A new problem seems to have occurred. When playing back an SD recording on an Android device the picture is presented squished, as in 4:3 aspect ration. I have to change playback settings to “stretch” to make it correct, normally it is always on “letterbox”, and it’s a pain to swap it back and forth. When watching on a PC, it works fine and plays back 16:9, however on my Android phone and Sony Bravia it displays 4:3
Codec MPEG2VIDEO
Bitrate 2150 kbps
Anamorphic true
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Location left
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Coded Height 576
Coded Width 704
Color Range tv
Frame Rate 25 fps
Height 576
Level 8
Pixel Aspect Ratio 16:11
Profile main
Ref Frames 1
Scan Type interlaced
Stream Identifier 256
Width 704
Display Title 480i (MPEG2VIDEO)
Extended Display Title 480i (MPEG2VIDEO)
Server Version#: 1.22.2.4282
Player Version#: Sony Bravia Android
Tuner Make/Model: HD Home Run
Guide/Lineup name:
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: Any SD channel
pretty sure it is because it is anamorphic mostly and maybe because using that weird resolution 704:576 on some DVDs and I think Panasonic vid cameras. which I think is closer to 4:3 than 16:9 576p - Wikipedia . I don’t think that pixel aspect ration is standard either but that probably has to do with it being anamorphic
are the black “letterbox bars” in the actual image of the video?
Those are normal values for SD PAL 16:9 video.
The width should be multiplied by the Pixel Aspect Ratio for presentation.
704 width* (16/11 PAR) = 1024 (presentation width)
1024/576 = 1.78 = 16:9
Either Plex or your TV isn’t doing this correctly. It’s not an uncommon issue. There are multiple ways that aspect ratio can be indicated in a file, and it’s common for PCs to look at one while TVs look at another.
A possible quick fix is to disable Direct Play and/or Direct Stream, because that will force Plex to parse the information instead of letting the playback device handle it.
It’s also possible that using the Plex Optimize function on videos will cause them to play back correctly.
Hi,
Yes, these are being recorded with the Plex DVR.
So when on Live TV, it’s fine, it’s just when watching that programme back it is the wrong ratio.
I changed it from “original quality” to “convert automatically” and hardware transcoding started, and it displayed correctly.
It seems to be when playing back a recorded file original quality on Android
This sounds like it may be the same as this issue, where the container details are lost after the commercial skip processing completes following recording:
Some players (such as Android and Fire TV) fail to determine the aspect ratio correctly when direct playing if the container details are missing.
I believe there a workaround is to use the Analyse option on the menu for the affected item to force Plex to re-analyse it and add the container details back.
YES, I tried this tonight, and you are totally correct.
By going onto a browser and selecting “analyse” the TV displayed the correct aspect ratio.
Only problem is the Android menu doesn’t seem to have the analyse option - but hopefully this bug will be resolved soon
