Server Version#:1.22.3.4392-6000
Player Version#:8.16.1.24597
So my odd situation is I’ve got 2 Fire TV 4K’s. One for downstairs and one Upstairs. Both talking to the same synology plex server install on the local network over wifi. Both running the same hardware and the same plex client version. However for whatever reason one of them will not playback some H265 content I have. It does work if I start playback on the other Fire TV and then resume on the problematic one (mostly)… But playback from the start seems to make one of the units always fail to playback and switch to transcoding while the other one works fine!
Video content is detailed below.
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5@Main
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 2 h 4 min
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 1 608 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 10 bits
Writing library : x265 3.2.1+1-b5c86a64bbbe:[Windows][GCC 9.2.0][64 bit] 10bit
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics : PQ
Matrix coefficients : BT.2020 non-constant
There are also two audio tracks but I’ve forced Plex to use the 2nd one (AC3)
Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID : A_TRUEHD
Duration : 2 h 4 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Maximum bit rate : 3 705 kb/s
Channel(s) : 8 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossless
Title : Surround
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Number of dynamic objects : 13
Bed channel count : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration : LFE
Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Format settings : Dolby Surround EX
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2 h 4 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 571 MiB (6%)
Title : Surround
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : No
Forced
The error message I see isn’t really very helpful “Cannot load libcuda.so.1” which i see when the playback fails on the problematic FireTV.
Not really sure why it’s happening as on previous versions it’s been fine. I guess I can rollback the server if needed but wanted to know if it was easy to fix.
Well as all the video processing is done by the FireTV unit and not the actual display I don’t think it has anything to do with processing power. The content will be downscaled for both TV’s (it’s 4K
)
HEVC) one to 1080p and one to 720p. It has always worked on previous versions of Plex Server and Plex Client on Fire TV 4k (that’s an Amazon device in case you’ve been on another planet) on both displays. As FireTV relies on Wifi the network points are moot really. In fact the TV which plays the content fine is actually the one furthest away from the source! It’s not a hardware issue. It’s purely related to how the server is interpreting the request from the client. I may just downgrade the server to the previous version. The hardware providing the reception and decode is the same for both connected TV’s.
Well, since you seem to be the expert here, I will leave you to it.
Have a nice day ![]
Well seeing as your post did not contain anything useful as you clearly didn’t read the fact these are Amazon Fire TV’s which only support Wifi (and which was mentioned in the post). Also the fact this has been working fine on the same infrastructure up until the most recent update of the Plex Server. I think that’s probably for the best.
Both TV’s are using a Fire TV Stick 4K. Yes one works, one does not and falls back to transcode so there’s obviously a negotiation issue between the two devices which differs and is causing one into transcoding. Like i said if i progress to play the same content from ‘resume’ rather than from the beginning it plays back fine on the problematic Fire TV stick. So it’s clearly some sort of negotiation issue between the server and client during the initial playback negotiation. I guess I’ll have to dig through the logs for some clues. Tried downgrading to PlexMediaServer-1.22.0.4163-d8c4875dd-x86_64 but no change in behaviour thus far. Might go back a few more versions and see what happens.
I did also try completely removing the Plex Client and Reinstalling on the problematic Fire TV stick to no avail.
Just weird how it’s only doing it to one client and not the other. Oh well.
I’m not finger pointing I’m looking for a root cause. As I’ve no way to diagnose any logs on the Fire TV without ADB and debugging tools I’m reliant on the Plex logs to give me some idea of the root of the issue. There is obviously some difference in how the two client server dialogues are being handled which MAY be down to a setting on the Fire TV which I’m not aware of (although to my knowledge both clients are configured identically with more or less default settings). No matter I’ll revisit this when I have more time as right now dinner needs cooking for the family.
If you have anything useful to add please do. If you are simply in the business of point scoring pleae go back to whatever you were doing. thanks.
Since they are on different floors, they are probably connected to different access points, right? If that’s the case, check if both are in the same (logical) network.
If the second one is in a different network, and its Remote Quality is set to default (2Mb), that will cause Plex to recognize the device as Remote and transcode your video down to 720p.
In this case, there are two possible solutions, changing the Remote Quality up to Original (easiest one) or reconfiguring your network changing the second AP to bridge.
Now, that could solve half of the problem, which is direct playing something. Let us know if those suppositions solved your problem so you guys can move on to "Cannot load libcuda.so.1”
Network is flat 192.168.0.x and is meshed orbi wifi throughout the house. No issues with streaming content I’m aware of and speedtests from both devices show more than adequate band width locally and remotely. Remote quality is set to Original (as is the local) so it should not transcode even if it thinks the client is offsite… The error on the troublesome stick appears to indicate direct play was attempted but failed. I’ll take a dig through the logs later. My kids are watching stuff right now so its kind of hard to troubleshoot
When something worked fine on a previous version the logical assumption is that it has something to do with the latest update since no other changes have been made to the settings or firmware.
He doesn’t know what the problem is which is why he’s here
Is it Plex, your TV, Fire Device, Network, Firmware, audio, video, or compatibility issue on the settings for any combination of those?
@unclebobuk: I would post the logs here during playback for the troublesome TV during the failure and hope that someone helpful shows up
If you can dig through the logs yourself and isolate the problem you’re a better man than I. LOL
Well, I’ve found a workaround. I had a look at the logs on the Fire TV Plex client after looking at the link provided earlier by trumpy81. It seems during the playback negotiation ExoPlayer attempts playback and fails thus triggered the switch to transcoding. I’d seen some oddness with other content transcoding when it shouldn’t and I’d found toggling subtitles on and off or to different sets whilst playing back seemed to fix the problem. So with playback activated and failed (and it busily trying to transcode a 4k stream to 1080p on my little synology - never going to happen) I switched into settings and toggled english subs on. Instantly i get direct play. I go back in and turn off the subs and direct play continues. What the root cause is I’m not entirely sure but at least I have a work around for now.
Happy to provide logs if required.
And for the record I’m not sure what ‘elephant’ the Plex ‘Ninja’ was referring to…never mind.
Usually is the opposite. But anyway… Pick a video file and let’s stick with it.
Can you please first do the test suggested by philipsw? Does the problem follow the bad FireStick or it also happens with the good FireStick when you move it to the other floor.
Settings → General → Enable Plex Media Server debug logging. (NOT verbose).
Play something and share the logs with us (Settings → Troubleshooting → Download Logs).
Ok.
So I tried the Fire TV stick upstairs and the problem persists so it’s definitely an issue on this stick alone. It’s running Fire OS 6.2.8.0 (Fire TV Home Version 6311085.1) which I believe is the latest. Here’s the logs in debug. Did a clean restart of plex server and then went straight to Fire TV downstairs and attempted playback of movie. After waiting about 25 seconds opened UI and selected subtitles and then i got playback.
From what I can see the Plex Server simply gets connection reset by peer and then decides to switch to transcoding. On the FireTV you can see that when ExoPlayer is invoked it causes an exception (which is probably the ‘connection reset by peer’ event on the server). So basically it seems ExoPlayer is the root cause. Sadly as I believe this is an embedded video player on the Fire TV unit (written and open sourced by google but modded for FireTV by Amazon AFAIK) it’s a bit of closed shop other than API calls. Maybe I missed something but i think my logic is sound thus far. I suspect a factory reset of the stick and reinstallation of everything might fix the problem as is often the case with these things but as it is i can live with it for now.
I was on the latest already but downgraded to see if the problem went away… yeh will probably go with a reset of the Fire TV stick at some point. Will also bring the plex server back to the latest or maybe even try a beta again. With regard to subs these appear to be embedded within the container however don’t cause any transcoding when activating as far as I’m aware. I’m no expert with regard to container formats and standards, just my observations.
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