HEVC 10-bit playback on Firestick - Too many errors

[Drazgo 8]

Hi guys,

 

Searched around the forums and didn't find too much on this issue, though there were a couple of similar ones.

 

I have two HEVC format files I am unable to stream to Firestick.

 

The files in question are extremely large (working on scaling them down) at 48 gb (which may be the issue).  

I can play through the browser without too much issue.

 

• Exactly what you were doing and what happened.  Include the name of whatever you played if it is a playback problem  -  I just sent to movie selection and hit play
• The time you sent the log - 12 to 1 AM EDT
• The name of the Emby user on the local server that was logged in at the time - Methos

 

Cheers

syslog.txt

hevc error.txt

Edited June 20, 2019 by Drazgo

[VaporTrail 66]

I also got an error with some HEVC movies on Firestick with latest version - "Too many errors. Giving up."

 

What I did was remux films and remove embedded VobSub subtitles. Just added external SRT. After that they direct played again.

[ebr 15664]

I think the bitrate for that item is simply too high (80Mb).  Try compressing it or choosing a lower bitrate setting in the app.

D/EventLogger(10707):       [X] Track:0, id=0, mimeType=video/avc, bitrate=80000000, codecs=avc1.640033, res=3840x2160, supported=NO_EXCEEDS_CAPABILITIES

[Drazgo 8]

Thanks guys, will give it a shot!!

[Drazgo 8]

Just an FYI, was able to get it to play by dropping the bitrate on the stream.

 

Thanks for the pointers!

[rmich 2]

I am getting the same error on a fire stick with one specific hevc 10 bit encoded with Staxrip. Other 10 bit hevc encodes transcode fine (fire stick does not support 10 bit) using basically the same Staxrip settings, so I have no clue as to why this particular encode fails to play nice. I have uploaded a small sample (~ 30 MB), pm'ing the link to ebr. Hoping it helps to analyse the problem.

[Luke 40072]

I am getting the same error on a fire stick with one specific hevc 10 bit encoded with Staxrip. Other 10 bit hevc encodes transcode fine (fire stick does not support 10 bit) using basically the same Staxrip settings, so I have no clue as to why this particular encode fails to play nice. I have uploaded a small sample (~ 30 MB), pm'ing the link to ebr. Hoping it helps to analyse the problem.

 

Thanks for doing that. We'll see what @@ebr thinks.

[ebr 15664]

I am getting the same error on a fire stick with one specific hevc 10 bit encoded with Staxrip. Other 10 bit hevc encodes transcode fine (fire stick does not support 10 bit) using basically the same Staxrip settings, so I have no clue as to why this particular encode fails to play nice. I have uploaded a small sample (~ 30 MB), pm'ing the link to ebr. Hoping it helps to analyse the problem.

 

I cannot get to your sample yet but what is the bitrate of this item in question?  Is it way over the device specs like the one in this topic?  Did you try lowering the bitrate setting in the app?

[ebr 15664]

Okay, finally got your sample.

 

When this item direct plays on my Mi it is fine but, when we transcode it, the audio ending up at the player has 0 channels and the player is failing on that.

 

Not sure how that is happening.  Perhaps @@softworkz has a clue...

 

ffmpeg-transcode-dfa88d00-b21e-4967-8c95-4e480a2a3766_1.txt

[Luke 40072]

Okay, finally got your sample.

 

When this item direct plays on my Mi it is fine but, when we transcode it, the audio ending up at the player has 0 channels and the player is failing on that.

 

Not sure how that is happening.  Perhaps @@softworkz has a clue...

 

ffmpeg-transcode-dfa88d00-b21e-4967-8c95-4e480a2a3766_1.txt

 

While it's transcoding if you go into the transcode temp folder and open up one of the segments in vlc, what does it show for audio info?

[ebr 15664]

While it's transcoding if you go into the transcode temp folder and open up one of the segments in vlc, what does it show for audio info?

 

I had to crash the app to be able to capture them but no audio is played by VLC for them.  Here are a few of the segments.

 

segments.zip

[rmich 2]

Thanks for looking into this. One thing that caught my eye is that when looking at the Metadata displayed in vlc, there is an unreasonably low BPS value of 80. Could that be the reason? I'm going to try if downgrading to an older version of mkvmerge changes anything.

Edited June 26, 2019 by rmich

[Luke 40072]

Thanks for looking into this. One thing that caught my eye is that when looking at the Metadata displayed in vlc, there is an unreasonably low BTS value of 80. Could that be the reason? I'm going to try if downgrading to an older version of mkvmerge changes anything.

 

That would be a useful test. thanks.

[rmich 2]

Thanks for looking into this. One thing that caught my eye is that when looking at the Metadata displayed in vlc, there is an unreasonably low BPS value of 80. Could that be the reason? I'm going to try if downgrading to an older version of mkvmerge changes anything.

Tried different mkvmerge version, same outcome, including the weird BPS value in metadata, and no luck transcoding on Fire TV. However, if I encode the default English audio to 5.1 instead of the original 7.1, the video transcodes ok (with exact same video stream). So the original would probably transcode ok as well if one would select the second (German) audio track as source for the transcode, which is 5.1. Fire TV app does not allow to select audio track before starting playback though, so I couldn't test that.

 

Now here comes the really strange part: the original 7.1 encode transcodes fine if the destination is a browser (Firefox) on my Windows machine! It would seem there must be a slight difference in transcoding parameters depending on the player target.

[ebr 15664]

Fire TV app does not allow to select audio track before starting playback though, so I couldn't test that.

 

Yes it does but you may have disabled showing those controls in the app settings.

[miniliQuid 91]

Hey guys, just adding it here since I was looking for something like this problem (think it fits my issue).

My mom recently started using my emby server to watch Game of Thrones from season 1.

She doesn't watch too often, but a few weeks back she started, with episode 1 and up to episode 9 things were working fine.

 

No halfway through episode 9 she stopped, and went to bed, next day she tried finishing that episode but it gave the "too many errors, giving up" error.

This was approximately a week back, before that everything worked fine with the Fire TV Stick.

 

Told her to try and resume the Sherlock Holmes movie she watched halfway through, that no longer started and gave the same error as well.

Did get to run Agents of SHIELD on the firestick though. On android app Game of Thrones works fine, Emby Theatre as well.

 

I do have most files in x265 10bit, but the strange thing is, it all worked perfectly fine 2 or 3 weeks back, and only last week the error started.

 

Edit: PS where can I change the bitrate in the options? I know you can when you start the file, but since it doesn't start, can you do it before playing on fire TV stick, or just somewhere in the option menu so it always starts at a much lower rate instead of 80mb/s?

Edited June 30, 2019 by miniliQuid

[ebr 15664]

Edit: PS where can I change the bitrate in the options? I know you can when you start the file, but since it doesn't start, can you do it before playing on fire TV stick, or just somewhere in the option menu so it always starts at a much lower rate instead of 80mb/s?

 

Hi.  Have you clicked on the "Settings" icon in the last row on the home screen?

[rmich 2]

Yes it does but you may have disabled showing those controls in the app settings.

Found the option, thanks. Choosing the 5.1 audio track does not help though, transcoding still bails out with the "too many errors" message. Still it is pretty clear that the problem is with the 7.1 audio track, and since the same audio does transcode well for a Firefox target, I hope it will be possible to track down the cause using the sample I sent earlier.

[Luke 40072]

Thanks for the info.

[miniliQuid 91]

Hi.  Have you clicked on the "Settings" icon in the last row on the home screen?

No it's my parents TV I was talking about hehe.

Luckily I don't use Fire TV or the Fire TV stick and non of the other apps have the same problem.

 

They did find the setting though and dropped it to 1mb/s but same problem persists.

Files that used to play before won't even start anymore...

Edited July 1, 2019 by miniliQuid

[ebr 15664]

No it's my parents TV I was talking about hehe.

Luckily I don't use Fire TV or the Fire TV stick and non of the other apps have the same problem.

 

They did find the setting though and dropped it to 1mb/s but same problem persists.

Files that used to play before won't even start anymore...

 

Hi.  Can you provide details?

 

Are you running the beta server?

[miniliQuid 91]

Hey. No beta here (AFAIK at least) Version 4.1.1.0.

Streams to Emby for Android, Emby Theatre & Fire TV Stick regularly.

Just recently Fire TV Stick thinks we should buzz off with 75% of the media on the server or so and gives the error.

 

Will ask them to try again so I can pick the latest log and attach it in case that helps

[miniliQuid 91]

Okay here is the log, started the show around 13:00 I think (few minutes back), the same error came up.

embyserver.txt

[ebr 15664]

It doesn't look like the app is ever actually trying to play the video so there must be a problem happening before it gets there.

 

Can you have them reproduce and send a log from the app?  Instructions are also in the link above - please be sure to provide the information requested when they send it.

 

Thanks.

[miniliQuid 91]

Log should have been send a minute ago or so.

Should be under account name Alie.

File that should have started is Game of Thrones Season 1 episode 10.