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The PS4 profile isn't working for me


embyuser123

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embyuser123

I tried to tweak the profile over the course of several hours. I had no real success, but here's what I tried.

 

A very small selection of my library is even visible. I got most (but still not all) of my media to show up by changing the transcoding settings to transcode video to mp4, as opposed to the preconfigured ts. I'm not even sure why this works. Still, AVIs didn't seem to show up.

 

Most of my videos are h264 with DTS audio in mkv containers. I suspect that DTS audio needs to be transcoded. I changed the audio codec to aac,ac3. This seems like this almost works. Looking at the logs, the remuxing seems to begin, but the PS4 seems to lose connection or otherwise is unable to play back the resulting video. This still didn't allow most of my videos to play. Strangely, an HEVC/AAC video was playable, but only for a few seconds before the playback froze.

 

It seems like H264/AC3 generally plays fine, although there are still some exceptions. Everything else, I haven't been able to get to work. But a lot of other formats that should be compatible on paper simply don't work.

 

Additionally, the profile API (if that's the proper term) isn't documented and I have no idea how to properly wield it. There seem to be configuration settings that can even be accessed through the web UI and require manual editing of the XML. This is fine, I just have no idea how to do it other than to try to reverse engineer other profiles.

 

post-141008-0-58024200-1466647711_thumb.png

 

Without a native app, the PS4 Media Player is the only way to use my PS4 as an emby client. Being able to access my media without having to transcode it ahead of time would be awesome. Has anyone had success in this area?

 

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embyuser123

OK, here's some more information.

 

Again, most of my stuff is H264/DTS. It seems like most, but not all, H264/AC3 stuff can be direct-played. DTS needs to be remuxed. I can see in the logs that remuxing begins when I attempt to play a video that is DTS, but the video doesn't actually play on the PS4. It freezes after a couple of seconds for some reason. (It only does this when transcoding video.)

 

The remux script seems to work fine if I open it in VLC, so it's not completely broken, although perhaps not compatible with PS4 Media Player.

 

The server log indicates a dropped connection, but I'm not sure if that's the real cause.

 

I'm not sure if I'm remuxing to an incompatible format, or if the PS4 Media Player somehow has trouble maintaining a connection when remuxing. I'm trying to remux to H264/AAC in a mkv container. This should work, in theory.

 

Here are the compatible formats http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps4/music/mp_format_m.html

 

One last thing to note, the server Dashboard never seems to list the PS4 as an "active device". A resident Xbox One is displayed without even attempting to play a video or otherwise directly access the server. Browser usage shows up as well. The server logs do indicate that the Playstation 4 is identified as a Playstation 4, but the Dashboard never seems to indicate that the PS4 is accessing the server in any capacity.

remux-93019af4-5346-47e8-8c34-f0981bd5b40a.txt

server-63602469938.txt

Edited by embyuser123
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Yea when you see the dropped connection it almost always means the client video player disconnected because it didn't like the format that it was getting back.

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one thing they don't document it whether or not there is a supported max bitrate. you could try lowering it in the profile to see if that helps.

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embyuser123

one thing they don't document it whether or not there is a supported max bitrate. you could try lowering it in the profile to see if that helps.

If I lower the threshold, it sort of helps, but only because the video transcodes instead of remuxes. Transcoding, for some reason, allows the video to play for about two seconds before freezing. This is also kind of confusing; shouldn't it be an all-or-nothing thing?

 

I figured that if H264/AC3 can be direct played, remuxing DTS to AC3 would be all that is necessary. There must be more to it than that, maybe it's a problem with the PS4 media player.

 

I guess one thing I can try is to see if a fully-remuxed video using the same script that Emby creates plays via DLNA or USB. I'm going to attempt this next.

Edited by embyuser123
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the output container is also a variable. i would try ts, mkv, and mp4, in that order of preference.

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embyuser123

I opened a stream URL in my browser, saved the stream to my hard drive, and then placed the resulting video in my Emby library. I am able to stream this video (H264/AC3) to my PS4 just fine. It seems like only the "real-time" remuxing is problematic.

 

the output container is also a variable. i would try ts, mkv, and mp4, in that order of preference.

 

ts is the default, but this setting causes most of my library to not be visible to the PS4. The logs will indicate that these videos cannot be direct streamed or direct played, and thus aren't listed at all.

 

Should there not be a corresponding Direct Play profile for ts, in addition to the default transcoding profile?

 

It seems like the server will only return videos that can be either direct-played or direct-streamed. It seems like the qualifications for what can be direct streamed are videos that can be remuxed/transcoded into a format that can be direct played. That is to say, a transcoding profile that uses ts as a container will only play if there's a direct play profile that declares ts is a direct-play format for the PS4. Is my understanding of this correct?

 

I've played around with a lot of configurations. I've come close to success with mp4 and mkv, but ts isn't working at all.

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embyuser123

OK, so what dictates what can be direct played and what can be direct streamed? Is it information that the client relays to the server, or information inferred by the server, or is it based on the overall DLNA profile for that client?

Edited by embyuser123
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