Wired connection from my home server. The TV/server has no problem direct playing similar 4k files. The transcode reason given is “application disabled direct play, application disabled direct stream”
log file from tonight attached.
Plex Media Server.log (3.6 MB)
Disable Verbose logs in the server settings. It adds much unneeded info to the log files. Debug level logging is sufficient for most all troubleshooting. Settings → Server_Name → General. Uncheck Enable Plex Media Server verbose logging and save settings. See Reporting Issues with Plex Media Server for additional details.
Check the Vizio Plex app settings. If available in the application, make sure Direct Play and Direct Stream are both enabled.
Check bandwidth/quality settings in the Vizio Plex app. Make sure they are set to Original/Max
If possible, choose audio codecs that direct play / direct stream. Basically, avoid TrueHD.
What it appears is happening:
direct play/direct stream are enabled in the settings. All other 4K true hd audio files direct play the video and direct stream the true hd audio with absolutely no issue whatsoever. The Matrix is the only one that is transcoding.
i’ve disabled verbose logging and attached a new log where I played 4 similar video files
only The Matrix shows that direct streaming is disabled for the audio, forcing the transcode.
Plex Media Server.log (447.5 KB)
My first guess (without looking too hard) is that it’s hitting the bitrate limit. Try checking Settings → Video → Local Quality and changing it to Original if it’s not already.
It’s definitely not that
It’s hard to be sure without client logging, but it looks like playback is failing on The Matrix and we’re falling back to a transcode. Playback failure happens either because the Vizio player decides it doesn’t support the audio codec or the video codec (or whatever variation or level of either codec) or there is something wrong with the file (or at least something the Vizio player can’t handle about the file).
If you want me to confirm this on the app you can go to Settings → Advanced → Log to Media Server and choose the server you’re playing this from, then attempt to play the video again and get the logs from that. Then I can see what the app logs are.
I turned on log to server, here’s a log from tonight. The Matrix playback starts around 21:28:00
Plex Media Server.log (552.9 KB)
The log does confirm what I thought - the app is attempting to direct play the video which fails so we fallback to transcode.
What this means is that the TV will definitely not direct play the video. If we try to direct play and it fails, there’s nothing we can do to make that work. If you are willing, you could create a sample file from the this movie (Generating Sample Files from Media | Plex Support) and PM that to me. I might be able to determine if it’s the video or audio that is the issue and then maybe see if there’s some property we can limit on so that we can force a transcode on only the video or only the audio and only for whatever the TV can’t handle in this case.
I’ll make the sample later today, but I think it’s less of an issue that it can’t direct play and more than it won’t. As I posted above, similar videos with higher bit rates direct play (or stream) just fine.
Yeah, I don’t know what’s different about those files, but something about this one is causing it to fail. I’m not saying it can’t direct play 4K or HEVC or whatever, only that it can’t direct play that file specifically. There are a number of reasons such as codec level, framerate, bit depth and various other things that can be different and make the difference between direct playable and not direct playable.
Still looking for a an answer to this
Tried your sample on a similar TV and got the same result. I disabled True HD in the app settings and got the video to direct stream with the audio transcoded, so it looks like the TV can’t handle the audio. I did some testing with other videos that have True HD audio and they all failed with the setting enabled and direct streamed the video with it disabled.
I’m wonder if with the other True HD movies you mentioned…
…if you meant it was transcoding the audio, because you can’t direct play video and direct stream audio. Direct play means it’s just streaming the whole file unaltered. If it can’t do that then for each stream we’re either direct streaming (copying the stream without transcoding) or transcoding (it could direct stream all streams if the container was the issue). If not, I’d need to have a log with Log to Media Server enabled in the app to figure out what was actually happening for those.
In any case, you should be able to disable that setting and the video for The Matrix will be direct streamed.
Thanks for following up on this. I also thought it was weird that it was telling me I was direct playing video and direct streaming audio, but the playback also did not stutter with those two like it does with The Matrix.
In any case I picked up a Shield TV to complete my AV setup, but I can still generate some logs on the vizio app if it will help with development
Thanks for the offer, but I probably don’t need that. I’m thinking we should disable the True HD setting by default, but I’ll probably try out some more True HD samples before I do that. If you were definitely able to direct stream some True HD without some sort of external receiver involved, then that would be useful to know, but I should be able to figure that out myself.
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