Amazon Firestick 4k Gen 2 Only playing sound No picture or video

[majek718]

I have my Jellyfin server installed in a Docker running in the latest version (10.10.3). 4k videos plays fine on my PC browser and other device clients. But on my Amazon Firestick 4k which is connected to my TV via HDMI is not showing any videos and only playing sound. Even the media player controls are not showing. Some 4k videos works fine and plays well. There were only some that are not working. My TV is capable of playing different codecs and TVs browser can play the videos fine. It is only in Firestick that is showing this issue.

I tried different options such as setting my TV's HDMI format to "Enhanced HDMI" and switching on/off the Dolby Atmos settings but still not working.

I also tried setting Audio to "Downmix to stereo" instead of "Direct" on the playback options on the Android client and unchecking the "Bitstream Dolby Digital Audio." This seems to work but in just a short time it shows "Player error encountered. will re-try... Too many errors. Giving up."

Forcing transcoding by making the bitrate lower still with the Audio set to "Downmix to stereo" and the "Bitstream Dolby Digital Audio" still unchecked seems to work but my issue here is the playback is a bit laggy at times.

Here are some information about my setup:

Jellyfin Server:

• Installed in Docker using version 10.10.3
  
• Transcoding is enabled and using the settings in the screenshot
             
  
• The hardware of my server:
     - HP Elitedesk 800 G3
     - Intel® Core™ i3-6100T CPU @ 3.20GHz
     - OS: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
     - 8GB RAM   
     - 500GB HDD
  

Television: Devant 65QUHV05 (Hisense Brand)

Jellyfin Client:

• Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Streaming Media Player 2nd Gen 2023
  
• The Jellyfin for Android client that I am using is v0.18.2.
  

Here are some of the logs for my video playback (Only Movie name is changed):

FFmpeg.DirectStream logs:
https://pastebin.com/6QpVaN9s

Jellyfin Logs:
https://pastebin.com/f4u52C0F

[theguymadmax]

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-and...ssues/2630 (old issue)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...ssues/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:

1. 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
2. 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
3. Force Transcoding on ATV: Reduce the bitrate or set audio to stereo to trigger transcoding on the client.
   
4. 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.
   
5. 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.
   

[TheDreadPirate]

To add to what theguymadmax said, you also did not enable a couple of important settings.

You did not enable hardware accelerated encoding. Check "enable hardware encoding" and "allow encoding in HEVC format".

Neither of these is contributing to your problem, though.

[majek718]

I can confirm that stripping DV/HDR10+ Metadata works! Thanks for sharing me this information @theguymadmax.

Although isn't it very tedious to convert all my 4k media each? Also is there a way to determine which one to convert. What I am doing right now is testing each video one by one then converting it if it doesn't work.

How can I do this faster? I'll also try other workarounds.

[theguymadmax]

You can use a tool like MediaInfo to check your files. You only need to convert files that contain both DV and HDR10+. If the file has DV with just HDR or HDR10, no conversion is needed.
   

Tinymediamanager is also a great tool for identifying the type of HDR.