Server Version#: 4.56.3
Player Version#: 8.15.3.24332
Anyone have any ideas? Most 4k video (mkv) files I am playing seem to have a really difficult time playing. Video will start and buffer on/off constantly.
If I check the playback info the video is direct play and depending on the audio it can be direct play or transcode.
Tried playing the exact same video file on my Windows laptop w/ the Plex app. It seems to play without issue and without transcode of any kind.
The only thing I can perhaps pinpoint is that some 4k video will have higher bitrates like 60-100mbps. The video I am testing with currently, the plex server reports its playing around the 80-90 mark.
Does the Fire Stick have a limitation with throughput? Is there something that I need to do to get this working?
For reference: I did a speed test (with my phone) on my wifi in the same room as the Fire TV and my results get above 500mbps download speed from the internet. The Windows laptop would also be using the same wifi.
I’m not sure why I took this out, at the time I guess it seemed no longer relevant. Anyway I have tried playing from 2 different plex servers. 1 is yes a NAS which as you suggest can maybe at best handle 1 transcode and certainly not 4k. The other is a much beefier server that can handle multiples of transcodes simultaneously. Playback from both servers are identical.
With that said the video stream is listed as direct/not being transcoded when I view it on the dashboard in Plex. It is only the audio stream that sometimes will be unsupported.
The specifications you list I find a little confusing to compare. When it says 60fps the fire can handle 35Mbps video? Sooo does this then also mean if I have a 24fps video it can be about 70-80Mbps? Or how does that compute with watching standard 4k video?
Example of my test video I was trying.
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Commercial name : HDR10
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 1 h 30 min
Bit rate : 64.0 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.322
Stream size : 40.4 GiB (93%)
compared with something like this other video I know played fine before.
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Commercial name : HDR10
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 2 h 1 min
Bit rate : 49.3 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (23976/1000) FPS
Original frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.248
Stream size : 41.8 GiB (86%)
The only major difference I see would be the Mbps?
Both video’s I posted the media spec which are both higher than the firetv 4k spec posted.
Anyway I am not seeing the connection with why some video play fine and others do not.
Is it still possible to switch back to the legacy video player? I did not see the option anymore. I feel like my problems all started around when Plex started re writing the things that worked.
If the Fire TV is the source of my bottleneck (which regardless of the above it seems like it is) would there be something that can play a standard 4k file? IE 30Mbps is hardly a true 4k video. I tried looking at the Nvidia Shield but I can’t seem to locate the same level of spec to try and compare, it just says 4k video etc.
Server: 1.22.3.4392 on DS918+
Player: 8.15.3.24332 on Amazon FireStick 4K
Make sure the FireStick in on a 5 GHz WiFi channel. 2.4 GHz channels will not provide enough bandwidth for some high bit rate 4K HDR.
You can measure your network throughput using iperf3.
Load the (free) Analiti app on the FireStick.
I run iperf3 in docker on my DS918+ (dockerhub).
You can download Windows, etc binaries from the iperf3 web site.
When on 2.4 GHz WiFi, the download speed (server to FireStick) is ~95 Mbps.
When on 5 GHz WiFi, the download speed is ~200 Mbps.
FireStick 4K on 5 GHz 802.11ac WiFi. Playing 4K HDR movie w/o buffering.
Thanks all for the info. Tried another movie and it seemed to be playing perfectly fine I believe it was more around the 50-60mbps range.
Tried playing around with iperf some firetv to my laptop. This doesn’t do terribly great. It is 5Ghz AC 867Mbs (supposed to) but was getting more around the 100 mark.
Oddly the default speed test in Analiti going out to the internet was doing much better closer to 250 up and down.
So not sure exactly but will probably play around some more there also.
Update: it also appears that hard coding which audio stream to use from the video seems to have improved things. Seems the video I previously tried that did not play, is now able to play fine after I selected an audio stream that will play with direct.
