Tizen-preview: Tizen direct play not working, should I leave preview?

Plex Players Smart TVs
1

Server Version#: 1.20.3.3437 Synology NAS DS218+
Player Version#: 5.2.1 - Samsung Q70R (2019) - Tizen 5 - TV running latest FW: 1361

Hello Plex forum, I’ve noticed that my TV is no longer playing a MKV media with direct play.
I have tried to disable subtitles, and no changes, still don’t play.
However, if I disable the options in the player, allow direct play and allow direct stream, it works.
Same movie plays perfectly in Chromecast Ultra.
Please, let me know in case you need more information.

The error I get is Fail to convert, the transcoder exited due to a error.

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Can you provide logs? You’ll need to enable Logging to Server from the app.

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Hello sLumpy, thanks for answering me, I’ll gather these logs later today, and I’ll attach them here.

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Plex Media Server Logs_2020-10-29_11-22-56.zip (479,6,KB)

Follow the requested log.
Kindly advise in case you need something else.

5

I don’t see anything in the logs. You need to go to the TV app, go to Settings -> Advanced -> Log to Server and select your server. Then try to play the video that has the issue, and generate the logs and send that.

6

Oh, sorry, didn’t know that.
I’ll do it right now.

7

Now, the behavior was a little different, maybe because I updated Plex server to 1.20.4.3517
Edit: Just noticed that the TV app was upgraded too, to 5.3.1

Now, with the subtitles .srt, the problem happens, and without the subtitles, it plays.

I left those options enabled all the time during this test in the TV app (allow direct play and allow direct transmission) as per first post in this topic.

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-10-29_16-57-23.zip (411,1,KB)

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Hey @sLumpy @mcury, have you figured out the reason for this? I believe I’m having the same issue after my Samsung app has been updated in the past days.

I have some files, especially HEVC but not only, that are being transcoded now and I’m sure weren’t before. Unfortunately, my server is not for transcoding some of those files, so I can’t watch most stuff anymore. I even have some “light” H264 files, 720p, that are lagging a lot.

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Sorry, I forgot to mention but I’m exaclty on the same versions as @mcury : Tizen = 5.3.1 & Server = 1.20.4.3517

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A few more threads describing similar issues:

I’m gonna try to disabled the public preview as described on the first post to see what happens.

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Hello @andregil, I’m still facing this problem. I’ve been waiting since I provided the logs.
In case I can provide further information, feel free to ask.

13

So, I’ve tried a few things:

1 - I’ve changed “Burn subtitles” from “Automatic” to “Image only” and it seems that the old video started playing with direct play now. It’s HEVC, 10bit, and has ASS subtitles. I never set it to “Automatic”, so it was either working before or something else happened.

2 - Some new videos were still lagging. Opting out of the public preview seem to have improved it, but I’m not sure. This one is also HEVC + 10bit + ASS, but is being transcoded.

Because the first is direct playing and the second is transcoding, I started looking into logs and found some interesting things like:

INFO - [Plex for Samsung] [MDE] Application decision, directPlay: false, directStreamVideo: false, directStreamAudio: true
INFO - [Plex for Samsung]     Cannot direct play with protocol: http, codec: h264. Reason: Video stream exceeded a max bit depth of 8
INFO - [Plex for Samsung]     Cannot direct stream with protocol: dash, codec: h264. Reason: Video stream exceeded a max bit depth of 8

So why only for this file? The other is 10 bits and it works. I also found some weird stuff like this one complaining about mp3:

DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol dash; container: mp4
DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 34794
DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: com.plexapp.agents: Direct Play is disabled
DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: com.plexapp.agents: media must be transcoded in order to use the dash protocol
DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: com.plexapp.agents: no direct play music profile exists for http/mp3/mp3
DEBUG - [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec mp3 when profile only allows aac

So that got me thinking… What if Plex is picking up the wrong profile to decide what should be transcoded or not? So look what I found:

DEBUG - [Now] Device is Tizen (TV 2017).
DEBUG - [Now] Profile is Generic

Does that mean that even when the device is reported as Tizen, for some reason, Plex uses the Generic profile now? I don’t know.

I also updated the server, on my Synology NAS, so I’m not sure if te problem is on the client, server or both :frowning:

1 Like
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According to @sLumpy on another topic, the profile is now stored on the client, so the one in the server should be ignored: Plex profiles with Tizen App wrongly assigned as Generic?

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Now, with the subtitles .srt, the problem happens, and without the subtitles, it plays.

Looks like the subtitles are failing for some reason. If you set the subtitles before starting playback, does the issue still occur? If it does then I’ll probably need a sample clip of the video causing issues.

I’ve changed “Burn subtitles” from “Automatic” to “Image only” and it seems that the old video started playing with direct play now. It’s HEVC, 10bit, and has ASS subtitles. I never set it to “Automatic”, so it was either working before or something else happened.

It’s always been Automatic, but it had a bug in there where ASS wasn’t getting transcoded, when it should be. Image only will render ASS in the app, but with less support for the styling.

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