Post a MediaInfo report for one of these things.
Let’s see what’s in 'em.
Here ya go: joker.txt (9.2 KB)
OK - mystery solved.
Not even the great and powerful Shield can work with this level of junk.
VC-1?
Not sure who’s idea that was - but it was wrong.
At this point if your material survives a complete re-code - no matter how long it takes - you should consider yourself lucky.
If Plex is finally transcoding this mess - be happy.
General
Count : 331
Count of stream of this kind : 1
Kind of stream : General
Kind of stream : General
Stream identifier : 0
Inform : Windows Media: 6.03 GiB, 2 h 1 min
Count of video streams : 1
Count of audio streams : 1
Video_Format_List : VC-1
Video_Format_WithHint_List : VC-1 (WMV3)
Codecs Video : VC-1
Video_Language_List : English (United States)
Audio_Format_List : WMA
Audio_Format_WithHint_List : WMA
Audio codecs : WMA
Audio_Language_List : English (United States)
Complete name : \\homeserver\e$\ServerFolders\Videos\Movies\Joker (2019)\Joker (2019).wmv
Folder name : \\homeserver\e$\ServerFolders\Videos\Movies\Joker (2019)
File name extension : Joker (2019).wmv
File name : Joker (2019)
File extension : wmv
Format : Windows Media
Format : Windows Media
Format/Extensions usually used : asf dvr-ms wma wmv
Commercial name : Windows Media
Internet media type : video/x-ms-wmv
File size : 6470161633
File size : 6.03 GiB
File size : 6 GiB
File size : 6.0 GiB
File size : 6.03 GiB
File size : 6.026 GiB
Duration : 7309311
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 2 h 1 min 49 s 311 ms
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 02:01:49.311
Duration : 02:01:51;02
Duration : 02:01:49.311 (02:01:51;02)
Overall bit rate mode : CBR
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 7081556
Overall bit rate : 7 082 kb/s
Maximum Overall bit rate : 8661872
Maximum Overall bit rate : 8 662 kb/s
Frame rate : 23.976
Frame rate : 23.976 FPS
Frame count : 175248
HeaderSize : 5839
DataSize : 6470111848
Encoded date : UTC 2020-03-22 02:57:28.340
File creation date : UTC 2020-03-22 02:57:26.626
File creation date (local) : 2020-03-21 21:57:26.626
File last modification date : UTC 2020-03-22 03:00:24.214
File last modification date (local) : 2020-03-21 22:00:24.214
Video
Count : 377
Count of stream of this kind : 1
Kind of stream : Video
Kind of stream : Video
Stream identifier : 0
StreamOrder : 1
Inform : English (United States), 8 000 kb/s, 1920*1040 (1.85:1), at 23.976 (23976/1000) FPS, VC-1 (WMV3) (MP@HL)
ID : 2
ID : 2
Format : VC-1
Format : VC-1
Commercial name : VC-1
Format profile : MP@HL
Internet media type : video/vc1
Codec ID : WMV3
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Video 9
Codec ID/Hint : WMV3
Codec ID/Url : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx
Description of the codec : VC-1 - VC-1 Simple/Main Profile
Duration : 7309309
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 2 h 1 min 49 s 309 ms
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 02:01:49.309
Duration : 02:01:51;02
Duration : 02:01:49.309 (02:01:51;02)
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8000000
Bit rate : 8 000 kb/s
Width : 1920
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1040
Height : 1 040 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.000
Display aspect ratio : 1.846
Display aspect ratio : 1.85:1
Frame rate : 23.976
Frame rate : 23.976 (23976/1000) FPS
FrameRate_Num : 23976
FrameRate_Den : 1000
Frame count : 175248
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.167
Stream size : 7309309000
Stream size : 6.81 GiB
Stream size : 7 GiB
Stream size : 6.8 GiB
Stream size : 6.81 GiB
Stream size : 6.807 GiB
Language : en-us
Language : English (United States)
Language : English (United States)
Language : en
Language : eng
Language : en-us
Audio
Count : 280
Count of stream of this kind : 1
Kind of stream : Audio
Kind of stream : Audio
Stream identifier : 0
StreamOrder : 0
Inform : English (United States), 640 kb/s, 48.0 kHz, 24 bits, 6 channels, WMA (Pro)
ID : 1
ID : 1
Format : WMA
Format : WMA
Commercial name : WMA
Format profile : Pro
Codec ID : 162
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Codec ID/Url : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 10 Professional - 640 kbps, 48 kHz, 5.1 channel 24 bit 1-pass CBR
Duration : 7309311
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 2 h 1 min 49 s 311 ms
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Duration : 02:01:49.311
Duration : 02:01:49.311
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640008
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Sampling rate : 48000
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Samples count : 350846928
Bit depth : 24
Bit depth : 24 bits
Stream size : 584752189
Stream size : 558 MiB (9%)
Stream size : 558 MiB
Stream size : 558 MiB
Stream size : 558 MiB
Stream size : 557.7 MiB
Stream size : 558 MiB (9%)
Proportion of this stream : 0.09038
Language : en-us
Language : English (United States)
Language : English (United States)
Language : en
Language : eng
Language : en-us
Have you tried just muxing this mess into an MKV file?
It couldn’t hurt.
For the record:
MCEBuddy didn’t do that by itself and it if did it all, it was kicking and screaming all the way.
Out of curiosity what’s the issue with VC-1?
It’s a ‘single threaded’ operation for one thing.
I assume it’s the same on a Shield, but on my PC I have 8 cores, until I try to do something with VC-1 - then I have 1 core.
I have a fairly decent single thread score, but it’s not as good as all 8 are!
As soon as ‘most’ users see VC-1 - they plan an encoding session to eradicate it. The last thing you want is to have that start transcoding while you’re doing anything else on the server machine.
At my house, my luck is such that as soon as I walk into a ‘Bring it on!’ difficulty room full of Hell Spawn - A VC-1 transcode would kick in and:
Hell Spawn - 1
JuiceWSA - 0
Interesting stuff about it being single threaded and I wasn’t aware.
All the remuxes I grab are around a 50/50 split between AVC and VC-1.
Thank god for HW transcoding.
I think there’s even a pain-point for VC-1 on Hardware, but I’ll defer to HW aficionados.
The best VC-1 to have is whatever it turns into after it falls out of Handbrake.
Or MCEBuddy 'cause over here it’s fixed plenty of them.
No this was done with Premiere Pro initially uncompressed, then encoded with Microsoft Expressions encoder. Not sure about the mess part. VC-1 as far as I thought was as good as it gets for WMV format. And don’t they still use that today with some Blue-Ray releases?
They do, but they’re tapering off here it seems.
I’m not totally convinced they aren’t doing that simply for the PITA factor for those that would - ahem - do something nefarious with it 'cause I’ll tell ya right now it’s PITA factor is off the charts.
I’m pretty sure a WTV file - what my WMC spat out - is meant to contain MPEG2 video with all it’s own PITA stuff - and still it fails to play on hardly anything. Put VC-1 in a proprietory Windows package and watch the fun.
Looks like the Shield “does?” support VC-1. Way these individuals are talking it broke about 6 - 8 months ago or something.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/305915/plex-wont-direct-play-vc1/
Beating this info to death, their website says they support 1080p content for VC-1
Note some other threads I found from Emby say it’s fixed but I don’t see it.
The Shield has no issues with VC-1.
As mentioned earlier around 50% of my remuxes are VC-1 and my main client is the Shield.
Whatever your issue is it is absolutely nothing to do with VC-1 (at least not that alone.)
Have you tried muxing those streams into an MKV file?
Won’t take a minute (or two):
MKVToolNix
1 Like
^^ This.
Let me try. I used Microsoft’s own paid tools for creating this content so going to be hard pressed to think something is wrong with the content, but let me try changing the container.
Do it with MKVToolNix
Oh yea, and while you do, scrub everything out that isn’t those two tracks, and a sub track if you have one.
All those ‘Global Tags’ Tags, tags, tags… leave 'em behind. You want a nice, clean MKV file with two streams in it - or 3.
All my files contain is a WMV and WMA. Note MKVToolNIX fails. Can’t extract WMV containers.
Xmedia Recode might:
(you need that anyway)
Simple:
Select Matroska
Video/Copy
Audio/Copy
Add To Queue
Encode
Or/And when/if all else fails:
Lt. Le-Fordie ‘splainin’ how to do it another way…
(if there’s any skin left on this Kat - I can’t see it)
1 Like
So here’s a weird one. So I did this:
ffmpeg -i input.wmv -c copy output.mkv
The new MKV file is almost the identical size as the WMV so that makes sense. The audio is still a WMA. Video shows VC-1 but with a bitrate of 6267 kb/s vs 8000 kb/s in my WMV file. Any idea why?
Well whatever the reason for the bitrate changes didn’t help.
I’d be happy with a transcode.
Yeah, actually the transcode is not bad. I have my encoding computer that I’m going to be buying another CUDA card for to deal with 4k HEVC content to MKV. Wonder if my old Tesla C2075 card would be any good for transcoding in the PLEX system since I won’t use it anymore. I basically have 2 - 6 core Xeon CPU’s with 24 logical cores total in the system already…
