MPEG-2 transcoding instead of directly playing on NVIDIA Shield?

[Jägs 85]

@@Luke suggested I post my follow-up question from this thread (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/70392-video-encoding-failed) here.

 

Background:  I am having playback issues with ripped DVDs in Emby for Android TV (2nd Gen Fire TV & NVIDIA Shield).  The suggestion was a driver issue and the solution was to add a dedicated graphics card, but...

 

One other thing I was just thinking about, though--and maybe I am misunderstanding what's happening:  I'm using an NVIDIA Shield for playback (via the Emby app).  Shouldn't MPEG-2 files direct play on it like my other content, instead of transcoding through ffmpeg?  According to NVIDIA, they expose the Shield's MPEG-2 hardware engine to Android TV apps (https://forums.gefor...er-with-shield/). 
 
To test this, I did run the same videos through Kodi (via Emby for Kodi) and VLC (via Emby's UPnP) on the Shield and they all played back fine.
 
Again, I'm not going to pretend to know all of the nuances of what's going on under the hood, but I thought I'd double check.

 

Any idea why this is happening?

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  We'd have to look at a specific example.

 

Thanks.

 

How to Report a Problem

[Deathsquirrel 745]

From my experience, the likeliest cause is the video is interlaced and you have the option enabled to deinterlace on the server.  If that's not it of course post the info that EBR requested, but that's the only reason MPEG-2 content gets transcoded when I'm using my shield.  A lot of DVD content, especially TV, was interlaced.

[Jägs 85]

From my experience, the likeliest cause is the video is interlaced and you have the option enabled to deinterlace on the server.  If that's not it of course post the info that EBR requested, but that's the only reason MPEG-2 content gets transcoded when I'm using my shield.  A lot of DVD content, especially TV, was interlaced.

 

I'm 99% sure this is what is going on, so thanks for the explanation!  Is there a way to disable this just to confirm?  I cannot seem to find the deinterlace options in 4.0.2.0.  I'm looking under Transcoding but perhaps this is not the correct spot?

[ebr 16184]

I'm 99% sure this is what is going on, so thanks for the explanation!  Is there a way to disable this just to confirm?  I cannot seem to find the deinterlace options in 4.0.2.0.  I'm looking under Transcoding but perhaps this is not the correct spot?

 

Hi.  The option is in the app playback settings.

 

Thanks.

[Jägs 85]

@ebr Thanks, I'll look for it there!

 

One more question:  assuming this is the issue, the remedy for the overarching problem seems to be to get a dedicated graphics card.  I assume deinterlacing can be done by the GPU, correct?  I just want to make sure that getting a new card (either the GTX-1050 or the RX-570) will resolve this.

 

Thanks!

[ebr 16184]

If the items play back okay without the de-interlace setting, then you don't need to do anything.

[Jägs 85]

Unfortunately, disabling deinterlacing in the app did not resolve the problem.  For log files, please refer to my first post.  I've also made a five-minute clip of one of the files in question using MKVToolNix and have uploaded it to Dropbox:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jl9991agk2j3842/sab.s01.e01%20%28clip%29.mkv?dl=0

 

Let me know if you need anything else to help diagnose this.

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  Your first post doesn't have any log files but we'd need to see these after you changed the app setting anyway.

 

What, exactly, is the "problem" you're trying to solve, as well?

 

Thanks.

[Jägs 85]

Thanks for your responses!  I posted the log files in the original topic to which I linked in my first post, but I've attached new ones after I disabled deinterlace on the app.

 

The problem is that these files are not playing.  As I explained in the first post, they play just fine on Android using the Kodi app via Emby for Kodi/Emby Connect and VLC using Emby's UPnP service.  They simply refuse to play in the app itself, though:  the loading animation simply spins indefinitely and the ffmpeg log concludes with "video encoding failed Conversion failed!"

 

In the original topic, the suggestion, ultimately, was that I get a separate graphics card so as to bypass the CPU as, for some reason, the Emby was having problems with the open source AMD drivers and AMD has not released drivers for the version of Ubuntu I'm running.

 

Hi.  Your first post doesn't have any log files but we'd need to see these after you changed the app setting anyway.

 

What, exactly, is the "problem" you're trying to solve, as well?

 

Thanks.

emby.txt

ffmpeg.txt

Edited March 9, 2019 by Jägs

[Jägs 85]

OK, some strangeness:  I just fired up the same video that has been causing these issues with my Android devices on my iPad and the iOS app had no problem playing them back.  An ffmpeg log was not generated for this--I assume because of direct play--but I've attached an updated server log.

emby.txt

[Jägs 85]

Now that I've had time to process this, the result in my previous comment isn't all that surprising if the ffmpeg transcode on Emby is causing the problem:  if there's no need to transcode and the file direct plays, there should be no problem.

 

Here's the real strangeness, though:  I watched part of the show on the iOS app, just to make sure things kept on playing.  I then went back into the Android TV app on the Shield and resumed from there:  it continued playing as expected.  NOTE:  I have deinterlace turned off in the app.  BUT, when I tried to start the next episode, the Shield had the same problem and the ffmpeg log generated the same error.

[ebr 16184]

The reason it is transcoding is the subtitles.  If you can turn those off or obtain external text ones, then the item should direct play.

 

From your experience, though, it sounds like something in the beginning of the video is corrupted.  You might try re-encoding one...

[Jägs 85]

I'll both of these (disabling subtitles and re-encoding).  Thanks!

 

EDIT:  Disabling subtitles did the trick, thanks!

Edited March 10, 2019 by Jägs