Unable to Direct Play some 4K HDR files to xbox one s

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
1

My PMS (MacBook Pro) is able to direct play some 4K HDR files such as http://hdrsamples.com/life-of-pi-4k-uhd-hdr-sample-footage/ and http://hdrsamples.com/exodus-4k-uhd-hdr-sample-footage/ but not others eg http://4kmedia.org/lg-chess-hdr-demo/. They are all 4K MP4, HEVC, 10 bit HDR, AAC. Only difference I see is that chess is 60P whereas the two working are 24P and different version of AAC.

Some others do play but are being transcoded to H264 eg http://4kmedia.org/lg-cymatic-jazz-hdr-hlg-uhd-4k-demo/

Any ideas why this is happening? I have attached PMS log for when Life of Pi and Chess were played.

2

The reason the chess file is transcoding is because the server is reading it as a mpegts which currently does not support HEVC on the Xbox One:
INFO - [Plex for Xbox One] [MDE] Starting analysis of 4k (mpegts, hevc, 153, main 10)

The reason that it transcodes to 1080p H264 is because HEVC is not supported in the HLS transport stream and there is currently a bug with the H264 decoder with media over 1080p so anything in H264 has to be transcoded down to 1080p

3

Thanks jmckee. Didn’t catch it was a different container when looking with mediainfo. Just looked with plexpy and its shows the difference clearly.

Why is it that Chess wont transcode thou and some others do eg jazz?

4

I can’t say for sure what is causing the transcoder to fail, but this is the error message:
Jul 12, 2017 00:43:56.480 [0x70000b3fc000] ERROR - [Transcoder] [stream_segment,ssegment @ 0x7fe880024200] sample rate not set
Jul 12, 2017 00:43:56.484 [0x70000ad55000] ERROR - [Transcoder] Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?): Invalid argument
Jul 12, 2017 00:43:56.486 [0x70000b585000] ERROR - [Transcoder] Error initializing output stream 0:0 --

Typically when I have seen this happen it is caused by the server not correctly analyzing the file when reading the properties of the file. Since this is a sample file what I would try is:

  1. Re analyze the file within plex and see if that gets the properties to populate correctly.
  2. (if you have the bandwidth) is to re-download the file and see if it might have been a corrupted file.
  3. If the file truly is a mpegts, try remuxing it to a mp4 through ffmpeg, or an mkv with mkvmerge or similar tools.

I downloaded the sample file myself and it shows in media info for me as a mp4 and not a mpegts. I didnt try playing it as I wasn’t able to get to my Xbox One to test it out.

5

Plex and MediaInfo are both showing mpegts for the chess sample

726×516 44 KB

6

I believe that is why the server is having issues. The file has an mp4 extension, but shouldn’t since its a mpegts. As far as I know that is what the line in mediainfo is telling you with the filextension_invalid section. Overall, I would say the server is rightly transcoding it because it is a mpegts, but that whoever created the sample file misnamed the extension.

7

After a remux with ffmpeg they are all playing properly now :slight_smile:

8

trying to figure out ffmpeg, but what command did you run viperlogic?

9

@APPR3NTIC3 said:
trying to figure out ffmpeg, but what command did you run viperlogic?

If you’re trying to copy all the streams and just change the container I would do something like:

ffmpeg -i filename.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -scodec copy newfilename.mkv

This will leave all streams in their original format while moving it to an MKV and should copy all video, audio, and subtitle streams.

10

ffmpeg had issues finding the audio stream on a few so had to add the following…

ffmpeg -analyzeduration 1G -probesize 10000000 -i filename.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy newfilename.mp4