I’ve ripped a movie straight from a PAL DVD (MPEG2 720x576 4:3) into a MKV container. The movie is anamorphic and the MKV’s aspect ratio has been set accordingly (1024x576 16:9). My Fire TV doesn’t Direct Play this (for whatever reason), so it has to be Direct Stream’d. The Plex Transcoder creates a “proper” MKV, with correct display dimensions, and even the single TS segments play correctly (on my PC atleast), but the Fire TV doesn’t care and forces my 16:9 movie into a 4:3 frame. I’ve Direct Stream’d the movie on other devices as well, but they do display it properly (although they didn’t choke on the container to begin with).
Bump.
I’ve a couple of old DVDs that behaved this way.
I tried modifying various settings with MKVToolNix and other tools to no avail.
I finally transcoded the movie with Handbrake. Handbrake recognized how the movie was formatted and adjusted accordingly. The output had the correct 16:9 aspect ratio.
Bump.
It’s surprisingly common for commercial DVDs to be badly mastered, with mismatched aspect ratio information in the DVD container vs. the video stream. My guess is that the Fire is ignoring the container and only looking at the stream.
This may be helpful, or it may be backwards. I can’t tell which issue the file has from the description given:
Color Cartoon Aspect Compression - but not in B&W! - #13 by Volts
Share the file if you’d like me to look.
The MKV container has an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1024x576), while the video is PAL (720x576, SAR 64:45). All perfectly fine values. One of two things has to happen for this issue to be resolved:
- Just Direct Play the MKV. Probably not much that Plex can do here because they rely on third-party software to play media (I think it’s ExoPlayer on Android/Fire TV). No idea why the Fire TV can’t DP it even though my Android phone can:
[Transcode] MDE: Test: Direct Play is disabled
[Transcode] MDE: Test: media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
[Transcode] MDE: Test: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/mpeg2video
[Transcode] MDE: Test: no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/mpeg2video/ac3
[Transcode] Streaming Resource: Added session 0xb2c44b60:f22ede40dcaaaf83-com-plexapp-android
[Transcode] Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=6719 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=8416 part=(id=10671 decision=transcode container=mkv protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=22094 decision=copy width=720 height=576) Audio=(id=22095 decision=copy channels=6 rate=48000))))
- Despite of the Fire TV (supposedly) saying that it can’t work with MKV+MPEG2+AC3, the Plex Transcoder does precisely that: It creates an MKV container (
header) with MPEG-TS segments (media-%05d.ts). This container is also 16:9 (16x9 display width/height), so it should’ve worked. The MPEG-TS segments also have the right aspect ratio to them (that’s why for example my PC can play both correctly). Seems like the Fire TV client is jumping through many hoops just to play my media incorrectly.
This is the ffmpeg command:
-codec:0 mpeg2video
-noaccurate_seek
-analyzeduration 20000000
-probesize 20000000
-i Test.mkv
-map 0:0
-metadata:s:0 language=eng
-codec:0 copy
-map 0:1
-metadata:s:1 language=deu
-codec:1 copy
-segment_format matroska
-f ssegment
-individual_header_trailer 0
-flags +global_header
-segment_format_options output_ts_offset=10
-segment_header_filename header
-segment_time 10
-segment_start_number 0
-segment_copyts 1
-segment_time_delta 0.0625
-segment_list http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/f22ede40dcaaaf83-com-plexapp-android/f6201312-2ef8-46d8-af17-d6242a10a31d/manifest?X-Plex-Http-Pipeline=infinite
-segment_list_type csv
-segment_list_size 5
-segment_list_separate_stream_times 1
-segment_list_unfinished 1
-max_delay 5000000
-avoid_negative_ts disabled
-map_metadata:g -1
-map_metadata:c -1
-map_chapters -1
media-%05d.ts
-start_at_zero
-copyts
-vsync cfr
-y
-nostats
-loglevel quiet
-loglevel_plex error
-progressurl http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/f22ede40dcaaaf83-com-plexapp-android/f6201312-2ef8-46d8-af17-d6242a10a31d/progress
As you can see, it’s not doing anything fancy – just copying the streams into another container. I’ve checked with ffmpeg, ffprobe and mediainfo and everything looks fine to me. Every single device can play it properly (directly or not), just not the damn Fire TV.
You can take a look at it yourself but I doubt that you will find anything interesting: 5sec.zip
Workarounds:
Because everything is fine from my side (meaning I can’t just do mpeg2_metadata or something), I came up with two workarounds:
- Zero-out the (MKV) header. By hooking into the Plex Transcoder and wiping the
headerbefore the Fire TV has the chance to read it, the player will skip it and go straight tomedia-00000.ts, thus loading the correct settings from the MPEG-TS stream. This works becauseMPEG2andAC3are of course valid in this context but I do lose the ability to use any kind of subtitles. - Transcode to H.264. By modifying the Plex Transcoder and changing
-codec:v copytolibx264and adding-vf scale=1024:576to it, it will create a correct file. This is awful though because my device lacks support for hardware transcoding (thanks Plex!).
Or, I strongly suspect, correct the discrepancies in aspect ratio values stored within the file. I could be wrong - but it’s really a common issue.
Look for differences between the sar/dar/par in the container vs. embedded in the bitstream.
Share a sample if you like!
The problem is not happening anymore! Not because Plex fixed it or anything, but because the video doesn’t play anymore without transcoding. Scratch that, even when transcoding, the picture is still not right.
No, there are no errors in the file. Every single Plex client or rather every single video player displays it percetly, that includes my 2014 Samsung (which runs an abandoned Plex client) and my Android phone (which runs the latest Plex client). I hate to repeat myself, but the video is fine – it’s the Fire TV Plex client.
Obviously that’s just my hunch, but it’s a really common problem. Share a sample.
And I’ll borrow a Fire.
There’s a 5 second clip linked above.
No need to, I’ve already verified with another FIre TV. It’s a problem with that specific hardware/Plex client/ExoPlayer. All other Android devices have no problems.
There’s a different problem where the Fire TV will play an (audio/subtitle) track that’s not selected. The client is just bad.
1 Like
So there is!
I agree with you, the file super-really-duper does look OK. The dimensions and aspect ratio are signaled correctly in both the MKV and the MPEG-2 stream.
I mostly wanted to see it happen on a Fire because I’m a monkey who likes to see things with my own eyes. I wasn’t able to borrow one this afternoon.
It’s very interesting that it works correctly with the segmented .ts chunks. That implies that it can parse the aspect ratio from MPEG-2 streams after all.
Have you tried remuxing into a .ts yourself?
What type of subtitles are you trying to use?
Well, according to my earlier comments, MPEG-TS does work. This is not about just trying to make it work at all (I’ve already worked around it). All I’m asking for is a simple bug fix in the Fire TV client.
What workaround are you using?
I just converted it to AVC but I keep both because I want a 1:1 backup of my DVD. I will throw away the MP4 as soon as this gets resolved.
Bump even though the video isn’t playing anymore (issue might still be present).
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