Roku TV not dircet streaming TV

[roberto188 33]

My Insignia Roku TV is not direct streaming live TV in the Roku Beta app. It's transcoding, and not just repackaging, full mpeg4 transcoding.

[Luke 37008]

Hi there, your server dashboard can tell you why this is happening so that you can check this on your own. Have you looked at that?

[speechles 1917]

Can you post an ffmpeg log?

 

Some RokuTV cannot support 60fps and the video player will actively fail. This will then cause the video player to exit. We catch when this happens and can spawn the video player again and fallback to a different method of playback. Especially if the signal degrades it might just close the player rather than cause it to show retrieving/buffering.

 

You should see multiple transcode logs for the same item when this happens all with different methods of playback. Remux/directstream or transcode at the front. Knowing the Media Info for the item and seeing the ffmpeg logs the Roku creates would let me know what is going on. Thanks.

 

 

EDIT: .. and mpeg4 transcoding? You mean mpeg2 -> h264?

Edited November 13, 2018 by speechles

[roberto188 33]

Ok so 720p stations direct stream perfectly. The 1080i stations transcode to h264. According to the log it says "TranscodeReasons=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit". 

 

See the attached logs. 1 is for the transcoded 1080i station. The other is for the 720p direct streamed station. 

 

ffmpeg-directstream-98fd9f06-5b01-4a6b-af22-da958e9e9f71.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-0edc4d22-f283-43e6-a9b0-c3acc557f67c.txt

[roberto188 33]

Also here is a third log that is a bit different for the 1080i stations. "Container not supported"

ffmpeg-transcode-3c8185d7-0083-456c-93d1-7ab11ef4338f.txt

[speechles 1917]

MaxWidth=1280&MaxHeight=720

 

Did you use the Roku settings to change to 720p? The app will respect that as the maxheight and maxwidth it supports for _all_ codecs. The app does allow all 4K Roku devices to downscale. So telling your Roku settings that your TV is 1080P won't result in 4K having to transcode. The app knows 4K streaming boxes can downscale to 1080P/720P letting the Roku firmware handle this. This reduces transcoding so it is best to choose the highest resolution your TV supports there. Choose 1080P if your TV can support it or 4K UHD if your TV supports that. The reason it did a full transcode is because the container wasn't supported. Since it has to change the container it will now fully respect maxheight and maxwidth which creates the situation you are in where it no longer direct streams the mpeg2 and transcodes it to h264.

 

Right now we are in the blackout period with Roku. We cannot update the app until November 26th. At that time a new video quality settings menu will appear in options. This will let you set a max transcode resolution and bitrate quality you want. This is exactly the same as what you can do in the video player OSD with the playback menu. This will also be remembered so that if you set it once you won't have to keep changing it all the time. This change makes it match exactly how the web client works.

Edited November 17, 2018 by speechles

[Luke 37008]

Ok so 720p stations direct stream perfectly. The 1080i stations transcode to h264. According to the log it says "TranscodeReasons=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit". 

 

See the attached logs. 1 is for the transcoded 1080i station. The other is for the 720p direct streamed station. 

 

 

 

Does the server dashboard sufficiently answer your question about why it is transcoding?

[roberto188 33]

MaxWidth=1280&MaxHeight=720

 

Did you use the Roku settings to change to 720p? The app will respect that as the maxheight and maxwidth it supports for _all_ codecs. The app does allow all 4K Roku devices to downscale. So telling your Roku settings that your TV is 1080P won't result in 4K having to transcode. The app knows 4K streaming boxes can downscale to 1080P/720P letting the Roku firmware handle this. This reduces transcoding so it is best to choose the highest resolution your TV supports there. Choose 1080P if your TV can support it or 4K UHD if your TV supports that. The reason it did a full transcode is because the container wasn't supported. Since it has to change the container it will now fully respect maxheight and maxwidth which creates the situation you are in where it no longer direct streams the mpeg2 and transcodes it to h264.

 

Right now we are in the blackout period with Roku. We cannot update the app until November 26th. At that time a new video quality settings menu will appear in options. This will let you set a max transcode resolution and bitrate quality you want. This is exactly the same as what you can do in the video player OSD with the playback menu. This will also be remembered so that if you set it once you won't have to keep changing it all the time. This change makes it match exactly how the web client works.

It's a Roku TV, so I can't set the resolution to anything. It is a 720p TV, so I guess you are saying, becuase of that, it's going to transcode all 720p TV despite the fact that 1080P content is never transcoded, the Roku just down scales it?

Edited November 17, 2018 by roberto188

[ebr 14903]

I thought I had changed this to not pay attention to the resolution setting.  All Roku devices can handle 1080 streams and scale them to whatever output resolution is necessary so we should not be wasting transcoding on that...

[speechles 1917]

I thought I had changed this to not pay attention to the resolution setting.  All Roku devices can handle 1080 streams and scale them to whatever output resolution is necessary so we should not be wasting transcoding on that...

 

Wooo.. Yeah that is a bug. Just submitted a fix for that. Fast. Blackout ends Nov 26th.. until then we can't update the app for this. Completely my fault. When I refactored the capabilities I mistakenly kept what was there earlier. I didn't realize what was changed later. I just defacto copied my capabilities in rather than edit in my changes because there were so many changes. This was my fault. Apologies...

 

As soon as the mention of "can't set the resolution to anything".. I was speechless.. ironic since I am literally speechles as a username. Sincerely sorry.

Edited November 17, 2018 by speechles

[roberto188 33]

Sounds good. Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. Im a paid Emby member but do u guys have a donation page for the Roku app. I'd like to contribute. Appreciate the hard work.

[ebr 14903]

Sounds good. Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. Im a paid Emby member but do u guys have a donation page for the Roku app. I'd like to contribute. Appreciate the hard work.

 

Hi.  Thanks very much.  At this time, we do not have any donation options (and can't really) but you could always re-purchase a subscription or other item and then immediately cancel the recurring payment for it.

[speechles 1917]

Well yeah.. thanks for sticking with us to resolve the issue.

 

I am just a cog in the machinery (as in my gearing only revolves around Roku). Alot of hard work by many talented people combines to give you what you experience today. These people deserve credit when credit is due too. A pat on the back for everyone all around. As @@ebr said, please don't donate. This confuses things and makes it unclear what the goal is. To keep things straight it all needs to be above board. Thanks.

 

EDIT: also my mistakes are not representative of any other team member. These are mine alone to own up to. Sorry again. :/

Edited November 18, 2018 by speechles