One Vertical Video Plays Differently On 5 Players

Plex Players
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1

I posted about this yesterday, but I wanted to start a new topic with the details of the troubleshooting I’ve been doing.

I’ve recently added a bunch of new content to my home videos library and the new vertical videos were having issues playing correctly. So, I deleted the old library, created a new one and set up the Library Type as “Other Videos”, the Scanner as “Plex Video Files Scanner” and the Agent as “Personal Media”.

The vertical videos (some shot with an iPhone, some on Samsung) in my “Home Movies” library play 4 different ways on 5 different players:

Chrome Desktop Browser - plays video perfectly

Roku - clear picture, but rotates the video 90 degrees to the left, video playback is smooth

AndroidTV (Nvidia Shield) - stretches the video horizontally to fill screen, video playback is smooth

Android Mobile (phone) - plays correct orientation, but color saturation is off (almost reduces it to black & white) and it stutters constantly

Windows Desktop Player - plays correct orientation, but color saturation is off (almost reduces it to black & white) and it stutters constantly

Any help would be appreciated. Most of the vertical videos that I added earlier this year and prior played fine until I added this new batch of files recently and ultimately deleted and re-created the library.

I’m running Plex Server, Version 1.30.0.6486, on Windows 10.

2

Am I doing something wrong with my vertical video? Why won’t it play correctly?

3

I may have something similar going on. I’m getting the stretched problem for portrait mode video on Shield (video is stretched horizontally to fill screen). I just verified that the problem is in the Plex app for Shield by doing this:

  • The video plays properly using the plex app on my Samsung phone.
  • When I cast my phone to Shield directly, bypassing the plex app, it also plays properly.
  • But when I play the same video using Shield’s plex app, it’s stretched out.

I’ve already rebooted Shield, and uninstalled / reinstalled the plex app on Shield, with no improvement.

Note that my portrait videos play fine on Roku, desktop, and android phone. Shield is the only issue.

4

Well, now the vertical videos on my Android (Samsung) phone play stretched out instead of normal resolution like they should. I even uninstalled and re-installed the client.

Is this an issue on the client or server side?

5

Vertical videos play fine for me on my iOS Plex App but turn sideways on my Android OS TV & the Plex App on fire sticks no matter what Media type library & agent I choose. This is completely ridiculous. I’ve looked everywhere and can see this has been a known issue for a long while and Plex still has no fix for this??