trying to playback certain content. The failures are happening when the audio codec is something that is not supported. In the case of Spider-Man, it’s TrueHD. The Fire TV is asking your server to transcode it to EAC3, which is then failing. I’m not sure why it’s failing, that’s something I still need to investigate. Your father should be able to get around this by changing the audio settings on his Fire TV (the main devices audio settings, not inside the Plex app) to disable using EAC3 (aka Dolby Digital Plus).
Oops, I forgot to tell him to check the time. I just told him now and he confirmed that, for some reason, the Fire Stick is set to a US time zone. He already set it to GMT+8.
Ok, got it. I’m curious though what do these audio settings in both playback device (Fire Stick) and Plex really do? What does enabling and disabling them mean? Isn’t Plex intelligent enough to detect which audio codecs are supported by the playback device?
Also, I know that when you have a receiver you generally want audio passthrough enabled in Plex. But if you don’t, is it generally recommended to pass through audio to the TV or just leave it disabled so that Plex can do all the decoding?
Ok, so the only available sound options in the Fire Stick 4K are:
Best Available
Stereo
Always Dolby Digital Plus
Always Dolby Digital
It was set to Best Available when these were tested. I had him try the other settings and playing the same media (with the True-HD stream selected) and they all still failed.
I then checked and found out that the failing media all had alternate (lower quality) audio streams. So I had him choose the AC3 streams just to do more tests. Here are some preliminary results:
- Amazing Spiderman set to AC3 5.1 → still not playing
- Ad Astra set to AC3 Stereo → both video and audio are direct streaming but randomly buffers
- Ad Astra set to DTS-HD MA 7.1 → video is direct playing while audio is transcoding to AC3. It is playing but it also buffers.
- Spiderman 2 set to AC3 5.1 → both video and audio are direct playing and no buffering
Here’s a new set of logs:
(File removed)
(File removed)
The time zone on the client logs is already set correctly. These were played from 9:30 to 10:00 PM (11/28 today).
NOTE: I checked the client logs and it looks like he has passthrough enabled. I had him disable passthrough and play Ad Astra again set at DTS-HD MA 7.1 and both video and audio direct played! Here’s another set of logs for this instance:
(File removed)
(File removed)
The problem is it still buffers even though it says it is direct playing the file! While he was testing I’m checking the PMS dashboard and here’s what I see:
The bandwidth is soaring at around an average of 76Mbps and it suddenly just dips to a very low value when it buffers. It’s as if the Fire Stick has not enough buffer memory capacity or something?
Something not right with your file.
11-28 22:10:41.282 i: [FF] VideoStream[0-hevc] 3840x2160 [SAR 1:1, DAR 3840:2160]. H.265 / HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) - Unknown Profile (video/hevc), 72.9 Mbps -54 sec 0.00fps, English / English (eng), 1 / 114 bytes, .
11-28 22:10:41.287 i: [FF] AudioStream[1-ac3] 6 channels over 1551 (5.1(side)), 48000 Hz, 0,0 padding. ATSC A/52A (AC-3) - Unknown Profile (audio/ac3), 72.9 Mbps -54 sec 0.00fps, No Title / English (eng), 0 bytes, .
For some reason the app is only seeing the file as being 54 seconds long. That matches when the bandwidth drops in your dashboard. The 76 Mbps you were seeing also matches. I can’t explain other files, but for this, I think something might be wrong with the file. Almost like it might have had multiple files put together but done incorrectly.
Right and the app sees that too as the duration of the file, but the individual streams show something else. Either PMS is picking these up wrong or the file was made wrong.
Can you follow https://support.plex.tv/articles/201035968-generating-sample-files-from-media/ and make me a 2 minute sample of Ad Astra using the dd command?
Here you go:
I know I can play the whole Ad Astra file normally using SMB and the VLC player just fine.
Got the sample. Yeah, that file is really messed up. Your sample dies for me at around 13s, not even getting to the 1 minute mark like you were seeing.
If you are seeing things like this with multiple files, maybe you’ve got a bad drive.
I don’t use VLC but I tried a few others I have and they all fail getting past around 13s.
Did you try playing the sample with VLC?
That’s weird, I tried playing the sample file using VLC just now and I get the same dropping out at 13s issue as you did. But when I play the whole file from the NAS, it gets past 13s. Any ideas?
It’s not a bad drive. These media are stored in a Synology NAS with drives that are being checked for bad sectors/dish health every month. The last check was yesterday and everything was still good (around 13 x 10TB drives).
Also, I had my father played the same Ad Astra media file using the Nvidia Shield for around 5 minutes and it played back just fine. I’m still baffled as to why the sample doesn’t work in VLC while the whole file does (I played it myself). There’s got to be something that the dd command did that corrupted the sample file or something.
Here’s another 2-minute sample file (that’s much larger than the initial 50MB file I gave you) that was processed by the Plex Transcoder as an alternative option in the link you gave me:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhDXcRksNyfeszi4X-gydzorTjui?e=FducqH
This one can be played without any issues with VLC.
I think the main issue described in this thread was closely related to my other thread where the EAC3 transcoder was not working for some reason. I already fixed that by deleting the Codecs folder. I had my Father play the same Amazing Spiderman video and it played beautifully even with TRUEHD selected now! Here’s what I see now:
So I have my own Fire Stick 4K now and I have my own issue that’s similar to this one. I’m trying to play “Frozen II” which is a 4K file and with TRUEHD audio stream. Here are my issues:
-
The movie plays but it transcodes both video and audio. I was expecting a video direct stream also like how the Amazing Spiderman was with my Father’s Fire Stick. The only difference is that mine is connected to a 1080p TV and his is connected to a 4K TV. I don’t think that even matters because the 4K capability is in the client device (Fire Stick) and not in the TV as the TV will only downsample the input signal from 4K to 1080p.
-
Even though the movie plays, it is buffering heavily to a point that you really cannot watch the movie anymore. PMS is HW transcoding and it only uses around 20% CPU when doing this so the CPU (J5005) power is not the problem. Here are the logs:
(File removed)
(File removed)
The media was played at around 12/4 2:55PM to 3:10PM
I played the same movie just now, with the same fire stick 4k, and it’s stuck at loading. This is really giving me headaches 
The behavior is so inconsistent.
Looks like the file has HDR video. Your father must have an HDR capable TV. You don’t, so the video has to be transcoded. You’ve also enabled the subtitles. Subtitles can’t be done via hardware so the video is sent back to the cpu to add that. Adding subtitles is also a single core task, so the 20% you see is close to maxing out that core. Turn off subtitles and you should see better results. Connect to a TV that supports HDR and you’ll get even better results.
Aha! You’re absolutely right! I forgot about the file being HDR, thanks for pointing that out. The TV that I have this Fire Stick connected to is a non-HDR 1080p TV, yes. My Shield TV Pro is connected to an LG C9 (HDR-capable) 4K TV though so that’s what I wasn’t having any problems with it.
I turned off the subs and it’s playing beautifully now while HW transcoding. So I guess there isn’t really an issue with this file. It was just a matter of the CPU not coping up with the transcoding resource requirements.
Before I finally close this thread, can you answer some of my past questions in this same thread? Specifically, these are what I’m most curious about:
-
What do these audio settings in both playback device (Fire Stick) and Plex really do? What does enabling and disabling them mean? Isn’t Plex intelligent enough to detect which audio codecs are supported by the playback device?
-
Also, I know that when you have a receiver you generally want audio passthrough enabled in Plex. But if you don’t, is it generally recommended to pass through audio to the TV or just leave it disabled so that Plex can do all the decoding?
1 - Yes, but sometimes the devices lie or don’t report properly. i.e. I’ve seen device say they support a specific codec but only 1 channel, which is definitely wrong. Or the opposite and they don’t specify a limit so it’ll appear it supports 8 or 10 channels.
2 - Passthrough is on the device the setting is on. The Firestick has it’s own setting. I believe they only support AC3 and EAC3. The Plex app has it’s setting. Your TV will have it’s own setting or it may be automatic if you are connected through ARC to the receiver or using the optical connection. So the Firestick, your TV, and your receiver must all support the same codecs for passthrough to work. Otherwise it gets stopped somewhere along the line and you might not be able to tell. Turning off passthrough will get the app to only use codecs the Fire TV reports as supported for local decoding.
Ok. So what do the Firestick audio settings do? If I set it to Stereo only, what is its effect to the Plex client? I still see the TrueHD stream available in my media even if the Firestick audio setting is set to Stereo only.
If I have passthrough off in Plex, the only audio codecs that get transcoded are those that are not supported for local decoding by the Firestick, correct?
Setting the Firestick to stereo will tell Plex that the Fires tick only supports stereo, so PMS will only use stereo. Any multi-channel will get transcoded to stereo. The Fire stick will then send out stereo to the TV.
With the passthrough setting off, Plex will ignore whatever is connected to the Firestick and only send it what you’ve specified in the Fire Stick’s main audio settings, see above comment.
