Roku Ultra 2020
Server Version#: 1.20.1.3252
Player Version#: 6.6.8.6594-e0fde920c-plex
Not sure why the feature isn’t present on Roku Devices or has a strange implementation? If my DVD player is smart enough to know to fit the video to the width of the screen cropping out a little from the top/bottom black bars, surely Plex can do it. If you enable the setting to allow MPEG2 on the player side, the issue is resolved (no black bars on left/right, only on top/bottom), but selecting allow MPEG2 results in what looks like interlaced video? Is that supposed to happen?
It’s basically an assumption & requirement that your files be appropriately cropped, and if they’re from DVD, that they have the correct aspect ratio encoded.
DVD is a weird format, it’s always stretched/squished on disk, and anything but 4:3 and 16:9 end up being matted/letterboxed.
Are you ripping and encoding these yourself? We’d be happy to help. What tools are you using today?
As mentioned above, the Roku itself has no ability to crop/scale. It just plays at the size it’s told. Enabling MPEG2 allows the Roku to direct play the file (i.e. as-is).
My guess is that you ripped the file as anamorphic which the Roku can’t adjust for. By turning it off, your server will transcode and can then scale it appropriately.
My guess is that the DVD was ripped without modification, and it’s a wider format with letterboxing bars matted into it.
I believe Plex (and Roku) handle anamorphic just fine. I have lots of media files with differing storage and playback widths, and Plex displays them correctly on all of my playback devices.
I think the issue is just letterboxing bars, which Plex generally can’t crop. It’s scaling to the correct aspect ratio and the maximum size that fits your TV, but it won’t scale past the black bars that are part of the image.
I think when it’s direct-streamed MPEG2, the Roku hardware itself has the ability to crop letterboxing bars.
I think the “real” fix for this is to run it through Handbrake. There’s a “Roku 480p30” (or “Roku 576p25”, if appropriate) preset. That will crop the black bars off and use a good deinterlacing filter.
To @anon18523487’s point about MPEG2 and the Roku and scaling, I think I was incorrectly conflating Roku’s MPEG2 support with an unrelated Roku TV feature.
On a Roku TV, while video is playing, I can hit * on the remote and get Picture Size options, including Auto/Direct/Normal/Stretch/Zoom.
I would have sworn that it was only present on the Roku TV when watching MPEG2 content, but I was incorrect. It’s present in Plex and Amazon and on HDMI inputs, even for 4K content.
I think I’ve only used it when playing certain MPEG2 content, and ignored it the rest of the time. So I apologize for that confusion.
I don’t believe that same Picture Size option exists on standalone Roku devices, but I don’t have one in front of me this instant.
Enabling and disabling MPEG2 in Plex has no effect on the image size and scaling, at least for the 480p matted letterbox sample I’m looking at. On this TV. During this phase of the moon.
Now I’m even more curious to see a sample!
How does your file play back on a mobile device, like a phone, when held in landscape mode? Is it ridiculous?
I’m still confident that the “real” fix is going to be to crop the letterboxing bars out of the video stream. But I was confident before…
Wow so many responses! thanks guys. So I actually use a docker on my linux server, which also hosts my plex server. The docker is called Ripper and basically watches a USB bluray drive and when it sees media, it immediately rips it to MKV and ejects the disc when completed. Its basically using makemkv to rip the dvds. The DVD I ripped is one we bought for my kids, Big Hero 6.
@anon18523487@Volts
Enabling MPEG2 is both Good & Bad. It makes the video fit the screen correctly (Good). But it looks interlaced which drives me nuts (BAD). I really do not wish to re-encode these files as a workaround considering they work fine and the odd behavior is where each method has Good and Bad, meaning there is no reason each couldn’t be Good without the Bad. Why Re-encode when the server itself is already Transcoding?? Why can’t the Transcoder take care of the issue?
Thanks for confirming what I’m seeing @Volts and yeah, DVD does some weird formatting stuff.
Also, does MPEG2 just use interlacing? Why does Interlacing look so bad when using MPEG2 on a Roku Ultra 2020?
@Volts I wouldn’t mind giving you a temporary account to my plex server so you could see for yourself. If you PM an email address, I’ll send an invite.
