Green Lines on Fire TV Lite playing files 4khdr mkv from emby server

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Hello, i have a Fire TV Lite and i'm trying to play 4k HDR mkv files from my emby server. The playback works perfectly but there are green diagonal lines in all screen.

I have seen other users with the same problem, but all in TV playbacks and the options are different.

What can i do? All the playback is correct except for this green diagonal lines. It occur in all files i tested.

Thanks.

Marcos.

[Happy2Play 8282]

What is the playback method?

Please provide media info and server/ffmpeg log of present for specific example.

[Luke 37065]

Hi @VerdaderoKiwi you can learn how to get the server and ffmpeg log files here:

Thanks.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Hello! Thanks for the answer! 

I put a screen with the lines and the info, and the server and mmpeg log files.

 

Thanks!

ffmpeg-transcode-bfa5beb3-6313-4182-b3fa-6103c1e28746_1.txt embyserver.txt

[ebr 14913]

Same issue:

Perhaps related to an ffmpeg update as that appears to be when it started.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Yes, i saw this post, but there isn't a solution there, and is for a live TV playback.

[RanmaCanada 345]

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications-fire-tv-streaming-media-player.html?v=ftvsticklite

your server is more than likely the problem as the Lite does not support 4k, so the server has to transcode it down to 1080p, and then do tone mapping as Emby currently won't transcode to HEVC with HDR.  It's also doing the encode out of spec, 1934x1088.  1080p is 1920x1080.  I would just replace your LITE firestick if you expect to be able to play 4k files properly as replacing your server hardware will probably be out of the question.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Thanks, the case is that the video playback is correct except for this green lines. The destination TV is 1080p and i have 4k HDR files for another tv but i want play this files in all displays for my family.

Now i'm using Plex that works correct with it but with an awfull color saturation with hdr that i must correct in the tv.

I like Emby much more and i would like to use it, but with this lines is not possible.

[RanmaCanada 345]

Again the playback is NOT correct as 1080p is 1920x1080 and your server is transcoding it to 1934x1088 which is out of spec.  Have you tried to use an external player for playback like VLC or Kodi?  Or have you tried manually updating your ffmpeg? As for the colour saturation with Plex, it's an HDR file, and it will have incorrect playback as tonemapping requires a plexpass.

What is the current hardware in your server, or do you know?

[Luke 37065]

Hi, also do you have Emby Premiere? This will allow the use of transcoding tone mapping which will resolve the issue, assuming your server machine can handle it.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

On 3/1/2022 at 2:45 AM, RanmaCanada said:

Again the playback is NOT correct as 1080p is 1920x1080 and your server is transcoding it to 1934x1088 which is out of spec.  Have you tried to use an external player for playback like VLC or Kodi?  Or have you tried manually updating your ffmpeg? As for the colour saturation with Plex, it's an HDR file, and it will have incorrect playback as tonemapping requires a plexpass.

What is the current hardware in your server, or do you know?

Hello! Thanks for the answer. Yes, i have test with VLC, but in this case the playback is black. I'll test with xmplayer or Kodi.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

On 3/1/2022 at 4:09 AM, Luke said:

Hi, also do you have Emby Premiere? This will allow the use of transcoding tone mapping which will resolve the issue, assuming your server machine can handle it.

Thanks, but for now my principal issue is the diagonal lines. After that i'll try to correct the tone/saturation. 

The server machine is an AMD 5950X with a RTX 3090, and 64GbRAM.

[ebr 14913]

On 2/28/2022 at 11:09 PM, Luke said:

Hi, also do you have Emby Premiere? This will allow the use of transcoding tone mapping which will resolve the issue, assuming your server machine can handle it.

I don't think we have found that hardware tone mapping will resolve this particular issue.  In fact, it may be causing it...

@softworkz?

[Luke 37065]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

I don't think we have found that hardware tone mapping will resolve this particular issue.  In fact, it may be causing it...

@softworkz?

How do we know that? His ffmpeg log from the server shows that tone mapping was not used.

The reason - your GPU does not support decoding the content on the hardware and as a result tone mapping can't be done with it. Do you have other content to test with that the GPU does support?

[ebr 14913]

Just now, Luke said:

How do we know that?

We don't know anything yet I don't think - except that this appears to be related to transcoding certain material for this certain device and  it supposedly was introduced with the last server version.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Hello again. First of all, thanks for your attention.

For this moment, the tone mapping doesn't matter, the important is to remove the green lines. I assume that hdr files may have tone mappings problems in a non hdr tv. On the other hand, in the computer that i have installed the server i have powerfull hardware. Ryzen 9 5950X with a 3090 GTX GPU. Here i can watch 4k HDR files perfectly with a player that support HDR (madVR,..) so the hardware in the server is not the problem. Maybe the problem is what you comment about the transcode to an incompatible resolution of the player in Emby with FireTV Lite, even though the video looks perfect (with the lines).

I have no touch any option in server about tone mapping, maybe this need to be activated in the server, but for now i need to solve the green lines problem.

I'll try to use another players in Emby like MxPlayer (VLC doesn't work, the video playback is full black with sound), mplayer...

I have to test with normal videos too.

 

 

 

[ebr 14913]

On 2/28/2022 at 9:45 PM, RanmaCanada said:

Again the playback is NOT correct as 1080p is 1920x1080 and your server is transcoding it to 1934x1088 which is out of spec.

Actually, the server output is correct (for 4K):

Stream #1:1: Video: hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084), 3840x2160

So I'm not sure where the 1934x1088 is coming from...  Edit:  I don't think the ffmpeg log provided is from the same playback as the screenshot

@VerdaderoKiwi  Can you please play that item for a few seconds and then follow the instructions to send a log from the app?

 

 

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Yes, i'll repeat de test to generate new logs.

Thanks.

[VerdaderoKiwi 2]

Hello, i submit the logs i've found after playing another mkv video. 

After this, i installed the mxplayer and set Emby client to use it, and it works! No green lines! The problem  now is that the reproduction is too slow, maybe mxplayer is more slow but maybe is by the wifi state, now my wifi is getting slow (i'll check it).

If i can fix the emby client to play files with an external player, better

embyserver.txtffmpeg-transcode-11f58055-0b31-468f-bc15-613bea4e1db7_1.txthardware_detection-63781937098.txt

[ebr 14913]

Okay, the maximum resolution on the device is coming back as 1088 so that's what it is converting to.  I'm not sure if this is actually the problem though.

[softworkz 3335]

The height of 1088 is safe. Almost all decoders and encoders are using 1088 lines for processing 1080-line frames. The reason is memory organization. 1088 is a multiple of 32 (even 64) while 1080 is not. Typical alignment requirements are 16 or 32 for internal processing, most codecs can do arbitrary frame sizes (just no odd values for height and width).

Taking 1088 as a target height, causes the width of 1934, which is just a multiple of 2, then it gets odd.
Assuming the error would be caused be the FireXX decoder, then it would seem that it can basically deal with that width (otherwise, the whole picture would be diagonally distorted), but at least one component of the implementation has problems with it. Probably the decoder chooses a width of 1936 in memory (which is a multiple of 16), so there are 2 unused pixels at the end of each line. Unused means zeros for those pixels and while zeros mean black in case of RGB, the "black" in YUV is ---> green.

In other words: the width is probably causing the green lines, but the width is not invalid (per spec), it is just uncovering an implementation flaw.

Following steps to investigate further:

1. Confirm that it's actually the frame size causing it

For this, please try the following steps:

• Download the Diagnostics Plugin
• Under Diagnostic Options, scroll down to "Parameter Adjustment" which allows to do a kind of find/replace in ffmpeg commands
• Text to replace: width=1934:height=1088
• Replacement text: width=1920:height=1080
• Now, try the same(!!!) playback again

2. Find out whether the assumption is correct that it's a bug in the client decoder or whether it's an error at the server

We will simply check the output from the server:

• Open the transcoding-temp folder in Explorer
• Run playback for 30 s and pause
• Copy the 8-10 generated segments (*.ts) and send via PM

Thanks,
sw

[ebr 14913]

Can someone please test this with the latest beta release of the app?

 

 

[brainfryd 7]

Ahhh bugger... ran through the test and then realised I missed the updated app part.... will re-do as soon as i get the chance, device is being used at the moment

[brainfryd 7]

@ebr @softworkz - OK .. so that works ( with latest app version 2.0.70a),  I can finally play 4K media on the FireTV stick.

Have attached server and transcode logs and test media segments 

Media now renders perfectly , tested multiple video files - all seems OK.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0dc45e05-f71d-4bf1-9c41-eb16079fdd72_1.txt Media Test.zip

[Luke 37065]

Thanks for the feedback.