Why is Plex identifying SD video as 576p?

General Discussions
201

@MovieFan.Plex said:

@jonkv said:
So it wants square pixels within a 720x576 frame, which turns into 720x404.

It doesn’t want square pixels. It uses whatever pixel aspect ratio your file says it is. Your XML shows that your file has pixelAspectRatio="64:45". PMS does not upscale video so 720x404 is correct.

So PMS doesn’t upscale, but will happily downscale! Good to know (and with good I mean bad). This (together with the note at the beginning of the thread from another plex emplyee regarding 720xsomething resolutions) speaks tons about how Plex understands DVD rips and perfectly explain the utter mess that 480p vs 576p is in PMS.

Why doesn’t PMS jsut transcode the video with the same resolution and let the player do the stretching/upscale/downscale? This is going to happen anyway since most TVs now are full HD or UHD, is this an HLS limitation? Because direct play and direct stream work as expected.

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And the final answer to this question was???

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I’m jumping the gun ‘a bit’ ( I think). This, along with another problem, are being worked together. While not specifically targeting the ‘576p’ label (that will probably come next with “SD”/ “HD” instead of the number but be correct for (A/N)TSC , PAL, and SECAM… Getting it to understand what really IS 576p vs 480p was ( think) the problem because most development was North America and they were simply ignorant of PAL. IF I am following it correctly. PAL and ATSC/NTSC geometries got a co-mingled so fixing one, fixes the other.

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@ChuckPA said:
Getting it to understand what really IS 576p vs 480p was ( think) the problem because most development was North America and they were simply ignorant of PAL.

That was exactly my impression from the first replies to this thread by Plex employees. And, honestly, this feels pretty bad because, you know, when you develop a video oriented application you should be a bit informed about this stuff, or at least don’t try to tell people (who admittedly know more than you) that everything is fine. I was honestly disappointed by the replies to this thread from other Plex guys

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And ‘dumbing down’ the ‘solution’ to SD/HD because Plex is unable/unwilling to figure it out is sad, but par for the course and exactly what many have come to expect.

Unfortunately.

So, if some poor user wants to search or filter SD/480p/576p so they’ll know what to replace (for instance):
“Plexberg, DEAD AHEAD!”
Awww… too late and not enough lifeboats…

Have some 720p versions needing an upgrade?
“Captain! Plexiscope off the Port Beam!”
Boom.
“Abandon Ship!”

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Juice… my dear friend… :wink:

I do believe you jumped to a conclusion. I admitted I do not know what they ARE SPECIFICALLY doing . I DO KNOW they are working on two problems, one of which IS 576p.

I think it time to let go of the label. The issue really at hand is how is 576p / 576i / any other vertical height handled, is it not?
Do you really care about the label or do you care about how it’s played?

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@zpaolo11x

While the burden is on Plex (no denying that and why it’s getting done), remember the original FFMPEG/libav source was used… and unfortunately bugs included.

I’m not on the development team but I’m trying my best to be advocate and conduit for all of you. I don’t want anyone (if I can help it) think their issue isn’t being looked at. I know this issue IS getting some serious heavyweight skills applied to it.

Bottom line… we ALL want it right. It may have taken a while but I see the end of the tunnel. That’s why i pinged in here and let you know it’s getting brighter from where I’m sitting.

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I care about the label. Chuck, I think that’s fairly obvious by now.

I am NOT alone.

Up until very recently things were fine. Let’s go back there and I’ll be happy. I won’t belabor the fact that I may have jumped to a conclusion, but if History is any indication, what you are describing is exactly what is going to happen.

Some users won’t care. Some users will care. Plex is in the starting blocks ready to pee-off a bunch of people when/if that change is made. We’re not too happy with the change that’s already been made and it sounds like it’s going to get a lot worse.

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I’m not in any position to dictate policy to them about what label they use. I took a SWAG (Super Wild Axx Guess) at what would make sense to me. We ALL know, what they decide is their decision and we’ll know when we see it.

I, for one, don’t give a rats xxx about the label. I do care that video dimensions are correct and PMS doesn’t misidentify a video file’s content (which is the source of the ‘label’ problem… hint). All that is in the same core libraries they are working on.

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I know how to create a proper DVD rip and have it Direct Play across my Devices. If Plex takes the time to properly identify proper DVD rips - that’s all I ask and all I can possibly expect.

I feel like I know what’s happening ‘-behindthescenes’. Plex is trying to backwards engineer something for Plex-DVR and it ain’t working. I could be wrong. It’s happened before.

You’re in the ‘Don’t Care’ group. Fair enough. Not everyone is in that group.

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Maybe you should send your resume to Plex?

And , personally speaking as I step out of this thread, I do care. If I didn’t care, why would I be helping so many people? I’m sorry my efforts aren’t clear

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@ChuckPA said:
I, for one, don’t give a rats xxx about the label.

I only have your words to go on. A Rat, His ***, and the words ‘Don’t Care’ and ‘Label’ leads me in a certain direction. Unless I miss it somehow, you ‘Don’t Care about the Label’! Any other words you attach to what I have said to jumble up the meaning of what I have said, is on you.

For clarity: The two main groups we’re talking about in the ‘possible’ SD/HD or the ‘very real’ 576p Label fiasco are ‘Don’t Care’ (you’re one) and ‘Do Care’ (I’m one).

If fixing something else that’s broken or underdesigned cures what ails us - I’m good. What Plex does next is of great interest to me.

The End.

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@ChuckPA said:

I’m not on the development team but I’m trying my best to be advocate and conduit for all of you. I don’t want anyone (if I can help it) think their issue isn’t being looked at. I know this issue IS getting some serious heavyweight skills applied to it.

Thanks a lot for the information – I really appreciate knowing that our feedback is being received and considered. And for your hard work elsewhere in the forums as well!

(BTW, I think the “don’t care group” referred to those who don’t care about the labels, not those who just don’t care in general.)

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That’s it! Hammer… Nail… Direct Hit.

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I think you guys are reading what ChuckPA is saying incorrectly.
ChuckPA and I as well as others have chatted about this and talked on the phone about it. First thing is making sure all the information Plex software uses when actually playing back files is correct. You can view this information using the VIEW XML option. A couple of fields have what looks like bogus information in a field but if you drill down into the video portion for example you will see it’s normally correct.

Things like determining interlaced vs progressive often time are wrong. This is the type of thing ChuckPA is working to make sure is correct. I’m also following this from my position for what it’s worth.

However, the LABEL we are talking about where it says 576p is not used by the system to determine any playback abilities. It’s just a label or a filter.

The 576p label could be changed to SD or DVD and would be correct if that is all they did.

Keep in mind while some of us understand the different formats and how you can back track to find out the source and the resolution that doesn’t always help with the many files Plex has to read that some people have on their systems. People use conversion/encoding tools the wrong way at times and mess things up. People will mangle the file badly from a standards standpoint but they don’t care. Keep in mind all videos aren’t designed for TVs or their standards. 640x480 and other resolutions are computer only. People will crop videos in weird ways to make videos that “look” better on their cell phones and tablets. Remember videos don’t always play back on TVs.

So Plex needs to handle video resolutions that many of us would consider non standard and they need to classify them as well. It’s not as simple as you might think when you have to be able to handle these odd ball videos through the encoder and what not.

So what ChuckPA is telling you is that the underling code is going to be better at identifying many things and secondly that the label will change. Chuck I believe would prefer “SD” and I would prefer “DVD” as the label. What I think we both agree with and I think you take exception to is that this is just a LABEL and nothing more than that. It will get changed to something that is more accurate but neither of us know what that label will be.

Does that make more sense?

Carlo

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@cayars said:
So what ChuckPA is telling you is that the underling code is going to be better at identifying many things and secondly that the label will change. Chuck I believe would prefer “SD” and I would prefer “DVD” as the label.

I like the idea that all “sub DVD” quality items are called “SD” and “standard DVD” quality items are called “DVD”, but again, there’s a lot of exceptions and I’m glad Ples is now trying to sort it out. I know it’s just a label, but maybe you spoiled us in the past with 576p vs SD labels that were correct :wink:

What I think we both agree with and I think you take exception to is that this is just a LABEL and nothing more than that. It will get changed to something that is more accurate but neither of us know what that label will be.

I’m super-glad ChuckPA stepped in this thread and helped bringing this topic to the Plex devs. It’s just a label but it’s also a filter and in that case it’s better to have something that “works” instead of something that misidentifies stuff.

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If everything fit clearly into a “standard” it would be much easier. It’s the exceptions and “mangled” transcodes that cause the bulk of issues when it comes to things like this since Plex has to be able to play them back regardless of if they are “legal” or not from the standpoint of compliance to a spec. It has to be able to transcode and change the resolution to fit different devices and to take the aspect ratio into account, etc… There is a lot more to it then just the label which has become the point of this thread.

As ChuckPA pointed out it’s being addressed and this thread is known and logged. Not really much more can be said at this point except this is on the radar and being looked at.

Carlo

PS On a side note, I really enjoyed catching up on this thread (don’t know how I originally missed it) as it’s right up my alley with technical bits. It clearly shows a few of you guys truly understand the specs inside and out and know how to properly encode some of the trickier aspect ratios. LOL

218

Time to give this a fresh coat of paint. It’s gotten a tad ‘dusty’ and another user was interested in the Big Question.

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Once upon a time, (at least 2 months ago) I cared about the resolution that Plex reported. I used the Resolution/Bitrate settings that were reported as a target for encoding my own optimized versions so that my server would not find the need to transcode. Specifically, I relied on the 480p/1.5Mbps quality settings, available on all the apps, for a couple of users I share with who have a slower internet connection. With the odd exception, it worked perfectly, because the Roku clients I was aiming at automatically selected the lower quality version, and all was good in my happy little Plex-Land.

Now everything transcodes, so it just doesn’t matter. I’ve seen a few posts around the forums suggesting that more things are transcoding recently, to various clients that used to direct play. Coincidentally, resolution labels changed about the same time.

With the recent report that a cropped 720p videos is mis-labeled as 576p (for reference: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/272371/why-is-plex-determining-my-movie-as-576p-instead-of-720p ) That may be true in my library now too, but because a lot of my videos are now labeled 576p where I used to have a mixture of 720p, 480p and SD and a few 576p videos, I can’t be bothered checking.

Limiting the resolutions to UHD, HD, and SD won’t make me happy, Neither would suggestions that all videos ripped from DVD without an anamorphic setting and a 720X480 or 720X576 resolution be considered SD because they were encoded wrong. No one is ever gonna convince me that I am clueless because I don’t use anamorphic settings, and no one is gonna convince me that the cropped to 1280X544 video in the other thread was not ripped properly.

Regardless, in all cases, anamorphic or not, cropped or not, Plex used to report an expected result. Sure, there were exceptions… Handbrake by default resizes a 4:3 aspect DVD to 720 X 540 (NTSC or PAL) and we got a 576p label. It also, by default, resizes a 16:9 DVD to 720 X 404 (NTSC or PAL) and plex gave us an SD label. Guess what? I agree with those labels. The fact that the original source was anamorphic changes the resolution. If you ain’t using an anamorphic flag during the encode, live with what Plex reports.

I did do some research on the whole resolution thing, and frankly relied heavily on how YouTube reports the quality/resolution settings. They aim for a 16X9 player - let’s get real, that’s pretty much standard, and those devices that have a different aspect screen size play those videos perfectly. The player itself adds any black bars it needs to the sides/top/bottom to fill the screen so we don’t need a million resolutions or transcoding to make it work.

I haven’t seen a better suggestion than the chart I made up a few pages back. Using a 16X9 box that considers both width and height makes sense. If either parameter doesn’t fit in the box, it’s bumped up a resolution label until both do. It covers anamorphic and cropped videos as expected. I’m sure there will be the odd crossover - cropped anamorphic DVD’s in either PAL or NTSC might get an unexpected result occasionally, but again, you have cropped an anamorphic source, thereby changing resolution, so be prepared to live with the category it now fits in.

'Nuff said, rant over. What will be, will be.

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The box suggestion is good but the box escalation can be tricky: let’s say you have a 16:9 anamorphic DVD with a 2.35 movie, you strip the black bars and you encode a 720x436 anamorphic 2.35:1 stream. This stream has the exact same resolution and view quality of the 576p DVD it was taken from, but will perfectly fit in a 480p box.