Why does video dim out when paused on apple tv? fix this

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 4.141.0
Player Version#: Latest on tv 18.3 and prior versions
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>

So annoying that Plex dims screen brightness a little when pausing video on the tvOS plex app. Hit play and you get full brightness back. Many times pausing a video is intentionally done at a specific point in video to take a closer look at something, yet with Plex it dims out the scene a bit when paused so you can’t view it in full brightness. This makes no sense and needs to get resolved.

2

This only occurs if you have generated video preview thumbnails for it.

You can locate the BIF file, and rename/move/delete it, and the video when paused will not change in brightness.

The screen is dimmed when a preview thumbnail is shown. I think the devs forgot to undim it once the preview times out and the GUI overlay goes.

The BIF files can be located here:

Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/[0-9a-f]/[0-9a-f]{39}.bundle/Contents/Indexes/index-sd.bif

function plex_list_bifs() {
    set +o posix
    cd "/<INSERT_PATH_PLEX_HERE>/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/" || return
    echo -e "\033[48;5;166;97;1m Finding all BIF files: \033[0m"
    find . -type f -name \*.bif -print0 | \
        du -cbs --files0-from=- | \
        tee >(gawk '{a+=$1} END{printf "%d\n%d\n", a/NR, NR}' ) | \
        numfmt --from-unit=1 --to=iec-i --suffix=B --format %.3f --field 1 --padding=10
    cd "$OLDPWD" || return
}

On the web Plex client, Get Info, then View XML, you will see the XML tag indexes="sd" if there are preview thumbnails (i.e. an index-sd.bif).

Annoying screen dims when paused on apple tv
3

I do have thumbnail generation enabled.

If I delete the BIF am I also deleting the generated thumbnails?

I think you are correct “I think the devs forgot to undim it once the preview times out and the GUI overlay goes”. Hopefully this can get someone’s attention for resolution.

4

Yes, the BIF file contains all the video preview thumbnails.

You could rename the BIF files, and then restore if this is ever fixed. Keep the BIF files in-place, change from index-sd.bif to index-sd.tmp for example.

Currently you have to choose one of:

  1. video preview thumbnails
  2. Normal pause screen that isn’t dimmed

It took me a while to determine the cause. I’d submit a bug report, but I don’t think we can?

5

If anyone is interested, the BIF file format is designed by Roku, and they publish it and examples of how to generate BIF files here:

6

Interesting that Roku generates thumbnails for

  1. sd
  2. hd
  3. fhd
7

Any devs know if FHD BIF preview thumbnails are coming with the new Experience player?

The scrubbing image is now full screen; and not a small window on the time scrub bar.

FHD should be 640 x 360 (272, etc to match the aspect ratio).

Plex Media Server uses 320 x 240, which is the HD specification on ROKU. However Plex labels them as “SD” and file names are always “index-sd.bif”

8

@chris_decker08 on the media info properties dialogue, and the XML API response, there is a key indexes which is set to sd on all my media (most is UHD HEVC DoVi with SMPTE 2086 + 2094 metadata).

Can I generate FHD indexes as per the Roku ad-hoc standard?

Can I generate actual FHD index at 1920x1080?

I think 1920x1080 should be more than necessary for preview scrubs.

JPEG-XL

Would be perfect here. Much better compression, Rec.2020 color space, HDR possible.

JPEG-XL has been across the Apple range for sometime now.

9

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