I have an Nvidia Shield TV Pro (2017 edition) running Plex Media Server version 1.5.3.3580 (released on April 5, 2017). When DVD rips (MKV files, MPEG-2 video stream) are transcoded to play back on iOS devices (iPhone 6, iPad Mini 2) or on a Roku 3, the aspect ratio is wrong. It looks like the files are playing back at the native 720x480 instead of the anamorphic 853x480. Video preview thumbnails appear to have the correct aspect ratio.
Is anyone aware of a Plex Media Server setting that could be changed to fix this? Or is a bug fix for this in the works? This seems to be an issue specific to the Nvidia Shield TV – running PMS on my laptop, the aspect ratio of DVD transcodes looks correct when viewed on iOS or on the Roku.
It “could” be a bug that I reported some time ago but Plex, nor anyone else, responded:
If it is that bug then, until it gets addressed if it ever does, turning off hardware acceleration in the Shield’s transcoder settings will allow the aspect ratio to be displayed correctly. But that does impact the number of streams you can have transcoding at the same time but, for me, one or two seems to work OK.
Thanks very much, Elijah_Baley. Turning off hardware acceleration did fix this aspect ratio problem but as you point out, does come at a performance cost. Since it manifests on the Roku and on iOS and can be fixed by turning off hardware acceleration on the Shield, it seems like it’s a Plex Media Server bug specific to the hardware-accelerated transcoding on the Shield or it’s an Nvidia bug in the hardware-accelerated transcoder itself? When I turned off the hardware acceleration option in the PMS settings, I noticed that the option was designated as “Experimental” – not sure whether that means the problem is on the Plex or Nvidia side but it sounds like the feature may still be in development.
I have this issue but:
It’s normally a 720x480 DVD rip that should be squeezed to 640x480 (normal 4:3) but when I transcode it squeezes it to a 1:1 frame instead of a 4:3 frame. If I disable HW transcoding it works, but the performance is terrible. PLEASE FIX THIS PLEX/NVIDIA! I WILL PROVIDE LOGS.
