Roku 2 Playback = grain in some scenes

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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1

Lifetime Plex account holder
Server Version#:newest as of a few weeks ago
Player Version#: 4.26.1

I have a Synology DS418 Play with Red HD’s and 5 Roku2 (4210R model- 2015) hardwired and viewed on 5 TV’s around the house (connected through separate AVRs) but quite often with some scenes that have a lot of detail from a wide camera angle (such grass/trees/city scapes, etc) I see a lot of ‘hash’, grain/texture or general fuzziness- but ONLY in those scenes. When the frame is filled with other content that is not as complex it looks great. The content is all ripped Blurays in MKV with no tweaking/adjustments. I see the same issue on all TV’s and various movies (all from Blurays) that I know when viewed on a bluray player do not have that same issue.

I wonder if the problem lies in the ROKU2 being a older model and maybe I need to upgrade to a newer version (also hard wired). All devices are on a gigabit switch with Cat6 and connected direct to various Onkyo AVR’s and in some cases the video is sent from the ONKYOs over HDMI/CAT6 baluns from the rack room to the TVs- but I ONLY see this issue with Plex Movies from my server.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I have a laptop acting as the server in my rackroom and is a newer (2 years old) model Core i7 Dell with 8BG ram and the Synology and associated drives are all new.

Transcoder quality = Make my CPU hurt
Transcoder default throttle buffer= 60
Background transcoding x264 preset = VERY FAST
CHECKED OFF= Disable video stream transcoding
CHECKED ON= Use hardware acceleration when available
CHECKED ON= Use hardware-accelerated video encoding

2

If the source bit rate is too low, anything will look grainy on anything.

More information is needed.

I have a Roku 3 (along with other devices) and Onkyo RZ series.

3

Media

  • Duration 2:15:36
  • Bitrate 37044 kbps
  • Width 1920
  • Height 1080
  • Aspect Ratio 1.78
  • Video Resolution 1080p
  • Container MKV
  • Video Frame Rate 24p
  • Audio Profile ma
  • Video Profile high

Part

  • Duration 2:15:36

  • File THE LORD OF THE RINGS- THE RETURN OF THE KING (EXT.) - PT. 2_t00.mkv

  • Size 35.09 GB

  • Audio Profile ma

  • Container MKV

  • Has Thumbnail 1

  • Indexes sd

  • Video Profile high

  • Codec H264

  • Bitrate 33780 kbps

  • Language English

  • Bit Depth 8

  • Chroma Location left

  • Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0

  • Coded Height 1088

  • Coded Width 1920

  • Frame Rate 23.976 fps

  • Height 1080

  • Level 4.1

  • Profile high

  • Ref Frames 2

  • Scan Type progressive

  • Width 1920

  • Display Title 1080p (H.264)

  • Codec DCA

  • Channels 7

  • Bitrate 1536 kbps

  • Language English

  • Audio Channel Layout 6.1

  • Bit Depth 24

  • Profile ma

  • Sampling Rate 48000 Hz

  • Title Surround 6.1

  • Display Title English (DTS-HD MA 6.1)

  • Codec DCA

  • Channels 7

  • Bitrate 1536 kbps

  • Language English

  • Audio Channel Layout 6.1

  • Bit Depth 24

  • Profile es

  • Sampling Rate 48000 Hz

  • Title Surround 5.1

  • Display Title English (DTS-ES 6.1)

  • Codec AC3

  • Channels 2

  • Bitrate 192 kbps

  • Language English

  • Audio Channel Layout stereo

  • Sampling Rate 48000 Hz

  • Title Stereo

  • Display Title English (AC3 Stereo)

  • Codec PGS

  • Language English

  • Display Title English (PGS)

4

the file will be force transcoded because you have PGS subtitles.
Image based subtitles must be transcoded (burned into) the video image.

App settings are going to control what happens here.

5

Please verify DEBUG logging is enabled. VERBOSE is off

Start playback,
play 30 seconds
Stop
wait 30 seconds
Settings - Server - Troubleshooting - Download Logs

Attach the ZIP file it gives you.

6

So, I guess that is a Roku app setting I need to get into and adjust? Any other info you have will be greatly appreciated. I will also work on getting a Log file over the next day or so.

7

There is a Quality setting in there somewhere. I admit I’ve been away from it for a while.

I’m the backend/packaging guy on the host OS itself.
I’ve spent other time working with Nvidia on the Shield platform to help fix its issues for Plex.

Those logs will tell us what PMS sees from the video file, what the server is configured to do, and what the App is asking for (it is in control)