Juice, the files that are transcoding are not 264, they’re Mpeg2 files and unfortunately, there is no Mpeg 2 setting in the firestick like there is in other devices
A’ight… just make sure one of those settings - like quality didn’t go back to it’s default.
Long time Veteran FireTV Victim here - I know all the ‘post update symptoms and checkpoints’.
Also don’t forget the FireTV is unique in the Plexiverse, like that phone app, wherein not only will it tell you it’s transcoding - it’ll tell you why. Display Information and the Old Player may lead somewhere you haven’t looked before.
There is a new option under Settings \ Server \ Transocder \ Disable video stream transcoding.
Did you maybe enable that?
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I actually caught that already last night. I enabled the information overlay and I saw it did drop the fire stick down to 1.0 which was preventing pretty much any file from playing I bumped it up to like 5.0 and most of them immediately started working again, aside from the 1080 files.
I bet there are a ton of people having the 1.0 problem and have no idea why their fire stick Plex app isn’t working.
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That’s why I mentioned it.
What’s the reason for the transcode for the 1080s?
I wish there was it’d make it an easy fix, I saw some people with a similar problem, but used a different device and were able to download VLC player and add it as the default player for their Plex app.
well, all of my 1080i Mpeg2 files get immediately transcoded with MCEBuddy to a better codec… I use my videocard, so the episode transcodes in about 6 minutes, so from the time it stops recording, Plex does commercial removal, and MCEBuddy does the transcoding, it’s about 10 minutes before it’s in my library, and my FireStick plays it smoothly without incident…
It says incompatible file type, however it has always played them fine before on the fire stick for me and the 720s are playing with no problem. It’s just confusing as to what changed.
Are both the 1080s and 720s .ts files?
Let’s see a MediaInfo report for both files - like this one:
General
Unique ID : 45624397096420203845792750048194727365 (0x2252F073192B71042D0E64076C460DC5)
Complete name : G:\Handbrake Dumps\Weeds - S03E01 - Doing the Backstroke.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 337 MiB
Duration : 27 min 48 s
Overall bit rate : 1 693 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2020-02-22 05:52:01
Writing application : HandBrake 1.3.0 2019110900
Writing library : Lavf58.29.100
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 27 min 48 s
Bit rate : 1 050 kb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.127
Stream size : 203 MiB (60%)
Writing library : x264 core 157 r2935 545de2f
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1050 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 27 min 48 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 127 MiB (38%)
Title : Surround
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Menu
00:00:00.000 : :00:00:00.000
00:00:58.058 : :00:00:57.975
00:10:33.967 : :00:10:33.883
00:18:50.463 : :00:18:50.421
00:23:32.077 : :00:23:31.785
00:27:11.964 : :00:27:11.839
No, they are mp4. They are uncompressed mp4 conversions from wtv files via MCEBuddy. They have always worked great for me with Plex.
I’m about to go to sleep I’ve wasted so much time the last few days on this aggravation. I’ll post the file meta data tomorrow and see if you can find an issue I’m missing.
Use MCEBuddy to convert the file with NVENC x264, if you want I can give you a profile to put into your profiles.conf that you can select and try out… Not sure how long your card is going to take to convert, but it shouldn’t be crazy long.
Have MCEBuddy put one of them in an MKV file.
Try that one. Tomorrow.
It takes about 20 minutes each file to edit out the commercials and do the uncompressed conversion now.
Yeah, I could give your profile a try. Thanks.
That is a good idea, I wonder if that’d make any difference.
What’s the reasoning behind why the Plex media player desktop app and the iOS app playIng the files with zero issue? It’s so confusing. Okay, I’m actually going to sleep now. Thanks again everyone for offering your help. If someone sees anything in the logs let me know.
[NVENC H264]
Description=nVidia H264 Quality Setting
order=ffmpeg, handbrake
AllowH264CopyRemuxing=true
FixedResolution=true
AutoDeinterlace=true
ffmpeg-UsingHardwareEncoding=True
ffmpeg-general=-threads 0 -hwaccel auto
ffmpeg-video=-ss 9 -c:v h264_nvenc -crf 20 -rc vbr -map 0:v
ffmpeg-audio=-acodec copy -map 0:a
ffmpeg-audioac3=-acodec copy -map 0:a
ffmpeg-ext=.mkv
ffmpeg-audiodelay=skip
handbrake-UsingHardwareEncoding=true
handbrake-general=–decomb --denoise=“weak” --loose-anamorphic --verbose=2 -T -O
handbrake-video=–start-at duration:3 -e x264 -q 20
handbrake-audio=-E ffac3 -R auto -B 192 -D 0 -a 1,2,3,4,5
handbrake-audioac3=-E ffac3 -R auto -B 384 -D 0 -a 1,2,3,4,5
handbrake-ext=.mkv
handbrake-audiodelay=skip
PreConversionCommercialRemover=true
Mpeg-2 is a finicky thing. Computers support it full stop, iOS likely has it built into the OS as well… FireTV Stick is supposed to be able to decode and encode it with HW acceleration on its own, but in my experience, it’s sucktastic at it… This is why I transcode all of the files ahead of time.
I know a way to find out…lol
While you’re at it - try a .ts file too. <—it may want that MPEG-2 stream in a .ts container - suddenly.
Let’s find out what flavor it likes.
This just in:
720s (progressive) don’t transcode, but 1080i does.
This seems a recent change.
The good news - you have MCEBuddy and it knows how to fix stuff like this.
The bad news - you have to let MCEBuddy fix stuff like this.
We’ll know more when we can see those MediaInfo reports, but I suspect I know what happened.
