Problem with playback of a 4k converted 1080p file on Fire TV 2nd Gen.

[Tupsi 4]

Let me start this thread by saying that I am allready figured out that this is not an emby nor emby app issue. I just encountered something weird and I am trying to figure out WHY this happens at all in order to find a more general fix for this. Just posting this here because I can only reproduce this problem on my fire tv 2nd Gen in native playback mode (no transcoding). I do not have an issue on my new fire tv 4k stick with this.

 

 

So I converted my first 4k source with ffmpeg down to 1080p using vp9 for the codec. The film looks good on my computer (in the browser) on my fire tv 4k stick (both running this native without transcode) and on all my other devices which need transcoding because they have no clue what vp9 means (nor most likely the cpu power to decode it :-) ).

 

Getting back to that 2nd gen firetv. Playing it back there I only get a mostly green picture with some blocks switching colors here and there, but never a real sound video.

 

The video plays fine again if I force transcoding via the "i have problems ...) option as emby server mangles it down to h264.

 

This also happens when I use kodi playing it back directly via the smb share, thats why I would rule out emby app to have "the problem" here.

 

Just curious would could be the problem with the file and how I can attack this finding out what is the actual reason, so any pointers would be awesome.

 

 

And just to clarify, this only happens to me when the source is 4k hdr; if i pull a normal/old BluRay out of my shelf and dump that to my computer and convert that to vp9, everything is fine.

Edited March 22, 2019 by Tupsi

[Tupsi 4]

found it, although it is still a bit strange. I encoded again and added -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v 0 to my encoding command line, enforcing pixel format and profile 0. The resulting file is about 10% larger, so it seems the old fire tv can only playback profile 0 correct streams while the newer ones have a bit more leeway.