PLEX missing (not playing) entire extended scenes contained in 4K MKV movie (Close Encounters)

[geogan]

Served from Windows 10 based media server PC on network
Server Version#: 1.22.3.4392

Playing on NVidia Shield 2017 android streamer using latest PLEX player app.

**ISSUES SUMMARY: **

1. Severe audio sync problems (drifting out of sync).
2. Missing entire extended scenes in movie

I’m just going to repeat what I posted on MakeMKV forum - I don’t know who is at fault but one or the other of you is!

Close Encounters 4K disc rip - sound drifting out of sync - missing entire sections of movie during playback with PLEX

Post by geogan » Sat May 01, 2021 10:58 pm

I have just tried to watch the Close Encounters of the Third Kind 40th Anniversary Edition 4K which I ripped with v1.16.3 a few days ago.

Watching on NVidia Shield 2017 though PLEX app streaming from a Windows 10 based PLEX media server PC (Version 1.22.3.4392)

There is SEVERE audio issue … sound does not stay in sync with the picture for more than a minute before it drifts off - voices and on screen is off by seconds after only a minute!

I don’t know what is going on - never seen it before on any ripped Blu-ray on Shield and I have been ripping my own 1080P Blurays for years.

If I stop the movie and resume, the sound/picture line up again, but it is gone again after less than a minute.

Similarly if I use remote to go back 10 seconds, sound lines up but then gone again very quick.

Movie is unwatchable.

Any ideas?? Could it be this strange DTS XLL format?

EDIT - THERE SEEMS TO BE MORE SERIOUS ISSUE HERE.

I just tried to view the movie on PC using KMPlayer (my usual media player) to see if the sound drifted out of sync there too, or if it was a PLEX/Denon AV amp problem and I suddenly noticed ENTIRE SCENE IN MOVIE WHICH DID NOT PLAY AT ALL WHEN I WATCHED IT ON SHIELD!

It seems that in this 50GB version of movie there is a long extended scene at around 15:00 after the boy runs into forest at night, with Roy trying to get the children to go to crazy golf or Pinoccio movie just before the wife gets the phone call for Roy to go into work (at 17:30) … which was NOT in the version that just played on PLEX/Shield at all.

On PLEX the boy runs into forest and then cuts straight to wife answering phone call.

There are probably more extra missing scenes but i didn’t look any further yet.

I don’t know what’s going on but it looks like some severe “seemless branching” issue maybe?

For details of MKV movie file (50GB 4K) go to MakeMKV forum here

This may be a MakeMKV writing problem… but … the fact that a PC media player is able to play the file correctly (no sound sync issues, no missing scene) tells me this may be a (severe) PLEX problem!!

[tom80H]

Issue #1 might be some bad or missing header in the audio or video track that’s causing the player to run them at the wrong “speed” (e.g. how many frames are being displayed per time). This will add to an increasing gap over time while jumping forward/backward will force the tracks to resync to that timecode.

Your second issue sounds like a problem of how you ripped that file. Blu-Ray discs (incl. 4K) can store different versions/cuts of the same video, re-using existing segments from each other. That way they don’t have to store the full video 2x on the disc but only store the extra sections.
Pixar are regularly doing this for texts/labels/signs showing in the video stream that will be translated depending on the viewer’s language (e.g. the newspaper snippets in The Incredibles can be on that disc in different languages). The same works for extended cuts where 1 version/playlist includes the extra scenes while the other one plays the movie without those.
TL;DR: are you sure you’re playing the same files? If you rip such a disc w/ MakeMKV you should get multiple output files – one with the extras and one without them. From your description it sounds like you might have stored both on your Plex and the server is picking the regular version (considering the extended cut to be a duplicate).

[geogan]

I have done some further testing… tried to play movie using PLEX on LG TV in bedroom - played perfectly and included the extra missing scene.

Went back to NVidia Shield PLEX to see if scene was definitely missing or was I going crazy - it was… it was playing a different shorter scene in place (the train goes around track on its own and crashes into open bridge)…

… but then I noticed that I have a previous rip of this movie on server (and older 1080P Bluray version) and PLEX sees this as two versions of same movie.

I went into the option where you choose which version plays… and chose the 4K HDR version…and then went back into movie and played it… this time the correct longer scene played!??

So I’m not sure what was going on - was it playing the older 1080P version instead of the 4K version? Why was the sound sync issues happening then? If it WAS just playing the 1080P version, then why was the sound issues happening? Was it playing audio from one version and video from the other?

The problem is the image quality on this movie is so atrociously bad it is impossible to tell the difference between 1080P version and 4K version.

[geogan]

Actually, it seems I have three versions of this on server… DVD, Bluray and 4K HDR

[tom80H]

Given they’re all in their own top-level folder you should be able to split them from the context menu of that movie (⋮ > Split). Right now, Plex considers items that match to the same movie to be different (quality) versions of the same file – not considering e.g. different cuts. One option to deal with those is to keep them as separate item (after splitting them) and assign a different poster / add a suffix to the title (e.g. “Extended Cut”).

[geogan]

Well I suppose I could do all that… but actually I don’t really need to keep the older versions of it… I have moved the Bluray and DVD versions to an Obsolete folder.

It still doesn’t really explain why PLEX on Shield was corrupting audio somehow - I mean it appears it was playing the Bluray version of movie (highlighted by the original scene being used in that version of movie), but I just tried playing that on PC and doesn’t seem to be audio sync problem.

Played movie again on Shield/PLEX after deleting the alternates and there doesn’t appear to be any problems now - audio seems locked to video and correct scene is playing - 4K picture is still absolutely terrible in this movie though - only slightly better than Bluray but with much more graininess.