Shield Client transcoding high quality video/audio to OPUS

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.30.2.6563
Player Version#: 9.15.0.38159
Shield OS 9.1.1

Morning, I wonder if anybody could provide any suggestions. My NVIDIA Shield TV (2019) (stick, not Pro) seems to have lost the ability to play any TRUE-HD, DTS:X, DTS-HD content anymore, and tries to transcode to OPUS.

I’ve read through numerous thread in the forum and tried the suggested but nothing seems to work.

I’m connected Shield > Denon X2600 > LG C8
Server is the docker version (plexinc/pms-docker) running on Fedora 36

All the content I’m attempting to play has historically played in full Direct Play quality.

Server Settings

Transcode
Enable HDR tone mapping - enabled
Use hardware acceleration when abvailable - enabled
Use hardware-accelerated video encoding - enabled.

Note: If I tick ‘Disable video stream transcoding’, I simply get ‘Unable to play media’ on the Shield.

Setting on the Shield
Video Quaility
Auto Adjust = off
Home Streaming = Max
Remote Streaming = Max
Play smaller videos… = On

Subtitles
Burn = auto

Advanced
Passthrough = hdmi
Refresh rate switching = on
Resolution switching = on
Enable i/o cache = on

I enabled debug logging, tried a few items, all of them have the same/similar messages, which are a little odd, as everything is wired, and running a speed test on both devices shows I’m getting very close to 1Gbps

MDE=3001,Not enough bandwidth for direct play of this item
Direct Play is disabled

Example of a 1080p DTS-HD output

Streaming Resource: Reducing playback quality for 39619kbps stream bitrate: video resolution to 1920x1080, audio channels to 6, quality to 99, disable video DS as 2147483647kbps is > the 20736kbps available, disable audio DS as 2147483647kbps is > the 768kbps available

As a test, I installed Jellyfin server in a docker container on the same server, Jellyfin client on the Shield and pointed at the same content. Everything Direct Played with both the libVLC and ExoPlayer, (ExoPlayer showed DTS on the amp, libVLC showed DTS-HD)

Is there a setting I need to enable/disable of the Shield or Server to get Plex to Direct Play my media again, or is this a bug that’s incorrectly calculating the available bandwidth?

Thanks in advance.

Darren

2

Just an update on this. If I understand the above message correctly, it’s suggesting it needs ~2.15Gbps bandwidth to be able to stream the content.

Having a look at the file I captured the error for, and below are more details.
Length = 1:55:02
Size = 20.16GB
Video bitrate = 25091 kbps
Audio bitrate = 1536 kbps

Based on the above, wouldn’t the bandwidth requirements be closer to 3Mbps?

3

After a little more debugging, I’ve managed to resolve the issue.

With ‘Disable video stream transcoding’ still ticked, I fired up the AppleTV to try and play the same content. I got a very helpful error message with words to the effect of ‘required bandwidth was greater than the available 52Mbps’

Knowing 52Mbps was my internet bandwidth upload speed, I went hunting in the settings. Sure enough, I had Server > Remote Access > Internet upload speed set to 52Mbps. Changing this to 1000Mbps, the content instantly played. Tried the same content on the Shield, and it worked flawlessly.

I assume, that as the docker containers are on their own subnet, it assumed the ‘other’ local lan traffic was coming from outside of the network and treating as internet traffic, which then enforced the ‘internet’ upload limit.

4

I believe (though I haven’t used/tried it myself) the “LAN Networks” setting in the server is there to alleviate/prevent this issue while maintaining a configured WAN speed.

Description of that setting states:

Comma separated list of IP addresses or IP/netmask entries for networks that will be considered to be on the local network when enforcing bandwidth restrictions. If set, all other IP addresses will be considered to be on the external network and will be subject to external network bandwidth restrictions. If left blank, only the server’s subnet is considered to be on the local network.

5

Thanks Gavin, I did see that setting, however as I’ve got 10+ Plex enabled devices I went with the ‘lazy fix’ :slightly_smiling_face:. I could set static IPs and fill in the field with the IPs, however, I don’t share my media with others, so I’m ok having the 1Gbps upload as a work around at the moment.

However, thanks for highlighting the setting :+1:t2:

Edit: just re-reading, if I can simply add the netmask range that would be an easy fix, eg 192.168.1.0/32. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.

Edit 2: setting eg 192.168.1.0/24 worked perfectly. :+1:t2:

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