Plex Fire-TV always burn subtitles

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version: 1.15.4.993
Player Version: 7.14.1.9954

After recent update on Fire-TV client-side app, Plex started transcoding the video for subtitles even for srt formats. I double checked the burn subtitles settings in fire tv and tried both automatic and only burn image subs.

An example case for a video with mediainfo result:

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 4.32 GiB
Duration : 1 h 21 min
Overall bit rate : 7 553 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2019-04-29 01:05:53
Writing application : mkvmerge v33.1.0 (‘Primrose’) 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.7 + libmatroska v1.5.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 21 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 6 911 kb/s
Nominal bit rate : 10 000 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.139
Stream size : 3.95 GiB (91%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 1 h 21 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
Delay relative to video : 2 ms
Stream size : 375 MiB (8%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text #1
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 1 h 19 min
Bit rate : 8 b/s
Count of elements : 203
Stream size : 4.82 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

without subs:

with subs:

As you can see, it starts transcoding when I add the SRT subtitles. It happens every video which was previously working fine for direct play.

UPDATE: It seems, it only occurs in some videos. I found a video with soft subtitles are working as expected. Here’s mediainfo of that file;

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 2.28 GiB
Duration : 1 h 48 min
Overall bit rate : 3 004 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2016-01-23 19:04:32
Writing application : mkvmerge v7.7.0 (‘Six Voices’) 64bit built on Mar 1 2015 01:50:05
Writing library : libebml v1.3.1 + libmatroska v1.4.2

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 8 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate : 2 560 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 23.976 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.116
Stream size : 1.94 GiB (85%)
Writing library : x264 core 130 r2273 b3065e6
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-2:-2 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.25 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=48 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=6,6 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-4 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=4 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=10 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=2560 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.00 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=20000 / vbv_bufsize=25000 / nal_hrd=none / ip_ratio=1.10 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 1 h 48 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 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)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 348 MiB (15%)
Title : Surround
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 1 h 42 min
Bit rate : 50 b/s
Count of elements : 1074
Stream size : 37.7 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

2

What is happening with the audio?

With AndroidTV devices, if the audio is transcoding and you enable subtitles, any type, the video will also transcode.

In the Plex app, set Display Information = On. During playback, pull up on-screen controls (tap bottom of ring on remote, pause video, etc). Look in upper left corner of screen. It should say if video & audio is direct playing or transcoding and provide a transcode reason.

What does it say for both the video and audio for each of the movies you referenced?

3

It isn’t transcoded in either cases.

I updated the images to show audio as well.

I’m check the video transcoding reason if there is any by enabling display information later today.

4

Thanks for the updated info.

It is unclear why Plex is direct streaming the Game of Thrones episode, even without subtitles. A FireTV can direct play MKV files. Plex shouldn’t have to repackage anything.

Will be interesting to see if the Display Info overlay provides a reason.

5

Player: ExoPlayer V2
Video: Transcode
Audio: Direct
Size: 1920 x 1080
Transcode reason: E-AC-3 is not supported on this device.

Image:

But when there aren’t any the subtitles, it says the same thing even though it is direct play;

Player: ExoPlayer V2
Video: Direct
Audio: Direct
Size: 1920 x 1080
Transcode reason: E-AC-3 is not supported on this device.

And this is not only for the newest episode. The previous episodes which I watched with subtitles by direct play started doing transcoding as well.

Still confused.

6

Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like that. Especially showing a transcode reason when it says the audio is direct playing.

Which FireTV device / generation do you have?

Edit: FWIW, I’m running same version Plex client on my FireTV Cube. It is playing MKVs w/ EAC3 audio & SRT subs OK.

7

i think this happens if you have force direct play enabled

(edit was thinking roku, dunno if applies to fire tv)

8

I have a 2nd generation Fire TV Stick.

I tried removing the app and installing again but no luck.

I played with the streaming settings and changed from max to some other things as well but still the same.

I have access to the server logs if anyone from development is interested.

9

That was next suggestion…

Only other thought is to do a hard reboot of the stick. Pull the power, don’t just reset from the settings menu. Maybe something is in a weird state that a hard restart might clear out?

Other than that I’m stumped.

@TeknoJunky FYI, the option to directly enable/disable Direct Play & Direct Stream is no longer available on Android TV devices. There’s a Maximum Rate setting for local video, just like for remote streaming. It can be lowered to force a video transcode if desired, but there is no longer any way to completely disable/enable Direct Play or Direct Stream.

10

Please provide the entire log from the Fire TV after playing back the video with subtitle.

11

Tried hard reboot for the stick and it didn’t change anything either.

I’m attaching all of the server logs and one recent portion separately where I open the app and open the problematic file with and without subtitles. It’s mostly debug prints but there is some interesting error for transcoder on parsed_inlineass subtitles even though the subtitle is srt.

ERROR - [Transcoder] [Parsed_inlineass_2 @ 0x2a42840] fontselect: Using default font family: (Arial, 400, 0) -> /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Fonts/DejaVuSans-Regular.ttf, 0, DejaVuSans[Parsed_inlineass_2 @ 0x2a42840]

Anyway, the development team will know better for sure though. Hope we can identify and fix this issue.

Thanks in advance for time and the effort.

server-log-recent.log (397.3 KB)
Plex Media Server Logs_2019-05-01_22-46-59.zip (2.7 MB)

12

These are only your PMS logs. I need to see the log from the FireTV too.

13

Here’s the logs from Fire-TV fire-tv-logs.log (1.2 MB)

there is a timezone difference between the server and client. Server on UTC, client on BST (eg 22.30 on server, 23.30 on client)

14

Ah, I see the issue. The FireTV does not support EAC3 in an mkv container, only in MP4. So it has to remux the file into an MP4 so it doesn’t have to transcode the audio. However, due to a limitation with the app, anytime a file is not direct played and subtitles are needed, they get burned into the video. If you remux your file to MP4, you should be able to direct play without burning in the subtitles.

15

Thanks for a temporary solution but this doesn’t work either. I remuxed mkv to mp4 with ffmpeg but even I put the srt to mp4 as mov_text, it still transcodes. Having an external srt also does the same.

2019-05-02%2022_05_53-Plex%20Media%20Player

And as I indicated earlier, it used to work without transcoding for these type of files (eac3). I’m pretty sure that it’s newly introduced bug. If I have the option to revert back to the previous version I would. But I don’t want to sideload a previous version which I’ll be finding in some dodgy website.

Thanks for the help so far. Hope this can be fixed pretty soon with an update.

16

Does the mp4 version direct play without subs?

17

It does direct stream for mp4 without subtitles.

2019-05-02%2022_29_18-Plex%20Media%20Player

You can take a look at the logs.

firetv-2.log (1.1 MB)

18

Something is odd. I think PMS is having issues analyzing your file properly. Can you send me the xml for this, either the mkv or mp4 version? https://support.plex.tv/articles/201998867-investigate-media-information-and-formats/

19

You can have both! 2 file formats on 2 different episodes.

xmls.zip (2.9 KB)

Also just reinstalled the server to see if anything is broken on the server. Problem persists.

20

Thanks, let me see if I can figure this out. Very odd indeed.