Thanks for the effort. Seems strange (and costly in trancoding) to choose to burn subs just because the audio needs transcoding. Is the reason for this described anywhere you could point me to. Just for better understanding.
Second, as I read your ealier post, there might be a problem with subs failing to burn, have you reached a conclusion on this?
Thanks again for you effort and support
I believe itās a limitation of the platform. When anything is transcoded, the streaming protocol used is called HLS. Subtitles donāt work in HLS for WebOS, so they have to be burned in.
Second, as I read your ealier post, there might be a problem with subs failing to burn, have you reached a conclusion on this?
Is this not working for you? Iāve seen cases where the subtitles are not shown when direct played, but I am not aware of an issue for burning them in.
Shiled HW/software transcoding is broken again. Nothing is getting transcoded. It fails to start.
It was working (sort of) with previous versions of the Plex Server for NSTV.
I have tested transcoding HEVC 8/10bit to H264 on my FireTV Stick. I did the same using AV1 10bit to H264 on the same hardware.(only got audio and a Blank screen)
AV1 10bit to H264 (software transcoding) is also broken even on the Nvidia Shield TV itself.
Iām running the latest best Plex client and server version on all my devices.
Plex Server: 1.32.2.7088
Plex Client: 9.23.0.1644
Here are the logs:
I did some other tests @anon18523487
Tested against Plex Web Client and everything works. And by that I mean everything I threw at it was getting HW transcoded to H.264 as it should be.(HEVC 10bit and AV1 10bit)
Then I tested against Plex For Kodi on my RPI3. And everything that required transcoded failed to properly start. (HEVC and AV1) just like it did on the FireTV Stick.
The newest part of the log below must have captured everything I just mentioned.
Plex Media Server Logs_2023-05-21_12-38-31.zip (2.2 MB)
PS: Honestly, this is pretty disappointing. Where HW transcoding should be working (e.g. Plex Client on FireTV, Roku, etc) it doesnāt workā¦ Iām referring to Plex Clients on older streaming devices where some hardware codec capabilities are lacking and still are perfectly capable streaming devices. This is exactly the reason why Plex was envisioned for!
At this point in time, respectfully, I think Plex should let everyone here knows that support for Plex Server on the NSTV was dropped.
It just doesnāt work when (and where) one needs the most.
Iām not sure where in the logs I should be looking since you havenāt provided any details so Iām looking blind. What I do see:
Just before noon on 5/21 you played Top Gun Maverick on a Fire TV cube device. This was an AV1 video with opus audio. The video appears to be 8-bit as there is no mention of anything else. This is software decoded then HW encoded to h264 with ac3 audio. This is expected and appears to play for about 1 minute before you hit stop.
15 minutes later you played 50 First Dates. This was a 10-bit hevc file. This is HW decoded and encoded to 10-bit h264. Web then played this. The colors may be wrong since itās 10-bit, but it played. I see it playing again for 1 minutes before you hit stop.
A few minutes later you played Pirates of the Carribean on Web. This is also a 10-bit hevc file. Youāve also chosen to burn in subtitles. This is using hw decode and hw encode to 10-bit h264 with burned in subtitles (done through the cpu). This played for about 90s before you hit stop.
Then there was Twister to a different Fire TV device, which also appears to transcode properly and played for several minutes.
Iām not seeing any evidence where the transcoder is not working. There maybe playback issue on the client or there is something wrong with the encoder on your Shield so the videos it is producing do not work. This is not something we can fix as this comes from NVidia. Videos play fine on my end on 2 Shields I have.
If you want to share one of the above videos with me I can check on my end if my Fire TV device can play the videos to see if there is an encoder or a client issue.
I had another go at this. Only this time Iāll be providing the cleanest possible loggingā¦
#1 AV1 10-bit file to a target client running Plex for Kodi which ended in audio running but a blank screen. On Plex Dash, no HW transcoding is shown.
#2 AV1-10bit file to a target client running Plex official client on an old FireTV Stick (2018) which ended in audio running but a blank screen. On Plex Dash, no HW transcoding is shown.
#3 AV1-10bit file to a target client running Plex official client on NSTV )the same one which is running the Plex Media Server) ended in a loading screen that never produced any sound of the video. It just stayed there, loading. On Plex Dash, nothing is shown while trying to play this file on NSTV.
#4 AV1 10bit file to a target client running on Chrome (Plex Web) (Windows 10) which ended in an OK result. Video and audio are being transcoded from AV1 to H264 and HW transcoding seems to be performing accordingly.
2nd part:
#1 HEVC 10-bit using Plex For Kodi (RPi3) as the target client. Only audio, no video (blank screen)
#2 HEVC 10-bit using as target Plex Official Client running on a FireTV Stick (2018) that doesnāt have HEVC 10-bit hardware capabilities, therefore transcode is needed. it failed to produce any audio or video,. It kept loading until I closed it.
#3 HEVC 10-bit file using as target client the latest official Plex Client running on my old Roku 3 that doesnāt have HEVC hardware capabilities, It kept loading until it ended with a playback error.
#4 HEVC 10-bit file using as target client Plex Web Client (Chrome). It properly produced video and audio being transcoded to H.264. According to Plex Dash HW, transcoding is activated.
PS: The AV1 10-bit and HEVC 10-bit files were provided via a link to your PM. Please, contact me with you somehow couldnāt download them.
The problem seems to lie with Plex Server running on NSTV. I have tested the same files on a Remote Linux machine and they both played without problem. As do other AV1 or HEVC files I thew at it.
I split the logs into two parts.
AV1 - Plex Media Server Logs_2023-05-22_22-17-40.zip (386.2 KB)
HEVC - Plex Media Server Logs_2023-05-22_22-46-53.zip (412.0 KB)
.
Please stop testing with 10-bit video files. As I said, the Shield cannot tone map so you may be running into the client not being able to handle the 10-bit video. Your own results of this working in Chrome show that the transcoder can work. Your logs show that in all cases the hardware encoder is being utilized.
Why my NSTV cannot play any more AV1 files being transcoded from the shield itself, then?
Iām pretty sure it used to work like a month ago.
Like I said, since this works on Web, that would indicate the transcoder is working correctly and the problem may be on the client side. It could still be something on the server, but there is nothing in the server logs to indicate what that problem might be. If the transcoder was failing, then I would think it was the server, but it is running and generating the output needed by the client.
I need client logs to see whatās going on.
Here it is the log. It should have registered the attempts that I made (twice) to play an AV1 file. The same I provided you with a sample yesterday. Iām certain that like a month ago or so it was successfully playing back;
NSTV.zip (233.5 KB)
Hello,
I realised that transcoding fails to start since last server update, whatever file I try to play which requires transcoding (and can reproduce by forcing conversion)
The only workaround I found was to disable hw encoding which is disappointing as I expect the shield hardware to do the job.
Does is correspond to what you are describing ?
Hello,
I donāt have time right now to provide logs, but I can confirm that there is an HW transcode issue. Videos are spinning in round forever.
With the same client but another type of server, the transcode is OK. So this is definitely an issue with Plex server on Shield.
I hope this helps.
Looking at Plex Media Server 1.32.2.7100 changelog :
(Transcoder) Some sessions could fall back to software when attempting to use an Nvidia GPU
This seems related to the shield transcoding issue which appeared with this release
Iāve finally been able to reproduce. Iām looking into this.
Hi, I am also experiencing the same issue and really glad to finally find this topic 
Hope you will find a solution.
Disabling HW transconding is working for me as workaround until you find a solution 
Thanks,
it is still not solved in latest release, plex server on shield canāt do any hw transcode for 4k
And now I canāt reproduce.
Also having this issue. Shield as server and streaming to a Fire tablet. Have used both Amazon App store and Google Play clients.
Streaming through the web interface seems to alleviate the issue (canāt remember if it just managed to direct play)
No issues playing the same files through an Amazon Fire Stick using the app
EDIT: Have tested this by forcing transcoding on different Android clients. All fail to HW transcode. Also tested HW transcoding on a Linux client which worked fine. HW transcoding through the web client also works fine which I suspect is why @anon18523487 was unable to reproduce above
Ah, thanks for that tip. I can reproduce now with the Android app. My server looks fine so this might be a playback issue on the client. Looking into this.
I suspect it only works with clients which use DASH.
The issue is on the transcoder side, itās creating output but headers are missing so the clients cannot play it.
