Transcoding locks up on Fire TV 4K Sticks

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#:1.20.1.3252-a78fef9a9 (Synology DS418play)
Player Version#:8.6.0.20351 (Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K)

If I am playing live or pre-recorded 1080i recordings, things will play fine for about 5 minutes then I get a spinning circle like it is trying to buffer and it will get stuck there indefinitely until I quit the stream and start it back up again.

I’ve found that going into settings and changing the “Transcode Interlaced Live TV” to off it will play fine but often the video freezes for a few seconds when starting the stream and audio ends up out of sync when it the video unfreezes.

2

We have this problem constantly on our Fire TV Stick 4K when we’re playing live TV. I have not tried switching off the option to transcode interlaced live TV. Our pendant style Fire TV 4K works fine with live TV.

3
  • Server version#: 1.20.1.3252 (x86 machine running Ubuntu 16.0.3)
  • Player version: 8.6.2.20916 (811932488) (Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K)
  • More device info: “Manufacturer: Amazon Device: mantis Model: AFTMM Product: mantis Version: 7.1.2”
  • tuner: HDHomeRun EXTEND with transcoder disabled, i.e. “Original format” setting)
  • video content: 1080i

I’m seeing the same behaviour. After enabling logs in the plex android app and retrieving them from http://[local-ip-here]:32500/logging it looks like the plex client suddenly gets HTTP 404 errors then get stuck. I’ve copied log snippets below (edited to simplify). Happy to send a full log to any Plex devs/testers if possible.

Plex attempts to stream the content without transcoding (as expected per my settings), but it fails…presumably Amazon doesn’t support 1080i. Plex then falls back to H264 transcode w/profile 52.

10-04 23:42:32.052  i: [MediaDecisionEngine] Unable to direct play; Unable to Direct Play as this media is not compatible with the device.
10-04 23:42:32.053  i: [PlayerUtils] Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K does not support interlaced content. Requires transcode.
10-04 23:42:32.057  i: [PlayerUtils] Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K does not support interlaced content. Requires transcode.
10-04 23:42:32.059  i: [video] User maximum h264 profile determined: 52
10-04 23:42:32.059  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer has been interupted...
10-04 23:42:32.063  i: [video] Device recommended h264 profile determined: 52
10-04 23:42:32.063  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer has been closed, interrupting FFmpeg...
10-04 23:42:32.064  i: [video] Segmented MKV not supported
10-04 23:42:32.072  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Close requested, terminating.
10-04 23:42:32.073  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [Cache] Cache has been closed, interrupting AVIO ...
10-04 23:42:32.078  i: [BufferHelper] Assumed Bitrate: 400000, Segment Count: 46875
10-04 23:42:32.079  i: [BufferHelper] Detected memory pressure, reducing segment count to fit available memory: 384
10-04 23:42:32.080  i: [BufferHelper] Segment count: 2457

Server seems OK…

10-04 23:42:32.105  i: [MediaDecisionEngine] Server was happy with client's original decision
10-04 23:42:32.106  i: [MediaDecisionEngine] Decision: CanPlay: true CanDirectPlay: false CanDirectStreamVideo: false CanDirectStreamAudio: true CanDirectPlaySubtitle: false CanTranscodeSubtitle: false CanDisplayVideo: true Transcode Reason: Unable to Direct Play as this media is not compatible with the device. 
10-04 23:42:32.108  i: [LoadControl] New bitrate: 200000, Maximum: 200000

H264 stream starts up:

10-04 23:42:34.697  i: [FF] VideoStream[0-h264] 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1, DAR 16:9]. H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 - Unknown Profile (video/avc), 20.5 Mbps -54 sec 29.97fps, No Title / Unknown (null), 1 / 37 bytes, .
10-04 23:42:34.698  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] , start: 
10-04 23:42:34.698  i: [VideoUtils] MediaCodec found (OMX.MTK.VIDEO.DECODER.DVHE.STN) for video/dolby-vision

Playback starts, everything is OK, a few logs showing signal quality (every ~3 seconds), and 4 https fetches of content (urls: index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1, 00200.ts?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1, 00201.ts?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1, index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1) every ~2 seconds.

“Error fetching https://192.168.1.126:32400/:/timeline?airingID=…” errors every ~10 seconds which presumably can be ignored???

After a few minutes I get a 404 error then Plex seems to turn off transcoding and get stuck:


10-04 23:46:04.463  i: [FFmpeg] [WARN] [hls @ 0x78ee8600] keepalive request failed for 'https://192-168-1-126...-com-plexapp-android/base/index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' when parsing playlist, retrying with new connection: Server returned 404 Not Found

10-04 23:46:04.465  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [hls @ 0x78ee8600] Opening 'https://192-168-1-126...-com-plexapp-android/base/index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' for reading

10-04 23:46:04.613  i: [FFmpeg] [WARN] [https @ 0x7ecbd300] HTTP error 404 Not Found

10-04 23:46:04.618  i: [PlaybackTimeBehaviour] Time: 212715 IsStarted: true
10-04 23:46:04.624  i: [FFmpeg] [WARN] [hls @ 0x78ee8600] Failed to reload playlist 0

10-04 23:46:04.625  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [hls @ 0x78ee8600] Opening 'https://192-168-1-126....-com-plexapp-android/base/index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' for reading
10-04 23:46:04.773  i: [FFmpeg] [WARN] [https @ 0x7ecbd300] HTTP error 404 Not Found
10-04 23:46:04.785  i: [FF] End of input has been reached.
10-04 23:46:04.785  i: [FFmpeg] [WARN] [hls @ 0x78ee8600] Failed to reload playlist 0
10-04 23:46:04.786  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] loading [398.56, 209.43, window=0, false]
10-04 23:46:05.369  i: [PlaybackTimeBehaviour] Time: 213465 IsStarted: true
10-04 23:46:06.120  i: [PlaybackTimeBehaviour] Time: 214217 IsStarted: true
10-04 23:46:06.622  i: [PlaybackTimeBehaviour] Time: 214718 IsStarted: true
10-04 23:46:06.805  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] state [400.58, 211.45, window=0, true, BUFFERING]
10-04 23:46:06.807  i: [EngineEventManager] onBufferingStarted (isSeeking: false)
10-04 23:46:06.810  i: [TranscodeSession] Updating session status
10-04 23:46:06.812  i: [TranscodeSession] Media choice updated
10-04 23:46:06.814  i: [TranscodeSession] Pausing...
10-04 23:46:06.816  i: [TranscodeSession] Direct Play
10-04 23:46:06.818  i: [Player][Buffer] Buffering due to network too slow
10-04 23:46:07.686  i: [PlaybackTimeBehaviour] Time: 215783 IsStarted: true
...
10-04 23:46:12.320  i: [Player][Buffer] Buffering has now occurred for over 2 seconds, warning user.
10-04 23:46:12.322  i: [Player][Hud][Notification] Displaying notification for 2750ms: Weak Signal. Please check your tuner or antenna..
10-04 23:46:15.075  i: [Player][Hud][Notification] Hiding notification: Weak Signal. Please check your tuner or antenna..
4

Quick update. After adjusting the HDHomeRun tuner settings in Plex to enable HDHomeRun’s built in hardware transcoding feature the issue seems to be mostly fixed. After ~5 hours of 1080i (transcoded to h264 by my tuner) playback only one lockup was observed…and sadly I don’t have a log.

So one workaround could be to bypass Plex’s transcoding if your tuner supports H264 transcode.

5

Since this problem has been so irritating we can’t wait for Plex to take their time to get to this. I found a pendant style 3rd gen Fire TV off eBay for a pretty decent price to replace the Fire TV Stick 4K. No live TV playback problems just like in our living room.

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