I was curious to see if Plex supported Dolby Vison after many people said that Plex didn’t support it.
So I went ahead and downloaded one of the LG DV promo videos and copied it into my Plex server. I used my new LG C7 and it’s own Plex app (NVIDIA SHIELD doesn’t support DV) and it worked just fine.
As you can see the on the top right, the TV recognized that it was Dolby Vision content.
Here’s a video too → Watch IMG_0845 | Streamable
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It must be direct playing the file. I’m guessing however Dolby Vision is lost with any sort of transcode and potentially even with a change of containers?
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@nlundqu said:
It must be direct playing the file. I’m guessing however Dolby Vision is lost with any sort of transcode and potentially even with a change of containers?
My thoughts. As long as it’s direct playing the file, and your player device supports it, and your TV supports it, and you have HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2… it should work. Whenever it will need to transcode is when you’ll run into issues.
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Works with my LG OLED 55B7P as well.
I downloaded the demos from 4kmedia.org.
Playing the two Dolby Vision demo videos with the LG Plex app displays Dolby Vision in the upper right corner for a couple of seconds when the video starts.
The LG HLG video also direct plays and displays “HLG HDR” when the video first starts.
The TravelXP HLG demo file did not play at all. It caused the Plex client to restart, displaying a “This app will now restart to free up memory” message.
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Doesn’t on mi Sony A1.
@Tamberlox @FordGuy61 I cannot get this to work. I get an error on my side “Cannot convert this item. Implementation for video decoder ‘dvhe’ not found.”
Have you got any ideas?
demo’s aside, last I saw was that the problem was inability (or difficulty) to rip DV 4k blurays.
there was a thread awhile back about some utility that could remux some DV content, but haven’t seen anything recently.
@GigabitEthernet sounds pretty apparent that your tv and/or player doesn’t have the proper decoder, or doesn’t allow it for uncertified apps. (ie the ability could be restricted to whitelisted/approved apps like netflix and/or amazon or whatever).
No idea. It just worked. Only thing I can suggest is basic troubleshooting: a) make sure you’ve the latest version of the Plex client (Authorized Devices, SmartTV Announcements); and b) turn off TV then remove power cord for 20 - 30 seconds. Power button on remote just puts TV into a deep sleep. Pulling the power cord forces a full power off. This will force the TV to reload the app the next time you launch it, instead of possibly just bringing it out of background / sleep status.
I have not used the LG client in several months. It would not play PGS/VOBSUB subtitles without transcoding, and HDMI-ARC limitations meant no TrueHD or dts-HD audio. I now have a Nvidia Shield connected directly to my receiver. No Dolby Vision support, but all my Plex HDR content (outside of demo videos) is HDR10 anyway, so not an issue for me.
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@FordGuy61 can you link me to the video you used to test it?
Is there anyway you could test now and see if you’re still able to play back fine? I’m wondering if a Plex update broke it.
Many thanks.
Two DV videos work and two receive the error you mention. Not sure if this is due to L5 vs L5.1, 23.976fps vs 60fps, or other differences (see MediaInfo snippet below).
Using current client, 3.88.0, on B7 OLED. PMS v1.15.1.710 on Synology DS918+ & PMS v1.14.1.5488 on Nvidia Shield.
These two direct play when using Plex client on LG B7 OLED The TV shows the Dolby Vision overlay in the top right corner when playback begins:
LG Dolby Vision Comparison
LG: Dolby Vision
This two do not play. I get the same “dvhe” error you mention.
LG Amaze Dolby Vision
LG Earth Dolby Vision
A couple of things I noticed:
For the two that work, the Plex pre-play screen shows the video type as HEVC Main 10, even though they are DV.
For the two that do not work, the Plex pre-play screen shows the video as type DVHE.
They also have different info in MediaInfo:
LG Dolby Comparison
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5@Main
Dolby Vision : 1.0, dvhe.04.06, BL+EL+RPU
Codec ID : 36
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
LG Amaze:
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@Main
Dolby Vision : 1.0, dvhe.05.09, BL+RPU
Codec ID : dvhe
Codec ID/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding with Dolby Vision
Frame rate : 60.000 FPS
Codec configuration box : hvcC+dvcC
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Very interesting…should we “assume” is simply does not support the newer L5.1? It could be the Frame Rate as well (24 verses 60). I have had the best overall experience using an Intel NUC (Skull Canyon) running Windows 10 Pro…but I think I need an upgrade to the newer Intel Hades Canyon to fully support HDR10 (and potentially Dolby Vision). The audio codecs are no problem…DTS:X and Atmos-Dolby HD (Uncompressed)…direct play can get up to 110-125Mbps…but the on-chip graphics card on the Skull Canyon starts to choke on processing some of the HDR(10). The newer Hades has an internal Radeon RX Vega M graphics card which can easily handle HDR10. I have quite a few UHD Blu-rays I have ripped to my NAS (.m2ts and .mkv)…some HDR play and some (Lion King) start to choke the graphics card on the NUC. After reading here, I can do some testing of the Plex client on my Sony 930e and 940e displays…but the Atmos will be an “issue”. As per the Plex Dev team…currently the Windows 10 player is the most full featured…I have had decent performance from my nVidia Shield Pro, 4K Apple TV, even the Xbox One S…but over the last 3+ years testing tons of “players” the Windows still works best (in terms of highest quality), but I hate dealing with the Windows 10 aspect…mine is setup to auto login and auto launch Plex Media Player with only the services needed running…so as close to an appliance as I think I can get…without creating a Windows 10 custom appliance image…which is more work than I have time for at this point.
some info regarding main 5 vs main 5.1 @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_tiers_and_levels
essentially main 5 supports 4k up to 30 fps, main 5.1 up to 60 fps
but my guess at the main incompatibility is the dvhe profile numbers; dvhe.04.06 versus dvhe.05.09
see also @ https://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-vision/dolby-vision-profiles-levels.pdf
the tvs that error on the dvhe.5.09 files simply do not have the hardware to playback that DV profile
there is also the different layers present in the above 2 examples; BL+EL+RPU versus BL+RPU
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Demo files will probably work, whereas Dual Layer (Dolby Vision from Blu-ray) won’t probably work; there is some hope here, https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=18602&hilit=dolby+vision&sid=4ce36c86216f22f69b139beff953062d
Very interesting, someone seems to have had the same problem as me, with the same exact files. https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19958
Has anyone figured out what it is that makes some files play and other not play?
Did you even read this thread?
There are different variations of dolby vision encodings.
Not every tv is compatible with all the different encodings.
DV from ripped blurays are/can be different than streaming DV, which is why DV works from streaming providers, but not bluray rips.
See my other post just a couple posts above for links straight from dolby.
Of course I read the thread. I was asking in an indirect way if anyone has found a way to eliminate these differences. It is quite obvious that it is not merely the profiles but the fact of the two video streams in Dolby Vision Blu-rays. Case in point, I can get these files to play on my TV, they are just horribly distorted. While single track DV content mostly plays, but some videos from both profiles also don’t play.
I’m trying to find a way to get these 12 Bit DV rips into a working format that my TV can use. I’ll try some methods out and will report back. Using the Dolby Vision MP4 Muxer doesn’t work.
OK, I figured out the problem totally. I have no idea how LG and Vizio TVs are doing Profile 7, but TVs are only supposed to support dvhe.04.07/dvhe.05.07 while UHD BD players can do dvhe.07.06/dvhe.07.07 which is what is mentioned in this thread. When I used dv-profile 5 instead of 7, it worked perfectly on my TCL Roku 4K TV and still retained 12 bit color info as it had two streams.
I can play the LG Dolby Vision demo on my Sony X950G but i’m not sure if the dolby vision kicks in. It play fine using the internal player provided with Android Tv and Plex. I’ve tried a demo from BatmanVsSuperman (link from Reddit) and it play fine on Plex/Sony internal player but again, there is not Dolby appearing when I got to settings > Pictures. In NetFlix, it detects the DolbyVision content so i’m not sure if its working or not.
You can tell visually if Dolby Vision is working if the backlight changes. With HDR10, brightness will be the same for all scenes. It will change every scene with DV. Your TV might not trigger the logo when it’s playing from a file, but mine does FWIW.
I just tested with the new Nvidia Sheild Pro…despite Dolby Vision working within the VUDU app, nothing within Plex. I am using the new Pro unit into a Marantz 7702mkii to a Sony XBR75X940. I have the Dolby Vision demos, and the UHD Blu-Rays that should be Dolby Vision, Black Panther and Ready Player One…I ripped them myself and also pulled the direct .m2ts files…which I can test with, but I assume they are the same “issues” we saw with the varying format support. I assume it will come eventually, I was hoping this would potentially solve the issue…at least we know the hardware will support it, but the 4K Apple TV’s will as well…but as we know, Android it a little more flexible than Apple iOS…the picture is amazing though, so more of technically trying to get it to work! 
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