MKV movie not playing except on iphone

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Server Version#: Version PlexMediaServer-1.32.4.7195-7c8f9d3b6-x86_64_DSM7
Player Version#: Version 4.108.0
Most of my MKV play just fine. But I have 1 video that won’t play on my Firestick or my computer, but it will play on my iphone, oddly enough.
Is there a codec I can add? How do I fix?
Here’s the info of the file in question.
Thanks in advance~

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 11.6 GiB
Duration : 1 h 52 min
Overall bit rate : 14.7 Mb/s
Writing application : mkvmerge v72.0.0 (‘Minuano (Six-eight)’) 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.4.4 + libmatroska v1.7.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5@High
HDR format : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.05.06, BL+RPU
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 1 h 52 min
Bit rate : 14.4 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 1 600 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
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.097
Stream size : 11.3 GiB (97%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No

2

What happens when you try to play it on the Firestick or computer?

Do you see the video pop up on the dashboard here when you try to play it at all?

56088464-7a5f3d00-5e4f-11e9-8faf-204bff620660

Do you have transcoding disabled?

What CPU do you have?

3

Short Answer: If the Plex client and display support Dolby Vision, the video should play. If it does not, one of two things will happen. Playback may fail with a “color space not supported” message, or the video may play, but the colors will be very wrong.

If you want to play it on a non-Dolby Vision system, you’ll need to obtain a copy that is HDR10 or SDR.

Long Answer:

The wonderful Dolby Vision profile 5. Sure you want to open this can or worms? Start drinking, or smoking something, now. :rofl:

There are multiple Dolby Vision profiles.

Some, such as DV profile 7, used on Blu-ray discs, have the capability to fall back to HDR10.

DV profile 5, used by the streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, etc), does not. It is Dolby Vision only.

To further complicate things, Plex cannot transcode Dolby Vision video, as they do not have a license from Dolby to do so. Plex can transcode and tonemap HDR10 video if the server is powerful enough to do so.

So…

Plex Web: AFAIK, no browser supports Dolby Vision. Expect a “color space not supported” message when attempting to play DVp5 video.

Plex Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux): It will direct play DVp5 video, but it will not tonemap it. So, the colors will be off when using a SDR display.

Plex app on LG TV: If in a MP4 or TS container, you will see Dolby Vision video. If in a MKV container, it will still play, but the colors will be wrong (LG limitation). And if the audio is transcoding, don’t enable subtitles or the video won’t play at all.

Plex app on Samsung TVs: Samsung does not support DV video. Playback of DVp5 video will fail. Expect to see a “color space not supported” message.

Other Plex clients (FireStick, etc): If they can direct play/direct stream DVp5 video, they will do so and the colors should be correct. However, if DVp5 is not supported, you will see a “Color Space not Supported” message. This is Plex’s way of saying the client does not support DVp5 and they cannot transcode it, so playback fails.

Specific to FireSticks, the capability varies greatly among the various models. You can see the capability of each here: Fire TV Device Specifications: Overview | Amazon Fire TV.

And, for those other DV profiles that have HDR10 compatibility, such as DVp7,…

Plex will try to direct play the Dolby Vision video first. If it cannot, it will try to direct play the HDR10 video. If that fails it will try to transcode & tonemap the HDR10 video. If that fails, then Plex gives up and displays an error message.

Yes. It is as clear as mud. Ready for that :cocktail: yet?

2 Likes
4

It’s on my NAS DS220+ running a INTEL Celeron J4025
Playback fails with a “color space not supported” error on everything other than my iPhone.

5

That is Plex saying “I can’t direct play and I don’t have a license to transcode.”

If the device does not support Dolby Vision, then that is expected.

If the device does support Dolby Vision, then you have to figure out how to avoid transcoding (turn off subtitles, etc).

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