Some MP4 Videos Not Playing in Plex

General Discussions
1

I used PlayOn to record videos. Older videos that I’ve recorded play fine in Plex. However, after an upgrade some of the newer videos will no longer play in Plex. PlayOn support is telling me nothing is wrong with the recorded videos. They play back in PlayOn, VLC, Windows Media Player etc. It only seems to be Plex that can’t play back the videos. I’ve tried to force transcoding the problem videos but that also gives me an error. It errors when trying to play from Plex on an AppleTV and on Plex from a FireStick. When I play back through a Plex browser I get audio but no video.

I created logs of a PlayOn recording that works and one that doesn’t (attached) using direct play. I also forced transcoded each of the files thinking that Plex may play it back transcoded and attached those logs.

One thing I noticed comparing the XML information of the 2 files is that the working MP4 has a frame rate = NTSC and the non working MP4 doesn’t have a frame rate value at all. I’ve attached the XML of each of the files also. I’m wondering if the frame rate is causing the issue.

I’ve seen other posts that have similar issues, but nothing specifically about the frame rate. Is there a way I can use ffmpeg to add a frame rate to the problem videos? Or is there some other issue with these files that causes Plex not to be able to play them back.

2

I forgot to post the times I did playback for viewing the logs:

Working MP4
4:07 - Direct Play
4:08 - Stopped play, stopped server

Working MP4
4:10 - Force Transcode
4:11 - Stopped Transcode Play, stopped server

Error MP4
4:13 - Direct Play - error
4:14 - stopped server

Error MP4
4:16 - Transcode Play - Error
4:17 - Stopped Server

3

I’m certainly not an ffmpeg expert, but until someone gives you a definitive answer, you can try this:

ffmpeg -r 30000/1001 -i "BROKEN_VIDEO.mp4" -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -c copy -metadata:s:a:0 language=eng -r 30000/1001 -movflags +faststart "NTSC_FIXED_VIDEO.mp4"

We’re assuming that the broken video here is actually in the NTSC video framerate. Maybe MediaInfo or the VLC player will let you know what they think the video rate is supposed to be.

I’ve used a similar command to fix some videos that had a weird reported framerate. Sometimes you can leave out the first “-r 30000/1001” if you get an error. That’s the part that sets the video rate in the command. For most bluray, etc the “-r” value would be “24000/1001”. PAL video is usually just “25”