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Emby for Android TV cannot DirectPlay .m2ts?


vlix

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Hi,

 

I have a lot of movie files in .m2ts format (basically straight copies from (UHD) Blu-rays). These files play just fine in Kodi via the Emby add-on, as well as in the Emby web player and, more to the point, in Emby for Android. However, I also have a Beelink GT1 on which I have installed Android TV. On this device, Emby for Android TV refuses to play .m2ts files without transcoding, because the "container is not supported".

 

I have a hunch this is because Emby for Android uses MPV as the media player, while Emby for Android TV uses ExoPlayer. Can someone confirm this? And is there perhaps a way to force Emby for Android TV to use MPV?

 

Thanks!

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Deathsquirrel

Almost nothing plays those natively.  Run them through MakeMKV and you'll get direct playback assuming the rest of the stream details are supported by that device.

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Almost nothing plays those natively.  Run them through MakeMKV and you'll get direct playback assuming the rest of the stream details are supported by that device.

Well, that's not my experience. Like I wrote, Kodi (via CoreELEC) plays them fine, as well as the Emby web player and Emby for Android. VLC on both Windows and Android also plays them fine. Same for MPC-HC on Windows. Only Emby for Android TV seems to have issues with DirectPlay.

 

I don't want to make .MKV files out of them because I want to preserve the original Blu-ray files (by which I mean the entire Blu-ray, including menus, extras etc).

Edited by vlix
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Are they actually not playing properly?  They should not be transcoding - but just remuxing (depending on the specifics of other streams).  Can we please look at an ffmpeg log from an example?

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Deathsquirrel

Well, that's not my experience. Like I wrote, Kodi (via CoreELEC) plays them fine, as well as the Emby web player and Emby for Android. VLC on both Windows and Android also plays them fine. Same for MPC-HC on Windows. Only Emby for Android TV seems to have issues with DirectPlay.

 

I don't want to make .MKV files out of them because I want to preserve the original Blu-ray files (by which I mean the entire Blu-ray, including menus, extras etc).

Cool, knock yourself out.  I'm way past bored with this argument.  Devices don't natively support these disc-based storage methods.  Some players do but the number is decreasing.

 

Switching to MKV will solve this.  Otherwise they'll require remuxing or full transcoding, depending on the details.

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Okay, the reason it is transcoding is the combination of an unsupported container and PGS subs - which have to be burned in if we cannot direct play the item.  Re-packaging to mkv would solve all of this but, also, obtaining text-based subs would eliminate the transcode and burn-in.

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Okay, the reason it is transcoding is the combination of an unsupported container and PGS subs - which have to be burned in if we cannot direct play the item.  Re-packaging to mkv would solve all of this but, also, obtaining text-based subs would eliminate the transcode and burn-in.

OK! Did a little more testing. Indeed I can Direct Stream on my Beelink Android TV box if I disable the built-in subtitles.

 

But exactly which component of Emby for Android TV doesn't support the .m2ts container? Is it ExoPlayer? As I wrote before, Direct Play (including PGS subs) works fine on Kodi + Emby, and also on Android on my phone. But Emby for Android seems to use MPV instead of Exoplayer. Would installing Android (instead of Android TV) on my Beelink box solve my problem?

 

Thanks for you advice! I do realize that re-packaging to .mkv would make my life a lot easier, but in my particular situation, that's still an option that I would like to avoid if possible.

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Emby for Android/MPV is going to have other limitations (like not supporting your 5.1 audio at all).  That's why we don't use it on the TV.

 

Exoplayer does not support .m2ts because it is not a container it ever expects to see since that is an optical disc format and none of these devices have disc readers.

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Crap... that's bad news for me. I guess I will have to either stick with Kodi and its clunky interface, or use Emby for Android TV with an external player. Or download external subtitles for everything. At least I have options :). Thanks for your help!

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