Direct Play failing on some devices

General Discussions
1

Yesterday my kids complained about some files not playing and I am trying to run down why. I have now found several more. I have a slow server and a fast network so transcoding is always disabled. These are MKV. The files refuse to play on our Shield TV or on my Pixel 4a however they do play on our fireTV 4K stick and original Fire TVs. All the apps have identical version numbers (8.11.0.22186)

Plex XML for file
MediaInfo for file
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-01-14_12-14-08.zip (2.1 MB)

2

Looks like this is the EAC3 audio problem. Adding that to conversion queue of 2364 avi and mpg files that Plex refuses to play… anybody have bash command line fu to identify mp4 and mkv with eac3 audio? Are there any more of these common codecs that Plex can’t handle?

3

here is one that works (requires mediainfo), execute in top of your media folder.

IFS=$'\n'; set -f; for f in $(find ./ -iname "*.mkv" -or -iname "*.mp4"); do mediainfo --Inform="Audio;%Format%" "$f" | grep -q "E-AC-3" && echo "$f" ; done; unset IFS; set +f
4

For She-Ra The Sword episode, it looks like the problem is the encoding profile.

The file is encoded with the Constrained Baseline profile, which is apparently not supported by the FireTV 4K stick. Therefore, Plex wants to transcode the video. Since video transcoding is disabled, playback fails.

Jan 14, 2021 11:25:56.897 [0x7f8163fff700] DEBUG - [Transcode] The Sword (1) - video.profile limitation applies: constrained baseline != baseline|main|high [list]

Two options:

  • Obtain a version that uses the Baseline, Main, or High profile.
  • Transcode the existing video offline using Handbrake or similar tools.

Edit: The same message is shown for Lucky and the Impatient Patient. The messages are in the Plex Media Server.log file (and .1 -> .5).

Jan 14, 2021 10:52:34.548 [0x7f81497ea700] DEBUG - [Transcode] Lucky and the Impatient Patient - video.profile limitation applies: constrained baseline != baseline [list]

5

Thanks for checking out my log but I have identified the problem as the lack of E-AC-3 audio support. The fireTVs were playing those files fine it was my phone and Shield that were the problem. I have a simple script running through my files and converting all the E-AC-3 to AAC and they are now working fine.

for anybody with this problem here is what I am using:

IFS=$'\n'; set -f; for f in $(find ./ -iname "*.mkv" -or -iname "*.mp4"); do mediainfo --Inform="Audio;%Format%" "$f" | grep -q "E-AC-3" && echo "$f" && ffmpeg -hide_banner -loglevel warning -y -i "$f" -map 0 -c:v copy -c:a ac3 -c:s copy "$f.mkv" && rm "$f" && mv "$f.mkv" "$f"; done; unset IFS; set +f

DISCLAIMER! this is quick and dirty and destructive! don’t use unless you understand what it does! (and have backups!)
You will need to re analyze in plex for it to see the change.

6

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