Firestick 4K Max - Major Issues

[tomstephens89]

Have posted my experience on the AndroidTV github with the Firestick 4K max and am looking for insight from others:

Usually I wouldn't dream of posting on github without detailed evidence and logs which demonstrate an issue.... However I can't seem to home in on this enough to get specifics, nor do there seem to be any logs.

Basically I am running a brand new Firestick 4k Max with the current 0.15.11 Jellyfin AndroitTV client installed. If using Exoplayer, across numerous titles (appear to all be x265, some HDR), I will get "Player Error Encountered. Will re-try..." before being dumped back to the menu. This appears to happen when lowering the quality setting to force a transcode. HOWEVER, even when direct playing, eventually I'll get stuttering and pausing, then audio only. If I switch to libVLC, everything appears to play, however will then stutter, or audio/video go out of sync.

On my Nvidia Shield Pro however, running the same version of the client, everything works very well. So this issue is unique to the firestick 4k max.

Any ideas? Is there some sort of major Codec related issue with the Firestick 4K max?

[TheDreadPirate]

There is a config in the Android TV client to send logs to the server. Turn that on, replicate the issue, and look at the client logs that were sent to the server. They will land in the same directory as the server logs.

[Fran314]

Not OP but I'm having pretty much the same issues so I thought I'd share my logs hoping for some insight.

I am using the jellyfin-androidtv 0.16.2 client on a Fire Stick (although not the 4K Max version) trying to view some h.265 10-bit HDR content and I'm having major issues with playback.

If I try to use the ExoPlayer, the playback will constantly crash and retry, giving the attached logs.

  log_20240107.log.txt (Size: 43.45 KB / Downloads: 136)

  FFmpeg.Transcode-2024-01-07_11-54-34_d63b98eda2f123e87fedaed45db4f93f_5a78e4eb.log.txt (Size: 21.71 KB / Downloads: 107)

If I try to use the LibVLC player, the playback will succeed but with major stutter, making it unviewable.

It is worth noting that I do (seem to, though I haven't thoroughly tested) to have similar, but not as severe, issues when playing anything on the firestick that is not direct playing. I don't think this is a server-side issue because I have no troubles viewing the exact same content on the web client from my laptop, and the server seems to have more than enough horsepower to live-transcode the content.

I have enabled the config to send the logs from the client to the server, but I haven't found any other file that wasn't there already so I am assuming that the client logs go together with the server logs in the log_yyyymmdd.log file? I am attaching the tail of that file regarding the playback issues.
There were MANY transcode log files, I am attaching only the first one but if any more are needed let me know

[TheDreadPirate]

Which specific fire stick model?

[Fran314]

The one that is just "Fire TV Stick" (as in not Lite, not 4K and not 4K Max)

[TheDreadPirate]

There have been several revisions of every model. I need a model number so I can figure out what your particular model can do.

[tmsrxzar]

The one that is just "Fire TV Stick" (as in not Lite, not 4K and not 4K Max)

if it's not a 4K then it does not support 4K ...

"hevc (Main 10), yuv420p10le(tv, bt2020nc/bt2020/smpte2084), 3840x1600"

generic "TV Stick" has had 3 versions the newest only does 1080p
"H.265 (HEVC). Hardware accelerated up to 1080p @ 60fps, 20 Mbps, Main 10 Profile Level 4.1, Color space 8-bit and 10-bit input with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG."

2nd gen does not do main10 or 4K
"H.265 (HEVC). Hardware accelerated up to 1080p @ 30fps, 25 Mbps, Main Profile Level 4.0, Color space 8-bit support"

1st gen doesn't do hevc at all

so any way you look at it, your device does not support what you are playing and the client won't scale for you

all specs here https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-t...vstickgen3
(click the dropdown on the page to check each device)

[Fran314]

There have been several revisions of every model. I need a model number so I can figure out what your particular model can do.

It is a "Fire TV Stick (3rd Gen)" running Fire OS 7.6.6.4 (PS7664/3772). If it's needed I can also give a serial number

if it's not a 4K then it does not support 4K ...

I didn't think that would be an issue, I thought that jellyfin would automatically transcode it to a downscaled version. Anyway, I manually transcoded it to 1080p with everything else unchanged and I get the same issue, with these new logs


  log_20240108.log.txt (Size: 31.15 KB / Downloads: 136)

  FFmpeg.Transcode-2024-01-08_08-35-59_4fe1e8f3b289f889a8640dc75292821c_a3dd826d.log.txt (Size: 25.93 KB / Downloads: 74)

the newest only does 1080p
"H.265 (HEVC). Hardware accelerated up to 1080p @ 60fps, 20 Mbps, Main 10 Profile Level 4.1, Color space 8-bit and 10-bit input with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG."

assuming that 3rd gen is the newest, it should now be fully supported, or am I missing something again?

Thank you!

[tmsrxzar]

server is transcoding at a rate less than 1x, not fast enough for streaming playback

lots of issue lines with pgs subs in the log
android** may have issues with pgs subs in general

compare to a copy of the 1080p video in the new log without pgs subs, ffmpeg -i (infile) -map 0:v -map 0:a -c copy (outfile).mkv

[TheDreadPirate]

What are your server specs? It says you are using QSV and the video output is 1080p. Should be transcoding way faster.

What CPU do you have?