Like the title says, Xbox One app has been playing files fine using DirectPlay, but for some reason today it decided that it was going to limit all media to 3000kbps. This is obviously making anything HD need to be transcoded. Here is the MDE portion of the PMS log:
17:43:28:809 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 20160 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:809 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: Direct Play is disabled Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:809 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: no direct play video profile exists for mkv/h264 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: no direct play video profile exists for mkv/h264/ac3 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - E03 - Guys' Night - video.bitrate limitation applies: 3373 > 3000 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - E03 - Guys' Night - video.bitrate limitation applies: 3373 > 3000 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - E03 - Guys' Night - video.bitrate limitation applies: 3373 > 3000 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:810 [12524] DEBUG - E03 - Guys' Night - video.bitrate limitation applies: 3373 > 3000 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:811 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:811 [12524] DEBUG - E03 - Guys' Night - video.bitrate limitation applies: 3373 > 3000 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:811 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: computed resolution bounding box of 1280x718. Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:811 [12524] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 5059Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor. Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:811 [12524] DEBUG - Clipped max bitrate to 3000Kbps based on client-requested limit Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:812 [12524] DEBUG - MDE: E03 - Guys' Night: selected media 0 / 20160 Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:812 [12524] DEBUG - Found session GUID of 3osy7qllecfj in session start. Nov 01, 2015 17:43:28:812 [12524] DEBUG - Using session GUID 3osy7qllecfj for new transcode session.
Why is the Xbox One app limiting to 3000kbps? Why is PMS determining that Direct Play is disabled even though it is clearly enabled in settings? I have killed and restarted both PMS and the Xbox One client multiple times. Thanks for any help.
I have further tested and any file with a video bitrate under 3000kbps plays perfectly DirectPlay, anything over 3000kbps is sent to transcode. I thought the maximum bitrate for Xbox One was 20mbps for mkv/h.264?
The bitrate limitation for MKV’s was removed a few months back.
I just tested streaming my Jurassic World bluray rip at 34Mbps average and the video is direct streaming at that rate with no issues.
During playback have you tried opening the settings menu (the … menu on the right after hitting A) and adjusting the video quality from that menu and making sure it is set to original?
@jmckee said:
The bitrate limitation for MKV’s was removed a few months back.
I just tested streaming my Jurassic World bluray rip at 34Mbps average and the video is direct streaming at that rate with no issues.
During playback have you tried opening the settings menu (the … menu on the right after hitting A) and adjusting the video quality from that menu and making sure it is set to original?
That was indeed what was happening, but there isn’t a default quality setting for the Xbox One app right? I wonder why those few files defaulted to the lower bitrate? Does bitrate settings for a video sync to the server and across clients?
There still isn’t a default app wide setting for video quality. I actually don’t know what causes this to happen, although I have seen it a few times myself. As far as I know the only options that should carry over from the server are actual stream selections (IE 2nd Audio track/subtitles).
I will definitively send a note that it is still happening for some people, but I can’t make any promises when a fix for it will come out.
I know at least one of the files that had this I had previously played on a client that I did purposefully limit the bitrate. Perhaps that carried over to the Xbox client somehow? But at least now I know what to look for. I just didn’t even think to check the individual quality for each video, since it was happening for all of them.
If you’re seeing the same issue, all you need to do is open the menu during playback and change the bit rate limit to original.
If it’s already at original you can try selecting a different value, bringing the menu up and then selecting the original setting again.
If you’re still seeing that type of limitation the next place I would look at is to see if your Xbox is seeing itself as remote and you have a limit set for remote streams.
