Looking at your PMS log, it appears that you were testing using a shared user’s account, not your admin account. This user has the option enabled to automatically select subtitles. It also appears that you’ve set the remote bandwidth limit on your PMS to 2 Mbps. The Fire TV is reporting that it’s on a WAN connection so that limit is being applied. This all looks to be working as designed.
its a remote user playing yeah. I just created a new library with 2 testfiles and enabled the extended log. Im currently testing.
Seems like he (the friend of mine with the stick for testing) did not turn off the subtitles correctly last time which forced the Amazon Stick and PMS to convert the movie (due to the enforced subtitles).
Movie 1 (without subtitles):
Overall bit rate : 3 180 kb/s
Format/Info :Advanced Video Codec
Format profile :High@L4.1
Width :1 920 pixels
Height :1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio :16:9
Frame rate mode :Constant
Frame rate :23.976 FPS
Color space :YUV|
Chroma subsampling :4:2:0
Bit depth :8 bits
Scan type :Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) :0.294
runs well, direct play. Puffers with ~10 Mbit
2nd Mobie (same with subtitles track in mkv)
Overall bit rate : 3 261 kb/s
Format/Info :Advanced Video Codec
Format profile :High@L4.1
Width :1 920 pixels
Height :1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio :16:9
Frame rate mode :Constant
Frame rate :23.976 FPS
Color space :YUV|
Chroma subsampling :4:2:0
Bit depth :8 bits
Scan type :Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) :0.294
Converts, lagging due to cpu speed.
The settings in the Amazon Stick isnt changed inbetween. The only difference is the subtitles.
Subtitles in PMS are set to NONE
Remote Streaming Quality is set to MAX
The second movie seem to run fine once he turns the subtitles off there, no idea why they are enabled at all. With Subtitles NONE it can do direct play easily.
If you want the server log to check let me know.
Subtitle info:
| ID : | 4 |
|---|---|
| Format : | UTF-8 |
| Codec ID : | S_TEXT/UTF8 |
| Codec ID/Info : | UTF-8 Plain Text |
| Duration : | 4 min 47 s |
| Bit rate : | 36 b/s |
| Count of elements : | 1 |
| Stream size : | 21.0 Bytes (0%) |
| Title : | Deutsch Forced (SRT) |
| Language : | German |
| Default : | Yes |
| Forced : | Yes |
guess the fire TV cant handle the SRT Subtitles without getting a converted stream As he told me he turned off the subtitles last time and I could still see the subtile track being sent to the client I thouht it might be a bug. Ill keep an eye on it and see if manually setting the clients subtitles to none will fix it. At least this worked for “other videos” here.
The Fire TV stcik does not support AAC 7.1, so the audio has to be transcoded. As mentioned before, unless the entire file is direct played, subtitles will get transcoded into the video.
Have your friend check if they have the option enabled for “Autotmatically adjust bitrate”. I think it’s on. With that setting, files either direct play or get transcoded, there is no middle ground.
that audio conversion is clear to me.
As mentioned before, unless the entire file is direct played, subtitles will get transcoded into the video.
direct play seems not to be possible with subtiles enabled at all. I guess because the Fire TV does not support that subtitle type which was enabled by default in that specific movie. That also explains why it switches to direct play once u disable that subtitle.
Did not try to simply switch the subtitle to anything else (eg spanish) to check if it supports other types of embedded subtitles… if these arent supported it logical that the Fire TV switched to “transcode” mode. I only wonder why that subtitle was enabled by default in playback. Maybe because of the forced flag and maybe that subtitle is only a few words within the movie, causing that whole stuff switched to “transcode”.
As its definitly related to that subtitle track (as said u can switch subtitles on / off /on during playback and you can see it switching from transcode to direct play and the other way as well) I added the subtitle information above. If i find the time I will check other subtitle codecs and formats with the fire tv.
btw.
Auto Quali / Bitrate is disabled in my server as well as in the client.
The Plex app does support srt subtitles so something else is going on. You might have a bad subtitle, it’s only 21 bytes? That could be confusing the app since it can’t play it directly (due to being bad), so it tries to transcode it as a fix.
Same issue here.
I can pick any file from my library, turn subtitles on (mostly .SRT) and the Fire Stick 4K will transcode the video. That same file on many other devices (SHIELD, Android Phone, Desktop App, Apple TV, Chromecast Ultra) will NOT transcode the video.
The Fire Stick 4K is capable of Direct Playing/Streaming because the Plex addon for KODI does it fine with the same file with subtitles on.
Kodi uses their own player that can handle the subtitle. Plex’s player is not the same and can only handle subtitles when the rest of the video is direct played. If this isn’t working, please provide logs and the xml for the video so we can investigate.
MovieFan.Plex, it’s November now… any news on when the EAC3 subtitles transcode problem will be fixed? This thread has gotten a bit off track…
Hmm. I thought we fixed EAC3 support in the app. EAC3 should direct play. Can you provide me an updated log so I can check what your device is reporting again?
EAC3 with subtitles turned on always burn (this is the title of the thread) and thus always transcodes the video. It was troubleshot by you already in this thread and on 10 May (in this tread) you said you confirmed the problem. And then I reported that with v7.20 it still wasn’t fixed. Has anything been changed with that issue since 7.20 because I see no fix reported in the changelog all the way up to current v7.23… thanks
Honestly, I can’t remember the details of what happened. I just tried playing a file now with h264 video, 5.1 EAC3 audio, and srt subtitles and it direct played. This is on my 4k Fire Stick.
If it’s not working for you, please provide me a log with the recent app and the XML for the video.
MovieFan.Plex, I don’t have a 4K Fire Stick so the difference in specs between the two sticks is probably why us non-4K Firestick (Gen 2) owners are having EAC-3 problems. But the non-4K Gen2 Firestick is also EAC-3 capable so that is not the culprit. Something else is.
The nature of the problem has changed, has gotten worse actually. After I just installed the most recent available Firestick Plex App v7.23 and then installed the most recent Windows server v1.18.2.2029, I am having multiple H264/EAC-3 files transcode both VIDEO & AUDIO even with subtitles off, this is whether I have Firestick Plex App’s Audio Passthrough set to Disabled or HDMI Passthrough. With subtitles selected then same thing both VIDEO & AUDIO are transcoding instead of direct playing. Error message for both scenarios is that the EAC-3 is not supported by this device. Which we know is not true and doesn’t even remotely expain why the video H264 is transcoding too! Only happens with E-AC3 files.
To remind you (and mentioned in this thread), I don’t have this problem with Firestick App v7.10.
So I need to know what you mean by “please provide me a log with the recent app”. Where exactly do I get this from and how do I get it to you? I understand the XML request. Thanks
^^Different Issue, but log gathering is the same - and it was the first one I found in a search…
Then you could zip - if not already in the above process (?), drag and drop to a message window or PM @MovieFan.Plex directly.
Not sure why an entire assortment of helpful links aren’t glued to Movie Fan’s ‘Card’ (when clicking his Icon)… <— but they could be…lol
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Okay guys, I sent MovieFan.Plex hopefully all the info needed to finally figure out what the Gen2 Firestick EAC3 problem is… Can you please confirm that you received all the files? Cheers
More logs sent to MovieFan.Plex…
Got the logs. With passthrough enabled, what are you passing through to and how? Arc or optical?
First log is with passthough on , I just sent that to you to compare with the second log which is passthrough disabled. Am not sending the audio anywhere, the firestick is just plugged into an HDMI port on my Samsung TV which is also EAC3 compatible. Cheers. Just thought it would be beneficial to send both logs… did you also receive the second log with Passthrough Disabled?
Can you get me a new log? I need the start of the app, so force stop the app, restart it and sign in if needed, wait about 1 minute without doing anything then get me the log.
Sure I can do that… do you want it with Passthrough Disabled or with Passthrough HDMI?
Go ahead and toggle it after the minute is up.
