Very perplexed by this problem. Obviously have checked the files to see how they play in VLC and they play flawlessly which they also do in PLEX when using the Plex Media Player app in Mac OS Sierra(where the files direct PLAY) and also plays perfectly when I disable direct streaming in any player forcing it to transcode. It also plays perfect direct streaming using plex online in safari so I feel safe to say that corruption of files can be ruled out and suspect this to be a bug that can and should be fixed.
So I have tested with around 10 different video files that i’ve found to have this issue, (i’m sure would find many more if I searched entire library). All files play flawlessly in VLC, direct streaming in safari, direct play on Plex Media Server on MAC and when transcoding to any platform but either shows distorted picture or suddenly stops playing giving an error shaka3015 (media) in the following situations:
Plex for XBOX ONE (direct streaming)
Plex online app using chrome (direct streaming)
Plex for LG webOS TV (direct streaming)
Basically the problems seems limited to the direct streaming feature and only on maybe 5% of my video library and only on certain players. Can of course disable direct streaming but due to many simultaneous users I would prefer that not to transcode everything on the fly and also because it SHOULD work!
Have also tested on completely different hardware/server and the same issue is there. My plex server is a Dell T610 with dual Xeon X5675 CPU’s and 32GB ram running OpenMediaVault with Plex Version 1.8.4.4249.
Looking forward to hearing if anyone have similar issues, if there’s something that can be done by me to make it work myself or if this needs to be addressed by PLEX programmers in an update and if so when that would be.
I’ve attached files of the how the errors / distorted picture looks like. Let me know if you need anything else.
Can you post the XML from PMS for one of these videos? My guess is that they are encoded as 10-bit and/or HDR. VLC and PMP can handle these but the client you listed cannot. Transcoding changes these from 10-bit to 8-bit, which they can handle.
Sorry to necro this thread but I’ve got the same problem, and its definitely NOT the a 10-bit / HDR problem. it seems to be associated with DirectStream muxing in an external .SRT file - the video plays fine up to the first subtitle and then bam - trails all over the screen that get reset on every key frame.
So far I’ve only seen this problem on Plex Web/Chrome. The video plays fine with .SRT to my iOS devices. Disabling subtitles the video plays fine on Plex Web/Chrome. Interestingly, switching from AAC to AC3 (to force audio transcoding) the video also plays fine.
Thanks for following up and providing the XMLs. I can’t see any reason why those videos would come out distorted. I do see that both of those files have DTS-HD MA audio. None of the clients you listed supports this, so the audio needs to be transcoded to stereo. The video is fine so the video is copied as is, but cut up into smaller pieces to be sent with the audio. It’s possible that there is a problem with the way the original video was created so that when it gets cut up like this, the client can’t correctly play back a specific piece and it stops with an error.
When you choose subtitles, the video is transcoded so the original issue doesn’t get carried over. I’m not sure why you see different behavior in Safari, maybe it has better error handling. If you can create a 1 to 2 minute sample file that exhibits this same issue, I can test it and see if I can reproduce the error. I can then have our video expert see if we can better handle these types of files.
