Some MKV's no longer direct playing

[Harblar 29]

So I've noticed this several times now some of my Blu-ray mkv's are being transcoded.

 

The other night John Wick kept transcoding the audio (which is a Dolby Atmos track, yet all of my other Dolby Atmos mkv's play fine... Including Fantastic Beasts and where to find them) and tonight Rogue One 3d (not trying to play it 3d and all my other 3d rips direct play, including the Force Awakens) refused to direct play anything!

 

I have made zero changes to my setup and don't understand what or where the problem is.

 

I attached the Transcode log from Rogue One tonight.

 

Hopefully someone can give me a clue as to why I'm suddenly having these problems.

 

I also have th

ffmpeg-transcode-c519f24e-d74d-4059-bb76-fc18481f392d.txt

Edited April 5, 2017 by Harblar

[Luke 42078]

best practice for direct play is to set up the optional network path in your Emby library setup. Not sure if you did that or not, but since Theater is a windows app it will not be able to directly access this location:

/mnt/Movies/Rogue One A Star Wars Story (2016)/Rogue_One_A_Star_Wars_Story_t07.mkv

Without direct file access, it can still direct play through Emby Server. This one appears to be transcoding due to app's bitrate setting being at 40mpbs, while the video's actual bitrate is a little higher than that.

[Harblar 29]

Luke... Every other single movie I have is stored remotely and accessed the same way. All (that I've tested so far) work fine except for John Wick and Rogue One.  (DVD rips weren't direct streaming either, but now they appear to be again).

[Luke 42078]

Ok so if direct file access it not an option then look at the app's streaming btirate setting.

[Harblar 29]

Honestly, I'm not even sure how I would configure direct file access since I'm running Emby Server as a docker on an unRAID server.

 

That being said, I checked the apps bitrate setting and it was set to 1080p - 40Mbps. Honestly, I've always just set this to max so if it ever encounters a file it HAS to transcode it does it at the highest quality. Since you mentioned it, I switched it back to Auto and tried again and this time both movies direct streamed perfectly!

 

I'm glad it ended up being a nice simple fix, but any idea why it would play virtually every other movie I have perfectly fine except those two? All I can think is that they were really high bitrate encodes to begin with so maybe that was throwing things out of whack. (John Wick is 39Mbps+ and Rogue One is 40Mbps)

 

Oh well... Thanks for the help and quick response, Luke!

[Guest asrequested]

Try setting it to 4K 120Mb/s

[Harblar 29]

Try setting it to 4K 120Mb/s

 

Looks like my theory was right. When I put it at the highest possible setting both movies played fine. So I dropped it to 1080p@20Mbps and Boom! Transcode.  Went and tried the other movie that was working before and it also transcoded. At 35Mbps it direct plays, but it's encoded bitrate is only 32Mbps, so I think it's safe to say that's why It was having problems.

 

On an interesting side note, when I had it set to 1080p@40Mbps John Wick would only transcode the Audio. Since the Video portion of John Wick was encoded at 39Mbps it only transcoded the audio just to keep it at or below th 40Mbps limit. Since Rogue One was over 40Mbps on the video it transcoded the whole thing.  

 

And I learned something tonight!!! :-)

[Guest asrequested]

I keep mine at 4K 120Mb/s. Then it plays at whatever the file bitrate is.

 

[Harblar 29]

See, That's what I did for a long time and never changed it. Guess 1080p@40Mbps was the highest at the time. lol

 

FWIW, Auto Appears to do the same thing as the highest setting now.  If we ever get UHD MKV rips, I'll be sure to keep this thread in mind!  hahaha. :-)

[Guest asrequested]

See, That's what I did for a long time and never changed it. Guess 1080p@40Mbps was the highest at the time. lol

 

FWIW, Auto Appears to do the same thing as the highest setting now.  If we ever get UHD MKV rips, I'll be sure to keep this thread in mind!  hahaha. :-)

 

I hope auto works well for you. I've had many instances where it gets set to the lowest bandwidth (I have a 10G network). I don't have any 4K content or a 4K TV, but I still set it at 4K 120Mb/s. Now I have no problems