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Roku Beta app - Cant play 4k properly


vaise

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vaise

Thanks for the very detailed post speechless.

Up higher in the post I attached a word doc (extension renamed as .txt) with media info for working and non working samples if that helps anyone.

 

This is a roku streaming stick +, so the latest one.

 

I have a workaround now tho by adding a drive to the USB on the tv and using the TV’s own player for the 4K content.

 

Happy to do more testing if required tho.

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Thanks for the very detailed post speechless.

Up higher in the post I attached a word doc (extension renamed as .txt) with media info for working and non working samples if that helps anyone.

 

This is a roku streaming stick +, so the latest one.

 

I have a workaround now tho by adding a drive to the USB on the tv and using the TV’s own player for the 4K content.

 

Happy to do more testing if required tho.

 

Okay, I went through your 4k movies in that document.

 

The ones which you say play without green screen, are actually h264 (mpeg4/avc) @ 3840x2160. So definitely enable the "h264/mpeg4 in 4k" option within blue neon and notice it will now copy that video stream and keep your 4k in h264. You should definitely notice a quality difference.

 

Now about the files which produce the "green"...

 

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Audio+and+Video+Support#AudioandVideoSupport-SupportedVideoFormats

 

Clearly, the url from roku shows hevc with support for both main and main10. With level 41, 50, and 51. Dual colorspaces, support for multiple framerates, etc...It is puzzling... Your video stream should direct stream according to roku documentation and without any green, artifacts, or macro blocking. Either the documentation is wrong, or roku firmware is broken on your roku model. There seriously appears to be no excuse why the official app isn't working other than it being a roku firmware problem. The blue neon app works because you are using an older version with broken direct stream (will only direct stream h264) support and will always transcode the video into h264 if it isn't already.

 

@@ebr h264@4k is possible for certain roku models, not sure if you already allow this. I only allow it in blue neon with a option preference since thats the easiest way to work for everyone, and only when required.

Edited by speechles
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vaise

I went to options, tried to the "h264/mpeg4 in 4k" option within blue neon says 'no [default]', I click on it and it says 'yes default]', I select that anyway and the menu still says 'no [default]'.

Dunno if I am doing it wrong.

Please don't want to waste your time on this though speechless, your info and research may be valuable to the roku beta dev's however.

Looking forward to your re-write.

 

The roku shipped media player also can play this natively fine, which suggests (to my inexperienced eye) that the roku firmware is good.

Edited by vaise
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Haw.. the reason for that setting not working is a typo.. Now corrected, but roku store wont let me put sdk1 apps on its store no more. But irrelevant really, because that setting becomes moot when you can force.

 

When you force direct within blue neon it will act like the roku media player. When doing so does that file play? If so, press * and change audio tracks, does the audio track change work? When using * to change audio tracks this is only possible when direct playing. This is likely an issue where transcoding(HLS) doesn't act the same as direct playing(original container), aka a roku bug.

 

I suspect some way to force direct and force transcode is the key here, so the user has quick remediation.

 

There is no way to use an external player on the roku, and other apps have that feature. In its place I suggest a "force direct" and "force transcode" option be given to users (with full fallback to transcoding if user chooses to force direct play and there is an error which the app already does, keep this behavior too), perhaps exposed when the user turns on "enable debug options". Then when the user uses the resume or play buttons, the app prompts with buttons showing Automatic, Direct, Transcode and lets the user choose how to deliver this item from the server. This would work around the fact roku can't get any benefit like the other apps from an external player. Food for thought? This would help users work around roku firmware issues which while extremely rare (j/k) do occur from time to time.

Edited by speechles
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vaise

Thanks for that. Thought as much.

Forced direct us fine, as posted somewhere above.

I think I also said somewhere here that roku should have a force direct and force transcode like bnn. There is the odd file that it can’t figure out.

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It is definitely the difference between the original container, and using HLS with direct stream copies of the video. They say HEVC can be direct stream copied, but maybe that needs to be addressed, maybe it really can't. Thats the bug thats at play here, and it has nothing to do with the emby team really. The reason blue neon works is because I've given the user full control over so much, and that was to make it easier for the user to self maintain their own environment without having to post on the forums about it.

 

The emby team has the thinking that if exposed to many options, users will soon become overloaded with buttons, knobs, and switches they can change which will then allow them to "break" so to speak the experience. They will then think emby is at fault since things are now in this broken condition without realizing that their choices in the settings brought about this behavior.

 

I on the other hand think people who run emby server already run an OS full of buttons,knobs, switches and are well aware of what to touch, and what not to touch, and aren't madly flipping through options willy nilly. Their users on each server they create may not be, in this instance it is my belief they will educate their users what options to touch and which are off limits. This allows the server admins to teach their users, those users who will never see these forums, or this post, or my master shake avatar in the broodwich episode (hint, don't eat the sun dried tomatoes).

 

The people who use this forum make up a small minority of users of the apps and server. People only come here, when they can't figure something out or are limited in what the server/apps can do. Then they start with feature requests, etc usually as their first post. So the roku forum isn't "on fire with complaints" right now, as many will live the with fact things are what they are and find a different way to play their media than the roku. They get an android device or use their PC. It's unfortunate, not sure what the roku userbase is of their app either, but it is likely well below both iOS and android with install base. This lower userbase roku has is seen as not as smart (this is for your grandma, your 4 year old, etc) as either the  iOS (these guys think they are smarter than normal) or android (these guys are just scurvy pirates who steal their software) userbase. They get extra things roku users don't, for example, external players.. (see where I am going.. lol).. None of these perceptions for each device are true, there are dumb iOS users, smart roku users, android users who do not pirate.

 

anyways, we had our say "officially" .. lol.. see what I did there.. and "officially" we can't do anything about it. But unofficially... blue neon has your back. :)

Edited by speechles
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Waldonnis

Any chance you can just post the mediainfo from Paddington 2, but using "Tree" view in mediainfo instead of basic?  There are things not show in the basic view that may be important.  It may be hard to screenshot (it's a lot longer than basic view), but you can export it to a text file and post that if you'd like (File->Export, Text tab).

 

Unrelated, but I'm curious why are there two video streams in your Star Wars file.  It's uncommon to see people do that (except for me  :P ) and just wondered what the second video stream was.  I suspect it's to store a version with different languages' crawl sequence/subtitles, but I figured I'd ask since it stuck out when I looked at the doc.  Most players don't allow changing video streams (Kodi does, I think, but Roku doesn't, for example), so I tend to only see multi-video stream files like that being used for archiving.

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vaise

Hi,

Paddington and starwars media info attached as per your instructions.

Audio tracks - 5 - 7.1 and 5.1 of spanish and english, plus a commentary track.

paddington.txt

starwars.txt

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Waldonnis

Thanks.  Now I understand the second video stream in Star Wars (Dolby Vision layer), so that answered that question.  I don't see anything unusual with either file that would be causing problems, though.  Both look to be set up properly for HDR with metadata that looks okay, and there are no signs of things that have tripped Rokus up in the past.  I'm just not sure what's going on with those.  My HEVC encoding settings aren't too different from what's shown in the files, actually, and I haven't seen anything like what you're reporting on a Roku TV...could just be something in the firmware of the stick model.

 

Huh, just saw something on the Roku forums while typing this out that's a little dated, but may be worth looking at.  Check to see if you have the "auto-adjust display refresh rate" setting enabled in the settings (here's Roku's help page about it).  Seems like there was a bug noted in a post from December where others were seeing green or snowy corruption when the setting was enabled, so it may be worth checking out if the corruption persists even when it's disabled.

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vaise

Ta.

That setting was disabled.  I tried enabling it, no difference tot he green at the beginning and random lines through as it plays.

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Waldonnis

While thinking about the Dolby Vision layer in the Star Wars file, I nabbed a file off of a disc I have that is a dual-layer Dolby Vision file (m2ts), then remuxed it to Matroska (mkv) to see how Roku treated the two video tracks.  Long story short, the official Emby channel decided to transcode it - I think because it had more than one video track, so that was a bust.  Roku can't read m2ts containers, so there was no way to direct play that file either.  I did try to force direct via BNN on the Matroska file and while it did flag the telly to swap to HDR mode (but not DV mode), I just got a solid green screen, which wasn't really much of a surprise given that Roku's video player object doesn't know how to deal with multiple video streams and provides no documented way to do video track selection (that I know of).

 

If the Roku channel will always transcode if more than one video stream is present, then having the DV stream as a second video track may be a liability and cause it to transcode every time even if nothing else causes it to.  Honestly, the DV stream won't work anyway, so I doubt you'd lose anything by getting rid of it.  If you really don't want to lose that data in the meantime, you can remux that stream to its own file and store it away until someone somehow comes up with a way to do a dual->single layer conversion for DV without Dolby's tools.

Edited by Waldonnis
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Waldonnis

Ta.

That setting was disabled.  I tried enabling it, no difference tot he green at the beginning and random lines through as it plays.

 

Hmm, then I can't think of anything else offhand other than a firmware bug or something in the encodings themselves.  You can try digging around on the net for a known-good sample 4k HDR file to see if it causes the same issue.  Heck, even a test pattern would do.  If it does, then it's more likely to be a firmware issue rather than something odd about the encoding.

 

Out of curiosity, do 4k HDR videos play fine from other sources like Netflix or Amazon?  Their methods are a bit different, but it would indicate that at least some type of 4k HDR playback is working on the stick.

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