Suddenly Not Being able to play movies on Roku

[JohnnyM 40]

I install an old ROKU on my system, a  "ROKU 2". Since then I have been unable to play a movie on any ROKU on the system without an issue.

 

Today I tried to play the movie RIO, a MKV rip of a DVD on a newer streaming stick. Movie seem to load and when it got loaded it returned to Emby detail page of RIO. 

 

Attached is the server log of this occurrence.

 

There are other issues happening on my Main ROKU that have been happening that never occurred before. Like it is transcoding but the system says that it is Direct play.

 

 

embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, is the roku firmware up to date? 

 

If it is transcoding, please attach the ffmpeg log. thanks.

[JohnnyM 40]

Here is the ffmpeg log

 

 

 

 

ffmpegLog.txt

[ebr 16169]

Hi, is the roku firmware up to date? 

 

Hi.  The above is a very important question as well.  With a device that old, you'll want to be sure it has up to date firmware.  Have you checked that?

[Luke 42077]

Additionally this log is from a trailer .avi file. Is that the right one?

[Happy2Play 9780]

The log shows Roku/DVP-9.10 and app app Roku SG 3.0.155

[ebr 16169]

Perhaps you had Cinema Mode enabled and the trailer caused the player to bomb out?  We should move on to the main item in that case but I'm not sure how well tested that scenario is...

[JohnnyM 40]

Sorry about the wrong log.

 

Attached is the correct one. It says that the movie Rio is transcoding but I don't understand why. The Roku I'm using is not the old one referred to in my prior texts. It is a fairly new one that has been working find until this issue. The movie being transcoded is a MKV file from a DVD with AC3 5.1 audio and has been playing fine.

 

 

ffmpegLog.txt

[Happy2Play 9780]

Sorry about the wrong log.

 

Attached is the correct one. It says that the movie Rio is transcoding but I don't understand why. The Roku I'm using is not the old one referred to in my prior texts. It is a fairly new one that has been working find until this issue. The movie being transcoded is a MKV file from a DVD with AC3 5.1 audio and has been playing fine.

&VideoCodec=h264&AudioCodec=aac

 

Capabilities returns only aac support.  So only audio is converted.

 

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (ac3 (native) -> aac (native))

[JohnnyM 40]

It never was transcoded before. It was always direct played until very recently. I don't know from my end what could have changed..

 

Attached is the MediaInfo report.

 

 

Rio MediaInfo.txt

[Happy2Play 9780]

What is Audio set to in the Roku settings?

[Luke 42077]

This is an mkv file. Do the old models not support that? @@speechles

[speechles 2055]

This is an mkv file. Do the old models not support that? @@speechles

 

We support MKV on every model.

 

    mkvVideo = "h264,mpeg4"

    mkvContainer = "mkv,webm"

 

There was an error playing the file and it is falling back into video player recovery. That is what is happening.

 

It looks like it incorrectly gives a transcode reason of container not supported but it does that for a reason. The MKV container is supported but maybe there was an error trying to direct play. If there is an error the app does play with capabilities and such an ffmpeg log is possible. The app will disregard direct play on the first error encountered. It will change capabilities to show that NO container is direct playable. The server won't know there was an error. It will give the "Container not supported" as transcode reason. But.. If the stats for nerds was used in the Roku app it would say "playback error" or "Direct play error" depending on Roku version used. The beta uses the correct "Direct play error" terminology as the server does. This is likely what is happening. An error during playback will cause this.

 

 

Also on a Roku 2 the audio track matters. The Roku 2 cannot direct play secondary audio tracks. It can only direct play the first track. So to get the second or subsequent tracks to play we must transcode the audio. If the AAC audio was chosen in the drop down for audio stream this would cause something that did not transcode before using the first audio track AC3 to suddenly transcode when using the second audio track of AAC.

 

 

----

 

If you use the Emby beta app for Roku this should solve the problem. 

Edited June 27, 2019 by speechles

[JohnnyM 40]

Thank you for your responses.

 

There is a misunderstanding about the ROKU2, it was not being used to play this movie. I was using a ROKU Premiere to play the movie. I mentioned the ROKU 2 because my problems started after the ROKU2 was added to the system.

 

I agree with speechles "There was an error playing the file and it is falling back into video player recovery. That is what is happening." The file must have encountered the error immediately since after the initial load, the movie does not start playing but reverts back to the movie detail screen. Also the movie plays with VLC, at least for the first 5 minutes when I stopped it.

 

I will try the Beta version of the ROKU app when I get a chance.

 

JohnnyM

 

PS There is only one audio stream in this movie. See MediaInfo above.

Edited June 27, 2019 by JohnnyM

[JohnnyM 40]

Problem solved with the Movie RIO on a ROKU.

 

Just to refresh you. This movie would not play on any of my ROKU's but it would play using Emby Theater and with VLC.

 

Finally I reripped the movie from the DVD to MKV, replaced the old rip with the new, rescanned the library.

 

Tried to play it with a ROKU and it played just fine. Something must have affected the file.

 

Strange, but problem solved.

 

JohnnyM

[Happy2Play 9780]

Is there a difference in the media info?

[JohnnyM 40]

No, Dolby Digital AC-3 6 Channel, Just like before.