I just got a plexpass to test the ps3 client out. So far im not too impressed, it seems the plex server is transcoding all media and since it runs on weak sucky hardware its a problem. I need to make it stop transcoding.
My non-plex setup for viewing media on ps3 is:
Transcode all media with ffmpeg: I have found two formats which works good on p3.
Basically, despite the 720P resolution statement, anything with a horizontal resolution of 1280 or less will work - example a movie at 1280X532 would still be classified as 720p. I have DVD rips at 480p that play well and are upscaled by the Sony hardware to fill the screen properly. You shouldn't have to add borders, resize, etc. to be exactly 1280X720
Videos with a resolution higher than 720p will be transcoded by the Plex server to 720p.
This video plays without transcode, but its not scaled to the size of the screen. It has black borders. So you will need to resize the video in order to use full size of the tv-screen. But its likely padding borders is not needed. Need to test scaling some 4:3 formats.
<span><a class="" href="https://forums.plex.tv/user/175457-leelynds/" title="">leelynds</a>: maybe I missunderstand are you refering to the ps3 plex player or ps3 native player over dlna? </span>
Sorry, I forgot to mention that, and I was aware of it. PS3 and PS4 have problems with anamorphic rips. That is, rips that are supposed to display at a resolution that is not their actual size. I don't have anything that uses the anamorphic flag, so I have never actually seen the problem
The bug is discussed here, the developers are aware of the problem:
@leelynds, thank you for helping me out here. I really appreciate it.
I think now I know enough to transcode compatible media. Follow these rules and you should be fine. Possilby they are overly strict.
1. Exacly one audio and one video stream in mp4, no subtitle stream
2. Video H264 profile Baseline, up or downscaled to fit a 1280 x 720 screen. No need to pad borders e.g. 960x720 works fine. It needs to be exaclty 1280x720, padding is needed in order to avoid problems for non 16:9 formats.
3. audio AAC
EDIT: I found out plex ps3 client has some strange bug when media does not fit entire screen.
I tested on 4:3 media. Scaled it up to 720p. The plex ps3 client displayed this with a narrow annoying blurry stripe on the right side, where video meets black border. Left side was fine. Video did not have this blur when played on computer media player. So my conclusion: make sure to resize and pad media to exactly 1280 x 720 in order to avoid problems.
If you need to burn subtitles into the video it can be done adding the filter "ass". ass is not a very used format so you need to convert .srt to .ass format. ffmpeg can do this.
The aspect ratio for DVD rips is a known bug, and hopefully they get a fix in for it. Luckily, I don't have any rips with the anamorphic flag set, so as I said before, I personally have not seen the problem. The videos are scaled by the Playstation to fill the screen properly and look to be in the correct aspect ratio. I usually crop out the black borders in my rips, so I can have a video 1280X832 (approx 2.40:1 aspect) and it displays properly without adding padding to be exactly 1280X720 (if I understand your post correctly, that's the only way it works for you)
There's a post here: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/132624-is-there-a-way-to-get-rid-of-the-borders/ where there was some success with just remuxing the file (no conversion/upsizing) and setting the aspect ratio flag and the new file displayed properly. Maybe this method will work for you too, and save some re-encoding time.
I think your case is a bit diffent, you have black-boxes on top bottom, right?
This was boxes left and right. And on the righthandside video was strangely messed up, blurry vertical stripe maybe 20 pixels or so.
Anyhow this usage to make video perfectly match with plex-client is rare I think. Only very few users do this,right? Main use is to feed your media to a 8 core modern cpu, which transcodes it perfectly with ease. With this in mind its understandable that the software has its quirks for this use case.
I know from a video quality perspective its bad to pad borders. But that can be overcome by increasing bitrate. Disk is soo cheap. I dont really care if the files gets big. Its more important for me to have a script that takes whatever media and adopts it for plex. I have a (weak) server which can transcode-crunch 24/7.
Actually, in the video referenced in that post, the black borders at top and bottom were hard coded (or padded), similar to what I think you are doing. It was a 16X9 video, but borders also appeared on the left and right that shouldn't. Essentially, the video should have filled the screen (if you count the padding as part of the video), but something weird in the original encoding was not properly reporting the aspect ratio. I think it's because some rips do not include the "anamorphic" flag, but that is a guess. Remuxing seemed to repair the error.
But it seems you have found a method that works. I imagine the playstation bug will be fixed eventually, and your original files will likely work. I'm like you though - a little impatient - and often go the extra mile to make it work NOW! :D
@leelynds said:
The aspect ratio for DVD rips is a known bug, and hopefully they get a fix in for it. Luckily, I don’t have any rips with the anamorphic flag set, so as I said before, I personally have not seen the problem. The videos are scaled by the Playstation to fill the screen properly and look to be in the correct aspect ratio. I usually crop out the black borders in my rips, so I can have a video 1280X832 (approx 2.40:1 aspect) and it displays properly without adding padding to be exactly 1280X720 (if I understand your post correctly, that’s the only way it works for you)
There’s a post here: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/132624-is-there-a-way-to-get-rid-of-the-borders/ where there was some success with just remuxing the file (no conversion/upsizing) and setting the aspect ratio flag and the new file displayed properly. Maybe this method will work for you too, and save some re-encoding time.
Man you have solved alllll my problems with black borders!!!
