Plex tells RasPlex that it is 1080p, it tries to play it as 1080p...
MediaInfo also reports this as being full 1080p, with 1920x1080 pixels.
And I believe this really is the true resolution, though twisted at 90 degrees, which is exactly how most PC players display it. So the up-down axis seen by the guy holding the camera is displayed as left-right axis in a normal 16:9 window.
What this movie really needs is to be displayed with aspect ratio twisted to 9:16 instead of 16:9, but that is so far from any normal video standard that I'm not surprised that many non-phone viewers show it incorrectly. Most of the ones I have show it in the twisted 16:9 format (up to the left, down to the right).
Here are the results for some of the media players I tested:
----- Starting with Plex client viewers -----
Pre-Kepler Plex for Android => Twisted 16:9
Kepler Plex for Android => Portrait 9:16 padded with black borders to achieve 16:9
Plex Home Theater 1.2.2 in RasPlex => Stretched to 16:9 without padding
Plex Home Theater 1.2.2 in Win7 => Twisted 16:9
Plex Home Theater 1.2.2 in OSX Mavericks => Portrait 9:16 padded with black borders to achieve 16:9
Plex Home Theater 1.2.2 in Ubuntu 14.04 => Portrait 9:16 padded with black borders to achieve 16:9
Plex/Web in Firefox => Portrait 9:16 padded with black borders to achieve 16:9
----- non-Plex viewers below this point -----
VLC v2.1.3 => Twisted 16:9
Media Player Classic (traditional) => Twisted 16:9
Media Player Classic (Home Cinema) => Twisted 16:9
Media Player Classic (Black Edition) => Portrait 9:16 padded with black borders to achieve 16:9
BS Player Pro => Twisted 16:9
What we learn from this, particularly from the conflicting Plex client results, is that the prime responsibility for correcting the orientation lies in some low-level rendering library, which differs between old and new Android clients, and also differs between Windows and OSX client versions, which obviously must have different libs. The same also applies to the RasPlex libs, since those are ffmpeg libs for XBMC 'Frodo' on ARMv6 Linux.
We also learn that the Plex server does send all the information needed by a client to to correct the orientation.
It is interesting to note that RasPlex has used the correct orientation and vertical scaling, so as to fit the full vertical height (originally 1920 pixels) in the available screen height (of 1080 pixels), but has failed to rescale the horizontal axis correspondingly, instead increasing the width (originally 1080 pixels), to fit the full screen width (of 1920 pixels). This is probably just a simplified coding assumption, that since the original format is flagged as 1920x1080, the picture should be rendered to fit the physical screen exactly.
The main conclusion to draw from the above is that this problem can NOT be solved by code changes in the normal PHT or RasPlex code. It has to be done by modification or replacement of the video rendering libs. (A very non-trivial task.)
Since we already have our sights set on one future update including new libs, in the merge with 'Gotham' XBMC, I think it would be pointless to try finding and merging yet another lib before that, just to solve this phone-related issue.
A much easier way to avoid the problem is for phone owners to make their home movies with the phone in landscape position. This will also allow much nicer viewing (regardless of bugs) as the result can be rendered on normal TV sets without having to add any padding borders.
Best regards: dlanor
