Can anyone who’s got their new Amazon Fire TV comment on native HEVC playback? Does it support 10 bit 4K? How hot does the unit get during movie playback? What’s your overall impression compared, if you have one, to a Mac/Windows PHT system?
With little documentation on performance, I’d love to hear what owners of the device have experienced before jumping in feet first and updating our setup here.
Cheers in advance,
Peter
I playback hevc videos all the time. I havent tried 10 bit 4k, but i have some 10 bit 1080 p videos and they play fine. I dont know how hot it gets though. Never actually checked it to see. I prefer hevc because of smaller size. I didnt answer all your questions, but hope i answered some. 
Yeah thanks for the feedback! I’ve been trialing HEVC encodes for a few weeks now and I’m really pleased with the quality boost while maintaining file sizes. I’ll import a few units over and give them whirl, it’ll be sweet not to have choppy playback when the PMS has to transcode the video. Definitely seems the right direction to go. Thanks again!
Information for anyone stumbling onto this, it plays back my 4K 10bit encodes flawlessly, both mp4 and mkv. Device does get a little warm though
@ptrjay said:
Information for anyone stumbling onto this, it plays back my 4K 10bit encodes flawlessly, both mp4 and mkv. Device does get a little warm though
Is that still working for you? I got a Fire TV 2 recently so I could start watching my 4k content and none of my 4k HEVC/x265 files will direct play.
Can you provide the XML from PMS for this video?
4K playback has also stopped for me since Plex app updated at the end of February.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Can you provide the XML from PMS for this video?
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:398 [5248] VERBOSE - * X-Plex-Version => 4.21.0.528
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:398 [5248] VERBOSE - * X-Plex-Product => Plex for Android
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:398 [5248] VERBOSE - * X-Plex-Device => AFTS
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:408 [5248] DEBUG - Found session GUID of 2cb95f77b3cd4f95-com-plexapp-android in session start.
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:479 [5248] DEBUG - TranscodeUniversalRequest: using augmented profile Android
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:480 [5248] DEBUG - Downloading document http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/metadata/9950
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:519 [5248] DEBUG - We’re going to try to auto-select an audio stream for account 1.
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:519 [5248] DEBUG - Selecting best audio stream for part ID 17514 (autoselect: 0 language: en)
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:520 [5248] DEBUG - We’re going to try to auto-select a subtitle.
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:520 [5248] DEBUG - Audio Stream: 39414, Subtitle Stream: -1
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:521 [5248] DEBUG - It took 0.0 sec to serialize a list with 1 elements.
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 10366
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): Direct Play is disabled
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/aac
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - The Fifth Element (1997) - video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:523 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: computed resolution bounding box of 3840x1600.
video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
That indicates that the device does not support 10-bit hevc, only 8-bit is supported.
BTW, although what you posted was very helpful, that is not the XML info I was looking for. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201998867-Investigate-Media-Information-and-Formats
@MovieFan.Plex said:
video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
That indicates that the device does not support 10-bit hevc, only 8-bit is supported.
By that time, Plex has already decided it needs to transcode though:
Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): Direct Play is disabled Mar 03, 2016 19:19:53:522 [5248] DEBUG - MDE: The Fifth Element (1997): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
It looks like a problem with the Direct Play of 4k content, which was working prior to this update.
And x265 isn’t currently supported in a Plex HLS stream, another reason why Plex thinks it should transcode. I guess the bit depth limit is referring to the HLS transcoding limits.
Find attached two XML files for media files that now won’t Direct Play to the Amazon Fire TV 4k.
You’ll have to remove the .jpg from the end of the filename, it wouldn’t let me upload XML files for some reason.
Copy the xml, paste to notepad (or other), save them as .txt files - both of those dudes are broken (as you are now no doubt aware). At least that’s what seems to work for me.
They both work for me if I just remove the .jpg from the end of the file name, so Windows then recognised then as xml again. Will re-upload as txt files as soon as I can though.
Well… it’s your post so perhaps you’re seeing something we’re not. What we’re seeing is two broken image icons that lead nowhere and we can do nothing with. An admin may have a better view and/or a way to repair the items in question with a quick edit - unless you get to it first.
Click, download, rename, open
Thanks cayers, good to hear it works for someone else. As simple as changing the file extension
@MovieFan.Plex said:
video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
That indicates that the device does not support 10-bit hevc, only 8-bit is supported.BTW, although what you posted was very helpful, that is not the XML info I was looking for. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201998867-Investigate-Media-Information-and-Formats
Ahh I thought you meant the Server logs. Sorry.
All of my new encodes are 10 bit, they look amazing without the need to increase bitrates as well as reducing banding in dark scenes.
Regardless, this file previously direct played so I know the device does support 4K 10bit, additionally the files still play in VLC on the AFTV, so I’m not sure why the limitation was introduced.
Anyway, XML data is at the bottom if it helps. If you need to test the file, you’ll have to give me a secure place to upload to.
If any devs are following, can you introduce the 4K 10bit as an option in settings atleast, like the H264 profiles are.
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="17514" key="/library/parts/17514/file.mkv" duration="7553637" file="X:\Movies H265\The Fifth Element (1997).mkv" size="5010853302" audioProfile="he-aac" container="mkv" videoProfile="main 10">
<Stream id="39413" streamType="1" default="1" codec="hevc" index="0" bitrate="5307" bitDepth="10" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" codecID="V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC" colorRange="tv" duration="7553637" frameRate="23.976" frameRateMode="cfr" height="1600" pixelFormat="yuv420p10" profile="main 10" width="3840"/>
<Stream id="39414" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="6" language="English" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="5.1" codecID="A_AAC" duration="7553619" profile="he-aac / lc" samplingRate="48000"/>
<Stream id="39415" streamType="3" codec="pgs" index="2" language="English" languageCode="eng" codecID="S_HDMV/PGS" format="pgs"/>
<Stream id="39416" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="3" language="русский язык" languageCode="rus" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>
<Stream id="39417" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="4" language="English" languageCode="eng" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub" title="Hearing Impaired"/>
<Stream id="39418" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="5" language="English" languageCode="eng" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub" title="Commentary"/>
<Stream id="39419" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="6" language="Español" languageCode="spa" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>
<Stream id="39420" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="7" language="Français" languageCode="fre" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>
<Stream id="39421" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="8" language="Português" languageCode="por" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>
<Stream id="39422" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="9" language="中文" languageCode="chi" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>
<Stream id="39423" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="10" language="ไทย" languageCode="tha" codecID="S_VOBSUB" format="vobsub"/>```@tenuthen said:
@anon18523487 said:
video.bitDepth limitation applies: 10 > 8
That indicates that the device does not support 10-bit hevc, only 8-bit is supported.
By that time, Plex has already decided it needs to transcode though:
Not quite. The way it works is the client is told the codec info, the client then responds with a yes or no as to if it can be direct played, if it says no, then PMS decides what to do with it. So in this case, the AFTV said no I can’t direct play this file. I was told be the devs that 10-bit is not supported. So PMS says ok let me try to remux, which then says no, can’t remux H265, need to transcode. It then provides the info on what it is transcoding to.
It looks like a problem with the Direct Play of 4k content, which was working prior to this update.
8-bit 4K H265 should work, the problem is the 10-bit file.
And x265 isn’t currently supported in a Plex HLS stream, another reason why Plex thinks it should transcode. I guess the bit depth limit is referring to the HLS transcoding limits.
This is a limitation of the device. If Amazon adds H265 support in an HLS stream, Plex can utilize it. Anything not direct played is an HLS stream so it has to be transcoded to H264. 10-bit H264 is supported so it may be possible to transcode from 10-bit H265 to 10-bit H264 to keep a little more quality, I don’t know, but I will check.
@ptrjay said:
All of my new encodes are 10 bit, they look amazing without the need to increase bitrates as well as reducing banding in dark scenes.
This is a limitation of the FireTV2.
Regardless, this file previously direct played so I know the device does support 4K 10bit, additionally the files still play in VLC on the AFTV, so I’m not sure why the limitation was introduced.
VLC uses software decoding, when you use software decoding, a lot more is possible.
If any devs are following, can you introduce the 4K 10bit as an option in settings atleast, like the H264 profiles are.
These are not the same thing. The H264 profile doesn’t really affect playback, it’s more of an identifier just to say I follow this standard, but you can lie about the profile and not affect playback.
I’m re-encoding some of my 4k content today based on suggestions I found online and in other forum threads.
Changing things to be:
Will report back with playback results when I can.
