Direct Play Error on Nvidia Shield

[ThomasPatrick 0]

Hello,

 

I was putting together an: "Emby is transcoding a file (14Mb/s h264 .mkv video) instead of direct playing on an Nvidia Shield" post. As a last ditch effort, I tried repackaging the MKV which actually fixed my issue, figured I'd still post this in case it's helpful.

 

Here's what was going on: The server-side was reporting "bitrate exceeded" while the client-side reported "Direct Play Error". I read in this thread that a direct play error can erroneously spit out a "bitrate exceeded" error, however I dug into the log and found what seemed to me to be an incorrect bitrate being reported: ". . .VideoBitrate=109616000&AudioBitrate=384000&. . .". (Is that supposed to be max bit rate for the video stream? Elsewhere it lists "110000000" as the max.) Subtitles are disabled. Issue appears to be isolated to this file—I have dozens of similar h264 mkvs that direct play as expected. The 6 channel audio configuration and the audio track displaying as "und" are the only details out of the ordinary.

 

Troubleshooting that I tried:

• Played the file on other platforms via iOS Emby app and AppleTV app, both direct play (ATV direct streams)
• Changed bitrate limit from auto to 110 mb/s
• Deleted the external .srt subtitles just in case (there are no internal subs)
• Finally, repackaged the mkv with the audio track designated as "eng" instead of "(undefined)" <- THIS FIXED MY ISSUE

So it seems that repackaging the MKV file did the trick, for whatever reason. I attached the log in addition to a second text file I put together with the video file specs and the portions of the log I referenced.

server-63660038400.txt

Notes and File Info.txt

Edited April 23, 2018 by ThomasPatrick

[ebr 14949]

Hi.  Those bitrate values you see above are the max requested rates.  They are correct.

 

Most likely, the repackaging fixed whatever the error was in the original file.  Sometimes there is bad data inside of a media container (which can cause a player to not be able to play it) and simply re-constructing it will then fix it.

[ThomasPatrick 0]

Hi.  Those bitrate values you see above are the max requested rates.  They are correct.

 

Most likely, the repackaging fixed whatever the error was in the original file.  Sometimes there is bad data inside of a media container (which can cause a player to not be able to play it) and simply re-constructing it will then fix it.

 

Okay the max bitrates make more sense, thanks for clarifying.

 

Hmm, I'll keep that in mind for next time. Thanks for the info and quick reply!