Fire Cube v3 not playing 4K .mkv files

[Tech127 20]

I'm trying to completely move away from my Win11/Kodi box.  I just received my new Cube v3 and loaded the Emby version from the Amazon app store.  Everything works, except for any of my 4K .mkv files.  When I launch one of these titles, I'll see the normal spinning circle for a second like it's going to play, then it just sits at a black screen for infinity.  Do I need to sideload (and if so what's the link to use in downloader?) or is this a known issue? 

[Luke 42077]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[Tech127 20]

Hey Luke,

I sent a debug log at 10:53am eastern from the Cube.  The user was "Smokey" and I tried playing Dark Knight (fail), Dark Phoenix (fail), and Deadpool (success).  On the fails, it was a brief spinning circle and nothing but black screen. No video, no audio.  On the success, it played fine. Video and audio.

I also rebooted the app on the FTV and the server before doing this so hopefully the logs aren't a mile long.

Attached is everything from the server that was in the logs section during the relevant time frame

If you need anything else, please let me know and thanks for looking!!

embyserver.txt hardware_detection-63805134964.txt embyserver-63805134951.txt hardware_detection-63805134823.txt

[ebr 16169]

5 minutes ago, TechLife said:

I tried playing Dark Knight (fail), Dark Phoenix (fail), and Deadpool (success).  On the fails, it was a brief spinning circle and nothing but black screen.

Hi.  Android only sends us the last bit of activity so all we got was the successful playback.  Can you please just reproduce ONE failure and then send the log?

Also, have you disabled transcoding for this user? Edit: I can see in your server log that you have not.

Thanks.

[Tech127 20]

31 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Android only sends us the last bit of activity so all we got was the successful playback.  Can you please just reproduce ONE failure and then send the log?

Also, have you disabled transcoding for this user? Edit: I can see in your server log that you have not.

Thanks.

So much for trying to be helpful lol. Debug log sent. Only Dark Knight failed attempt. 11:34am eastern

[ebr 16169]

Unfortunately, I still cannot see the playback issue because there are a ton of image loading errors after it relating to this issue in your server log:

	System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'D:\Shared Data\Emby\Metadata\metadata\library\28\28b5d5b8bef4bd1f1914503b5c11ac91\poster.jpg'.

Have you tried to move things around on your system lately?

Figuring out what is going on with that image may also lead us to whatever is going on with the playback error.

[Tech127 20]

7 minutes ago, ebr said:

Unfortunately, I still cannot see the playback issue because there are a ton of image loading errors after it relating to this issue in your server log:

	System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'D:\Shared Data\Emby\Metadata\metadata\library\28\28b5d5b8bef4bd1f1914503b5c11ac91\poster.jpg'.

Have you tried to move things around on your system lately?

Figuring out what is going on with that image may also lead us to whatever is going on with the playback error.

The short answer is yes. I had to build a new machine to replace my 7yr old server. I put all the the media in the same places D:\Moves and D:\TV. Installed Emby, then found directions here to copy all the settings over from the old box. I made everything humanly possible the same when it comes to software. The goal was a hardware swap but keeping the software the same.

Should I just delete and rebuild the libraries? If so what’s the best way to do that?

 

P.S. FWIW I just unchecked every transcoding box for this user, killed and reloaded Emby on the cube, tried playing TDK and the results were the same

Edited November 27, 2022 by TechLife

[ebr 16169]

16 minutes ago, TechLife said:

Should I just delete and rebuild the libraries?

Yes, I think that is probably best at this point.  You've obviously got some bad pointers in places due to trying to migrate machines.  If you have a backup for user data using our backup plug-in, you could just start with a fresh install and then restore the users.

17 minutes ago, TechLife said:

FWIW I just unchecked every transcoding box for this user,

Yeah, you don't want to do that.  I just wanted to be sure you hadn't done that.

[Tech127 20]

Okay cool. Thanks ebr. I’ll clean the crap out of everything and see where that gets us!

[Luke 42077]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[Tech127 20]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

New log has been uploaded at 9:09 eastern.  Server logs are below.

In terms of what I did, I took a backup using the app.  I did a full wipe of Emby from the server.  I deleted absolutely every file on the server storage drives so there was literally nothing but .mkv files and their containing folders.  I restored JUST the users from the backup.  Not even the watched data.  I created a D:\Shared Data\Emby\MetaData directory and pointed Emby there.  I told it to store the downloaded posters, etc. with the mkv's themselves.  I disabled meta everything in Radarr and Sonarr.  I added the D:\TV and D:\Movies directories as sources for TV and Movies respectively.  I let it run it's library scan pretty much forever lol.  I did a second scan for good measure.  I deleted cache, etc. from the cube.  I launched the Emby app, enabled debugging again, and tried to play TDK.  Same result as earlier.  Uploaded the debug log as noted above.

Hopefully the logs will at least be a bit more usable now?

embyserver (1).txt hardware_detection-63805172596.txt embyserver-63805172560.txt

[Tech127 20]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

New log has been uploaded at 9:09 eastern.  Server logs are below.

In terms of what I did, I took a backup using the app.  I did a full wipe of Emby from the server.  I deleted absolutely every file on the server storage drives so there was literally nothing but .mkv files and their containing folders.  I restored JUST the users from the backup.  Not even the watched data.  I created a D:\Shared Data\Emby\MetaData directory and pointed Emby there.  I told it to store the downloaded posters, etc. with the mkv's themselves.  I disabled meta everything in Radarr and Sonarr.  I added the D:\TV and D:\Movies directories as sources for TV and Movies respectively.  I let it run it's library scan pretty much forever lol.  I did a second scan for good measure.  I deleted cache, etc. from the cube.  I launched the Emby app, enabled debugging again, and tried to play TDK.  Same result as earlier.  Uploaded the debug log as noted above.

Hopefully the logs will at least be a bit more usable now?

 

 

UPDATE:  I think I found it.  Upon more digging, it wasn't specifically my 4K content, it was ANY content with DTS or DTS-MA audio.  I unchecked DTS passthrough and they all work now.  Apparently the cube is incapable of passing DTS/DTS-MA.  What is the right way to configure this thing to get the absolute best video and audio quality possible from it?

Edited November 28, 2022 by TechLife

[ebr 16169]

12 hours ago, TechLife said:

UPDATE:  I think I found it.  Upon more digging, it wasn't specifically my 4K content, it was ANY content with DTS or DTS-MA audio.  I unchecked DTS passthrough and they all work now.

Excellent.  Glad you found that. 

 

[ebr 16169]

I still see image loading errors though.

	System.IO.IOException: System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file 'C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\cache\images\resized-images\e\e6fadad5-eac6-dbbf-85d5-659412282902.webp' because it is being used by another process.

Are you running two servers pointed at the same area or some other process that is blocking here?

[Tech127 20]

 

3 hours ago, ebr said:

I still see image loading errors though.

	System.IO.IOException: System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file 'C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\cache\images\resized-images\e\e6fadad5-eac6-dbbf-85d5-659412282902.webp' because it is being used by another process.

Are you running two servers pointed at the same area or some other process that is blocking here?

Thanks for everything, ebr.  I saw it too.  I am only running one server box with Win Server 2019 on an M.2 OS drive and 4 spinners.  No VM's or anything.  The server runs StableBit DrivePool to pool the spinners to a D:\ drive.  Otherwise it's just Emby, Radarr, Sonarr, and NZBGet for local software and NGINX to Cloudflare for external but what we're doing here in our tests is completely local.  Could this be some sort of permissions setting I've overlooked?  I have tried to make the install absolutely as simple as possible, but that doesn't mean I didn't overlook something...

Edited November 28, 2022 by TechLife

[Dizzy49 99]

On 11/27/2022 at 7:55 PM, TechLife said:

UPDATE:  I think I found it.  Upon more digging, it wasn't specifically my 4K content, it was ANY content with DTS or DTS-MA audio.  I unchecked DTS passthrough and they all work now.  Apparently the cube is incapable of passing DTS/DTS-MA.  What is the right way to configure this thing to get the absolute best video and audio quality possible from it?

I got the Gen3 today and just discovered the same.
I am also curious the best way to configure.  I have quite a lot of TrueHD Atmos, and my soundbar says "Dolby Mat" when it plays, and I do not get sound from the rear speakers, only the front and sides.

The files with Dolby Plus (or EAC3 5.1/7.1) show as "Dolby Atmos Mat" on the soundbar and I DO get sound from the rear speakers.

[ebr 16169]

5 hours ago, Dizzy49 said:

I have quite a lot of TrueHD Atmos, ... I do not get sound from the rear speakers

Atmos doesn't have rear channels, right?  As those are repurposed for the overheads...

[rbjtech 5284]

6 hours ago, Dizzy49 said:

I got the Gen3 today and just discovered the same.
I am also curious the best way to configure.  I have quite a lot of TrueHD Atmos, and my soundbar says "Dolby Mat" when it plays, and I do not get sound from the rear speakers, only the front and sides.

The files with Dolby Plus (or EAC3 5.1/7.1) show as "Dolby Atmos Mat" on the soundbar and I DO get sound from the rear speakers.

The Amazon Cube does not support TrueHD - thus I presume it is just using the embedded AC3 Core - (thus no Atmos ) but I would expect the rears to work - as they would with any other AC3 stream.

Do you get the rears with a normal AC3/Dolby Digital file ?

 

Device Specifications: Fire TV Cube | Amazon Fire TV

 

Edited December 4, 2022 by rbjtech

[rbjtech 5284]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Atmos doesn't have rear channels, right?  As those are repurposed for the overheads...

As it's a soundbar -  I think he means, front being centre and 'sides' being front left/front right ? 

[Dizzy49 99]

16 hours ago, ebr said:

Atmos doesn't have rear channels, right?  As those are repurposed for the overheads...

I have a Nakamichi 9.2 soundbar.  The setup is the soundbar up front, two subs, two side (surround) speakers, and two rear (rear surround) speakers.  I believe all the surround speakers project sound upwards to assist with the spatial effects

 

15 hours ago, rbjtech said:

The Amazon Cube does not support TrueHD - thus I presume it is just using the embedded AC3 Core - (thus no Atmos ) but I would expect the rears to work - as they would with any other AC3 stream.

Do you get the rears with a normal AC3/Dolby Digital file ?

Interesting, in the link you provided it lists TrueHD.  I've only tried EAC3 5.1/7/1 and Dolby Digital+ files.  I'll find a few with plain AC3 and Dolby Digital variants and see what i get.

• AC3 (Dolby Digital)/ EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) /Atmos(DDP+JOC)/AC4(Atmos)/Dolby TrueHD(Atmos)

[rbjtech 5284]

2 hours ago, Dizzy49 said:

I have a Nakamichi 9.2 soundbar.  The setup is the soundbar up front, two subs, two side (surround) speakers, and two rear (rear surround) speakers.  I believe all the surround speakers project sound upwards to assist with the spatial effects

 

ok - so I had a quick look at the specs of the soundbar and it's effectively using some proprietary technology to matrix the 'height' channels - it does not appear to be an Atmos 7.1.2 or 5.1.4 discreet Atmos setup.  With that in mind - I would check the config of the unit to make sure it's setup to play/use the rears.

Both EAC3 and TrueHD via Emby use the discreet height channels on my Atmos setup (with dedicated ceiling speakers, so I 100% know of height sound  ) - via a AVR and Shield Pro combination.

It is probably worth submitting an error log from the Cube App to @ebr when playing something that should use the rears, to see what Emby is seeing as a playback device.  If it's reporting only a 5.1 - then that is your issue, but I'd be surprised if the soundbar is not using a 'matrix' effort to mix it over all available channels - that's what my system does - even without Atmos it still attempts to use the height channels to provide 'ambience' and I needed to set this up in the AVR to tell it to do so. 

2 hours ago, Dizzy49 said:

Interesting, in the link you provided it lists TrueHD.  I've only tried EAC3 5.1/7/1 and Dolby Digital+ files.  I'll find a few with plain AC3 and Dolby Digital variants and see what i get.

• AC3 (Dolby Digital)/ EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) /Atmos(DDP+JOC)/AC4(Atmos)/Dolby TrueHD(Atmos)

My apologies - you are correct - I missed it as it's oddly listed at the end - as the 'best' HD sound format I thought they would have put that first ! 

Edited December 5, 2022 by rbjtech

[VirulentPip 93]

4 hours ago, rbjtech said:

My apologies - you are correct - I missed it as it's oddly listed at the end - as the 'best' HD sound format I thought they would have put that first ! 

I found out the hard wat it's only supported via HDMI IN Passthrough unfortunately. When playing TrueHD atmos it uses Dolby MAT, but it's meant to end up showing Dolby Multichannel PCM 7.1 or just plain Dolby Atmos (it does with HDMI IN passthrough) but it simply shows Multi Channel PCM 7.1 meaning the Atmos meta data via Dolby MAT is not working.. Whether this is a bug with the Cube I don't know, I sent mine back. 

[rbjtech 5284]

11 minutes ago, VirulentPip said:

I found out the hard wat it's only supported via HDMI IN Passthrough unfortunately. When playing TrueHD atmos it uses Dolby MAT, but it's meant to end up showing Dolby Multichannel PCM 7.1 or just plain Dolby Atmos (it does with HDMI IN passthrough) but it simply shows Multi Channel PCM 7.1 meaning the Atmos meta data via Dolby MAT is not working.. Whether this is a bug with the Cube I don't know, I sent mine back. 

Ah-ha - great info thanks (you did mention this previously to be fair,  but I forgot ) - so it doesn't natively support THD from the Emby App.  Thus it's either using the AC3 track from it (if even included) or it's doing some internal processing which may or may not be compatible with your Soundbar ... 

The joys of AV Codecs - gotta love it ! 

[Dizzy49 99]

18 hours ago, rbjtech said:

My apologies - you are correct - I missed it as it's oddly listed at the end - as the 'best' HD sound format I thought they would have put that first ! 

I left a pretty scathing review on Amazon last night... Which they didn't approve.  100% factual and I did not violate ANY rules (I checked twice).
I DID get a call from the Amazon Fire department though, wanting my feedback on what needs to be fixed in the current version or what I'd like to see in a new version.

I told him that having only 10/100 on a new device in 2022 is an embarrassment, particularly when the diff in cost for the port is like 2 cents, prob less with the quantity they would purchase in.  And that actually supporting the things you CLAIM to support would be a big one.  He asked for some details and I told him that apps that are NOT streaming compressed audio and/or video not only like the bandwidth from a gigabit connection, but need actual support for the codecs the claim they support like TrueHD.

I told him that like at least a dozen other reviewers, that they actually allowed to post, I will be returning it and purchasing a 3yr old Shield device since it offers support that the brand new Cube does not.

 

On another note....

Dolby Digital via the Emby app on the Cube plays fine.  Normal Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus are Direct Streamed and played as 5.1

On the TV app,
TrueHD Atmos 7.1 is Transcoded and I get "Dolby Digital Plus" on my Soundbar.

DTS-HD MA 7.1 won't play at all
DTS 5.1 "Dolby Digital Plus"
Dolby Digital Plus Atmos 5.1 direct streams and I get "Dolby Atmos"

I found a couple files with Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 and EAC3 7.1, they both Direct Stream and come across as "Dolby Digital Plus".  I'm only getting sound from 2 of the 4 surround speakers so I think I'm only getting 5.1, not 7.1

 

[rbjtech 5284]

41 minutes ago, Dizzy49 said:

I left a pretty scathing review on Amazon last night... Which they didn't approve.  100% factual and I did not violate ANY rules (I checked twice).
I DID get a call from the Amazon Fire department though, wanting my feedback on what needs to be fixed in the current version or what I'd like to see in a new version.

I told him that having only 10/100 on a new device in 2022 is an embarrassment, particularly when the diff in cost for the port is like 2 cents, prob less with the quantity they would purchase in.  And that actually supporting the things you CLAIM to support would be a big one.  He asked for some details and I told him that apps that are NOT streaming compressed audio and/or video not only like the bandwidth from a gigabit connection, but need actual support for the codecs the claim they support like TrueHD.

I told him that like at least a dozen other reviewers, that they actually allowed to post, I will be returning it and purchasing a 3yr old Shield device since it offers support that the brand new Cube does not.

 

On another note....

Dolby Digital via the Emby app on the Cube plays fine.  Normal Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus are Direct Streamed and played as 5.1

On the TV app,
TrueHD Atmos 7.1 is Transcoded and I get "Dolby Digital Plus" on my Soundbar.

DTS-HD MA 7.1 won't play at all
DTS 5.1 "Dolby Digital Plus"
Dolby Digital Plus Atmos 5.1 direct streams and I get "Dolby Atmos"

I found a couple files with Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 and EAC3 7.1, they both Direct Stream and come across as "Dolby Digital Plus".  I'm only getting sound from 2 of the 4 surround speakers so I think I'm only getting 5.1, not 7.1

 

It continues to look that way that after 3 years, no device is yet capable of playing back or passing through the HD Audio codecs.    the only thing to be wary of is a) a new Shield has to come out soon and b) AV1 (in hardware) support is missing on the 2019 Shield.

 If it were me, I'd just get a much cheaper 4K Max stick - it'll play everything the Cube will do (incl AV1) at a much-reduced price and you can then move it to another TV etc when the new Shield does eventually come out .. ?