PLEX mixing up audio / video when both 4K and 1080P versions of movie are on server - no Dolby Atmos

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#:
Player Version#:

It says 4.63.0 on the “Plex Web—General” page on browser on server - I have no idea what that is, and searching web to find where to find “Server Version” and “Player Version” found nothing useful - you really need to change code to print these two out clearly on your web interface somewhere!

Problem:

Summary:
PLEX on Shield seems to play the Bluray version instead of the 4K version (or at least the audio tracks from Bluray version only) when both are on PLEX server.

Details:
I have direct, non-transcoded Bluray rips (MKV format) of my own Bluray movies collection stored on PC rack server - playing Direct Play to NVidia Shield 2017. Renamed to standard naming using Filebot before adding. These were all added to PLEX previously and worked fine.

I now buy 4K UltraHD Blurays to replace the older Bluray versions of movies in collection.

I also now rip these and add to PLEX in same way.

So I have TWO versions and resolutions of lots of movies now on server.

There is settings on PLEX on Shield to choose which version you want to play.

I recently noticed that it is not behaving correctly at all in terms of audio playback. It seems to get mixed up between the audio tracks somehow and only play the audio from the Bluray version, even though the video from the 4K version is playing (at least that is the version I told it to play!)

Reason I noticed this is that I was wondering why Dolby Atmos was not showing up as playing on my Denon receiver, and when I went to choose audio settings of the 4K movie playing, there was no option for True-HD 7.1, only DTS-HD 5.1 - ie only audio available to play was the tracks from the Bluray version. The Playback Info page also showed this.

I knew it must not be picking the correct version to play at all, so I went into PLEX server and deleted the Bluray version to test - and this fixed the problem - after this the 4K version played Dolby Atmos with no problem.

This same problem happened on multiple movies I tried… Guardians of the Galaxy, Matrix Trilogy, Annihilation, Blade Runner 2049, The Martian.

Note: it doesn’t always happen - I also have two Bluray+4K of “Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker” on it, and it appears to play the 4K version correctly with Dolby Atmos track.

I know not many keep two versions, but still it does happen as you upgrade from DVD->Bluray->4K

I have lots of duplicates and now I have to go through server finding lower resolution versions and deleting them to get past this bug.

To recreate - buy Bluray + 4K version of Blade Runner 2049 - add to PLEX using Filebot renamer, try and play the 4K version in Dolby Atmos.

2

Are you sure it was using the video from the 4K version? If the video needs to be transcoded, it may have chosen the 1080p version as the source and so it would use the audio from there too.

Recreate and provide server logs and android logs so I can see what’s exactly going on.

3

Well as I said I had to delete the examples I found in order to fix the problem, so will have to wait to find another example, or un-delete movie and re-add it to PLEX - not sure if doing this will make problem come back, since it is now added after the 4K version. As I said it doesn’t always happen (eg Bluray+4K of “Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker”)

I can’t see why it would choose the 1080P version when I told it to play the 4K version (using the Choose Version button that appears when there is more than one version of same movie), and after I deleted the 1080P version from server, it was able to play the 4K version as normal with Dolby Atmos in Direct Play mode (according to the playback info window while playing).

Although I seem to have a vague memory of one of the Info windows for one of the movies showing a resolution of 1920x1080 when I checked while bug happens instead of what it does now which is show the 4K resolution. So maybe it did decide to ignore me and play 1080P version unknown to me even after choosing the 4K version to play.

Maybe i can find server logs for the day it happened.

4

Plex Media Server Logs_2021-09-30_11-28-53.zip (2.8 MB)

Filenames of Bladerunner where problem did happen (before I deleted the 1080P version)

1080P version:
G:\Media 4\Video\MKVs\Bluray\Movie\Individual\Blade Runner 2049\Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv

4K version:
D:\Media\Video\MKVs\Bluray\Movie\Individual\Blade Runner 2049\Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv

Details of 4K version:

General
Unique ID                                : 43862803912986408979284208865859237617 (0x20FFAB33348D6FDE7A8E083477FA76F1)
Complete name                            : D:\Media\Video\MKVs\Bluray\Movie\Individual\Blade Runner 2049\Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 62.6 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 43 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 54.8 Mb/s
Movie name                               : Blade Runner 2049
Encoded date                             : UTC 2021-04-21 20:06:20
Writing application                      : MakeMKV v1.16.3 win(x64-release)
Writing library                          : libmakemkv v1.16.3 (1.3.10/1.5.2) win(x64-release)
Cover                                    : Yes
Attachments                              : cover.jpg

Video
ID                                       : 1
ID in the original source medium         : 4113 (0x1011)
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
HDR format                               : SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 2 h 43 min
Bit rate                                 : 49.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 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 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.249
Stream size                              : 56.5 GiB (90%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 4000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 457 cd/m2
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 179 cd/m2
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 2 h 43 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 4 597 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 5 022 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 5.25 GiB (8%)
Title                                    : Surround 7.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray
Number of dynamic objects                : 11
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
ID in the original source medium         : 4352 (0x1100)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 2 h 43 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
Stream size                              : 748 MiB (1%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Text #1
ID                                       : 4
ID in the original source medium         : 4768 (0x12A0)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 2 h 32 min
Bit rate                                 : 14.9 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 1950
Stream size                              : 16.3 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Text #2
ID                                       : 6
ID in the original source medium         : 4770 (0x12A2)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 2 h 34 min
Bit rate                                 : 18.6 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 2458
Stream size                              : 20.5 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Menu
00:00:00.000                             : en:Chapter 01
00:12:36.172                             : en:Chapter 02
00:23:29.116                             : en:Chapter 03
00:37:00.885                             : en:Chapter 04
00:42:50.234                             : en:Chapter 05
00:49:24.503                             : en:Chapter 06
00:58:35.553                             : en:Chapter 07
01:04:10.638                             : en:Chapter 08
01:15:47.251                             : en:Chapter 09
01:25:12.482                             : en:Chapter 10
01:36:15.060                             : en:Chapter 11
01:50:54.773                             : en:Chapter 12
02:01:36.789                             : en:Chapter 13
02:08:40.379                             : en:Chapter 14
02:16:42.319                             : en:Chapter 15
02:27:46.941                             : en:Chapter 16

If this is not sufficient I will try and restore the 1080P version and get logs from Shield if possible.

5

I attached server logs and some more info above. Let me know if more needed.

6

Your logs show that it is using the 1080p version. That decision was made by the Android app so I need the log from there to see why it chose that.

7

I can’t seem to reproduce it now. All the “dual” movies I have tried have all played fine in Direct Play 4K + Dolby Atmos now.

I even un-deleted the 1080P Blade Runner 2049 and re-added it to PLEX and that also now plays 4K+Atmos

I presume there is no way of getting logs from Shield from days ago, so will just have to see if I notice it again in future. If so, I’ll probably have to re-open another ticket since this will close in 3 months.

8

The logs keep going until they get full so you can grab the logs and see if the info is still there.

1 Like
9

Oh the logs stay there? This help page should be changed then… sounds like logs disappear after 20 minutes…

“When you enable network logging in the Android TV app, you’ll be able to access device logs over your local network for the next 20 minutes.”

Here is log from Shield…

Shield PLEX.zip (501.3 KB)

Seems to have a few days and I think it’s the 29th that it happened - must be since no previous mention of it - unless previous days are gone.

10

the 20 minutes refers to how long you can access the logs, not the length of the logs stored.

additionally, you should always check the Plex Web > settings > dashboard to confirm what file you are playing and whether or not any transcoding is happening.

11

All you have to do is bring up the play menu and it will tell what version you are playing in the bottom right hand corner.

I had a similar issue, some 4K movies would play fine automatically and others would play the 1080p version and I had to actually use the play version to play the 4K version. What I found was if the movie was a 4K HDR movie Plex would select the 1080P and if it was just a 4K non-HDR then it would play the 4K movie. I found that the TV was not reporting to the shield that it is capable of 4K HDR and I had to go in to the TV settings and enable the TV HDMI ports for HDR. Once that was done Plex now selects the 4K HDR movie over the 1080P. So you might check that.

12

Your logs don’t have the 29th, so we’ll have to wait until you see this happen again.

13

It doesn’t? What is all the “09-29 00:43:04.608” entries? Aren’t they for the 29th?

14

Oh man, I am blind.

Ok, I see you playing The Rise of Skywalker. It shows 4K video and 2 audio streams. The 4K video is playing along with the 2nd audio stream. I don’t see where it chose the 1080p version.

The Shield is rescaling the video to 1080p, but the source is the 4K one.

15

Not sure if problem ever happened with The Rise of Skywalker.

I originally noticed problem with “Blade Runner 2049” not playing or giving me option to pick Dolby Atmos audio track - so that is something to see if you see anything strange about in logs…

I know its going to be hard to find because logs contains older non working and then newer working versions of plays where it started working because i deleted the 1080P versions from server and then next day it still worked even with movies with both 4K and 1080P versions on server.

16

Yes, this could be something that is happening… I did notice that the audio settings in Shield was set to Auto and that Dolby Atmos was not selected… and I changed to manual and ticked Dolby Atmos. No idea why it was not selected as Auto. I know my Denon that it goes to definitely supports it, and plays Atmos fine now when they are working as normal. Those HDMI protocols where some separate device somewhere can just bug out and tell everything that it doesn’t like some HDMI feature or silently strip it out is a total PITA.

17

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