Server Version#:1.18.4.2171
Player Version#:All versions
Upgraded to beta version above. Problem still exists. Playback and transcode of certain very old VC1 (early days Blu-rays) video files causes Plex to: 1) transcode for players that need it (ie Roku, Shield, Web player), 2) produce a totally green screen, “corrupted” playback of the VC1->H264 transcode (see attached screen shot), 3) make the GPU (Quadro P2000) peg at 100%. Playback of the file in something like MPC is fine. Also, playback in the native Windows PMP is fine.
to be honest at this point it would probably be easier for you get another version of those older VC-1 Files than to wait for somebody here to fix a transcode issue of the older VC-1 files.
but im sure if you can get the log files and have somebody look at them they could atleast point you in the right direction. good luck.
Your logs are literally FULL of these: Dec 21, 2019 10:05:35.720 [7764] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 218.750000 ms to retrieve 1 items.
So much so that there is literally nothing else in them.
What does that mean?
I literally have no idea other than something isn’t working right.
VC-1 is a single threaded operation, meaning that no matter how many cores you have VC-1 will ensure only one of them is used. Great, eh?
Are you using DLNA? - if so you can’t. No transcoding on DLNA at all so whatever you try to play VC-1 on had better be able to play it AS IS - or it may look all green or something.
Hardware encoding?
Not sure if VC-1 can be encoded with Hardware - more advanced help is needed - I’m just here to inform about the joy of VC-1 - and also mention I use Handbrake to turn VC-1 into 264 BEFORE it ever hits my library… for rather obvious reasons.
Note: PMP is able to direct play just about anything you throw at it - so that might be your only option for VC-1…
I just tested this with a Quadro P400/Roku and couldn’t reproduce, sorry. But, two notes:
Try temporarily turning off hardware acceleration. The comment about VC-1 being a single-thread decode is somewhat irrelevant; you’re using hardware acceleration, so the software-decode CPU threading doesn’t normally matter for you. However, just as a test, try turning off the acceleration to see if the transcode works. You have plenty of CPU to handle a single-thread software transcode test. If it works with software encoding, at least we can check a few directions such as video drivers.
The only device playing it properly (PMP) is using direct play. Heads up that the Shield does play VC-1 natively, but AFAIK that’s temporarily broken due to something nvidia did in the 8.0 update. That will hopefully be resolved soon, and Plex won’t need to transcode VC-1 for that device again anymore. There’s a hotfix available, you can read here to catch up. @Achilles do you know if the Shield still requires a hotfix for VC-1 playback?
For now I have isolated the problem to a few select VC1 specific files, all of which were generated pre-2010. It’s an interesting problem. All my other newer VC1 files play just fine, and when necessary Plex is transcoding them fine to Roku or what have you.
This problem came up because a user tried to remote stream/watch the Polar Express, which according to Windows was a VC1 mkv file I created (from bluray) December 2007.
As I mentioned, all my other newer VC1 files are playing fine on every device. Perhaps the encoding was a bit different in the old days causing the transcoder to get confused. I was worried I might have a problem with all VC1 movies; I don’t, thankfully. For now, I am just transcoding the problem children into H264.
This is a bug with ffmpeg which is in Shield Experience 8.0 as well as the transcoder bump for PMS. On the Shield, I tested for the issue on Emby, Kodi and Plex. All apps are impacted.
For me, the transcoder bump for PMS is not in an acceptable state so therefore I run 1.16.2.1321 for production. My 2¢ thoughts.
Not using any subtitles in any of these files. And as most of these files were in the old days of HD-DVDs and Blurays, they’re all either AC3 or DTS (which my clients can variably direct play or not; it doesn’t matter for the VC1 transcoding problem I’m seeing). Again, it’s really weird. Just a few very old VC1 files are affected, mostly off of HD-DVDs but a few from Blu-rays. And we are talking some of the first Blu-rays ever commercially released in early 2007.
I think older versions of PMS played them OK. Not real sure because I use an HTPC w/ PMP sometimes. And that never has a problem with anything in terms of direct playback., so maybe I never noticed. The problem is Plex when it needs to transcode it to a client that needs h264 instead of vc1. PMS is succeeding 99% of the time, but I do have a few VC1 golden oldies I can throw at it to make it fail badly (green screen, 100% GPU peg, etc).
The Mediainfo reports are exactly the same, strangely enough. For example, the Last Starfighter HD-DVD and The Sting HD-DVD both show:
|Format :|VC-1|
|Format profile :|Advanced@L3|
|Codec ID :|V_MS/VFW/FOURCC / WVC1|
And both have about the same bitrate. But the last starfighter borks out when PMS tries to transcode it, but the Sting succeeds. (And I’ve pretty much confirmed all my modern VC1 files are fine w/ hw transcode). The Last Starfighter plays fine in direct play.
The only failure comes in the scenarios where the ancient VC1 must be transcoded to H264 for the client’s requirement. When the VC1 is being played in a directplay scenario it plays perfect. Playing back on a Roku, which requires VC1 to be transcoded, revealed this “bug.”
I would be willing to provide a couple sample files for admins if they would like to play around. DM me if so.
