Transcoding seems to fail on mpeg films

[Tony_D 0]

I have several films which are :- Format  : MPEG Video / MPEG-PS

None of them play on my samsung TV, If I manually convert them with ffmpeg to H264 they work ( ffmpeg -i "Step Up.mpg" -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -c:a copy Step.Up2.mkv ). They play fine from a usb drive so its not my TV.

 

 

 

embyserver(5).txt ffmpeg-directstream-e8a13556-65fb-4b09-9c45-a30aa770ab90_1.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, are you saying your tv doesn't support mpeg2?

@SamES

[Happy2Play 9780]

And the wonders of figuring out why &TranscodeReasons=DirectPlayError.  But no transcoding is happening it is just changing containers per the directstream log.

&VideoCodec=h264,h265,hevc,av1,mpeg2video&AudioCodec=ac3,aac,mp3,opus  &TranscodeReasons=DirectPlayError

17:30:56.048 Stream mapping:
17:30:56.048   Stream #0:1 -> #0:0 (copy)
17:30:56.048   Stream #0:2 -> #0:1 (copy)

 

[SamES 1057]

58 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, are you saying your tv doesn't support mpeg2?

@SamES

I was testing mpeg1 as that was the sample supplied, but apparently the sample was inadvertently modified from the original when the sample was made. I hope I will get a correct sample to test soon.

I haven't tested mpeg2 in this case.  According to the Samsung developer specs for these models, they should all play mpeg 1 & 2.

There is a theory from the user that the issue is the MPEG-PS container, which would account for my personal mpeg1 samples, but again, the developer specs say that both mpeg PS and TS containers are supported.  If it is just the container that's the issues, then this would align with the container swap that @Happy2Playmentioned.

My concerns at this stage are that even after transcoding (or container swap, etc) he is still getting a black screen.  I haven't seen this with any samples I've tested.  When I get an updated test sample I will try and verify this.  I also don't think we can currently differentiate between PS and TS type mpeg containers.

Finally, I have never heard of this issue previously, but in the last few weeks it feels like there have been several reports from different users.  It makes me feel like Samsung have broken something with a firmware update as nothing has changed here.  Unless we were always transcoding these in the past, and now something has changed on the server resulting in a black screen when it transcodes?

[Tony_D 0]

Hi Its a QE55Q83A OLED TV , which is perfectly capable of playing anything I have direct from a USB, 

When I originally uploaded a file ffmpeg converted it to Format version: Version 1 ( MPEG1VIDEO), which does play

After modifying my command to retain the orginal format its broken

I used medainfo to get more info than is supplied with emby. 

Format version: Version 2 ( MPEG2VIDEO)all fail in some way, When I try and play an error message :- media player error code: player_error_not_supported_format,player state : IDLE. Sound plays but no video.

On my google TV it plays with broken sound and jumpy video

from mediainfo:-

General
Complete name                            : /mnt/Movies.All/Movies/Films_2/Test.001/002/out2.mpg
Format                                   : MPEG-PS
File size                                : 22.2 MiB
Duration                                 : 30 s 0 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 6 218 kb/s
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS

Video
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2

[SamES 1057]

10 hours ago, SamES said:

My concerns at this stage are that even after transcoding (or container swap, etc) he is still getting a black screen.  I haven't seen this with any samples I've tested.  When I get an updated test sample I will try and verify this.  I also don't think we can currently differentiate between PS and TS type mpeg containers.

I've now got the mpeg2 sample.  It is an mpeg-ps container and it does fail with DirectPlay.  On remux it gives me a black screen.  If I take an individual .ts segment from the transcoding folder it DirectPlays fine, so there is nothing wrong with the video stream.

Is this because it is an interlaced video stream and we're trying to stream it via hls when we should be transcoding it?

[Tony_D 0]

Does that indicate that I will have to manually transcode to H264, Not difficult but it will take a while, I can easily generate a script but with 600-700 movies that I have identified using the report export plugin I would prefer not to. Some of the movies are quite old

[SamES 1057]

Just now, Tony_D said:

Does that indicate that I will have to manually transcode to H264, Not difficult but it will take a while, I can easily generate a script but with 600-700 movies that I have identified using the report export plugin I would prefer not to. Some of the movies are quite old

Not necessarily, let's see what Luke says about needing to transcode interlaced content.

[SamES 1057]

On 09/08/2024 at 21:42, SamES said:

I've now got the mpeg2 sample.  It is an mpeg-ps container and it does fail with DirectPlay.  On remux it gives me a black screen.  If I take an individual .ts segment from the transcoding folder it DirectPlays fine, so there is nothing wrong with the video stream.

Is this because it is an interlaced video stream and we're trying to stream it via hls when we should be transcoding it?

@Luke, we're seeing a lot of these playback issues recenly with 'black screen', generally on Samsung TV's.  The common issue that I'm seeing is that they are all recovering from a playback error, and are trying to DirectPlay the interlaced video stream in HLS. 

Has this changed on the server recently as in the past I'm certain that interlaced content was always deinterlaced for HLS, but now it is not.

[Luke 42077]

On 8/15/2024 at 7:20 AM, SamES said:

@Luke, we're seeing a lot of these playback issues recenly with 'black screen', generally on Samsung TV's.  The common issue that I'm seeing is that they are all recovering from a playback error, and are trying to DirectPlay the interlaced video stream in HLS. 

Has this changed on the server recently as in the past I'm certain that interlaced content was always deinterlaced for HLS, but now it is not.

OK then I guess we can stop trying to do this.

Please let us know how the next version of Emby for Samsung compares. Thanks.

Thanks.

[Tony_D 0]

When will the next release be ?

If its not soon I will have to start manually transcoding nearly 700 films !

[SamES 1057]

27 minutes ago, Tony_D said:

When will the next release be ?

If its not soon I will have to start manually transcoding nearly 700 films !

I wouldn't do that it, it shouldn't be far away.  The current USB Beta version is 3 weeks old, so I'd expect a new release of it in the next week or two.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Temporary fix would be to lower the playback quality on client to force transcoding.  Just needs to be lower than media being played but this would apply to all media.

 

But in the end you should probably look at reencoding so this media does not have to be transcoded.  But really is a personal choice and server capabilities.