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+--- Thread: playback on firestick that should be transcoded says Direct playing (/t-playback-on-firestick-that-should-be-transcoded-says-direct-playing)
playback on firestick that should be transcoded says Direct playing - lm8w5qv47 - 2025-01-05
I've got a couple of videos that when I go to play it on a firestick I get audio but just a black screen. Even the menu doesn't show up and I have to hit the back button twice to get back to the jellyfin app.
It's not just my firestick/monitor as someone else using a firestick reported the issue with this movie and they were watching on a regular TV so I think it's something specific to these files not either of our monitor/tv's.
I've watched these movies on my TV via Kodi and it played fine. I can stream them to my web browser and to my phone andthey transcode correctly and I can watch them there so it's something specific to the jellyfin app on the firestick but just with these file as I can trancode other things.
I believe the issue is that the movies shows up as being 4k dolby vision dolby atmos 5.1. The
I ran ffprobe on the files and I think this is the pertinent information
Video: hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084), 3840x1606 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1920:803], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn (default)
Video: hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084), 3840x1606 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1920:803], 24 fps, 24 tbr, 1k tbn (default) (original) (forced)
When the movie is playing on the jellyfin server under the active devices I click on the little i info button on the stream and for both it says "Direct playing The source file is entirely compatible with this client and the session is receiving the file without modifications."
the monitor it's playing to is an ancient crappy PC monitor with no HDR no dolby vision and definitely not that resolution so transcoding absolutely should be necessary.
checking the logs on jellyfin server all I see is this. No transcode log is created which makes sense as it doesn't seem to think it needs to transcode so it isn't.
[2025-01-04 23:21:47.487 -08:00] [INF] User policy for "theusername". EnablePlaybackRemuxing: True EnableVideoPlaybackTranscoding: True EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True
Under the playback Transcoding I've got hardware decoding set for everything, I've got enable enhanced NVDEC decoder checked, Allow encoding in HEVC format is checked and the tone mapping algorithm to use is BT.2390 but I don't think any of that matters as it doesn't even try to transcode.
Jellyfin server is Server version 10.10.3
Jellyfin app version is jellyfin-androidtv 0.18.3 release
Device Model is Amazon AFTKRT which is a fire tv stick 4k Max (2nd gen)
software version is FIRE OS 8.1.2.5 (RS8125/2586) which is up to date according to the firestick
I've tried to get debug logs off of the jellyfin app but I'm not sure where to get them. Debug is enabled and the logs are supposed to be sent with the crash reports but it's not crashing so nothing comes through to the server
RE: playback on firestick that should be transcoded says Direct playing - theguymadmax - 2025-01-05
This is a known issue caused by a bug in ExoPlayer on devices using the MT8696 MediaTek chipset, which is found in Fire TV 4K Sticks and the latest Google streamer. It occurs when playing media that includes both Dolby Vision and HDR10+. Here are several threads related to this.
AndroidTV
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/issues/2630 (old issue)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/issues/4021 (new issue)
Exoplayer/AndroidX Media
https://github.com/google/exoplayer/issues/11096 (old issue)
https://github.com/androidx/media/issues/1895 (new issue)
Workarounds:
AndroidTV
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/issues/2630 (old issue)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/issues/4021 (new issue)
Exoplayer/AndroidX Media
https://github.com/google/exoplayer/issues/11096 (old issue)
https://github.com/androidx/media/issues/1895 (new issue)
Workarounds:
- Remove DV Metadata: Follow the steps in this forum thread to strip out the Dolby Vision metadata.
Code:/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -stats -fflags +genpts+igndts -loglevel error -i "/path/to/dvhdr10+_video.mkv" -map 0 -bsf:v hevc_metadata=remove_dov=1 -codec copy -max_muxing_queue_size 2048 -max_interleave_delta 0 -avoid_negative_ts disabled hdr10_video.mkv - Remove HDR10+ Metadata:
Code:/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg -y -hide_banner -stats -fflags +genpts+igndts -loglevel error -i "/path/to/dvhdr10+_video.mkv" -map 0 -bsf:v hevc_metadata=remove_hdr10plus=1 -codec copy -max_muxing_queue_size 2048 -max_interleave_delta 0 -avoid_negative_ts disabled dv_video.mkv - Force Transcoding on ATV: Reduce the bitrate or set audio to stereo to trigger transcoding on the client.
- Use Kodi as an external player for the ATV client: Kodi allows you to choose the format compatible with your TV. You can disable Dolby Vision or HDR10+ as needed.
- Use Kodi with Jellyfin Plugin: Kodi allows you to choose the format compatible with your TV. You can disable Dolby Vision or HDR10+ as needed.