SOLVED: Player Fatal Error Spam on FireTV Stick 4K Jellyfin Client

[calamari7207]

Greetings,

I have a persistent issue with the Jellyfin app on Fire TV when playing certain content (4k DV/HDR) on my LG Oled c7. The video and audio start without issues but the message 'player fatal error' starts appearing after a few seconds while the content keeps playing, until the stream closes with a 'too many errors, giving up' message kicking me back to the Jellyfin home or completely crashing the app.
Other 4k HDR fiiles play fine, only certain files seem to be problematic.
The server is on 10.9.11, I tried on 2 different machines (one in Docker, other with Proxmox LCX) with different hardware and the issue persists.

The same files play perfectly in Direct stream with Plex or on a Jellyfin server with version 10.8.12 and the Jellyfin native app from the LG TV.
Furthermore as a second, perhaps unrelated issue, playing all HDR files with a 10.9.11 server and the Jellyfin LG app forces transcoding with a 'video range not supported' reason, which kept me from updating from 10.8.12 which direct streams them without issue and pushed me into trying out a FireTV stick 4k.

Here is a log from one of those fatal error streams, please let me know if you require more information. Any help is greatly appreciated as although I can stream the content as desired by juggling between Plex and an old Jellyfin server version, I would very much prefer solve the issue and keep everything on a updated Jellyfin server.

[theguymadmax]

In the Android TV app, is Bitstream Dolby Digital audio enabled? You can check this by going to Preferences -> Playback -> Advanced Playback Preferences -> Bitstream Dolby Digital Audio.

[calamari7207]

In the Android TV app, is Bitstream Dolby Digital audio enabled? You can check this by going to Preferences -> Playback -> Advanced Playback Preferences -> Bitstream Dolby Digital Audio.

Hi, thanks for the reply. This option is turned off as when kept on, a lot of media files (but not all) would show only a black screen (with Dolby Vision or HDR popups) while the audio correctly plays in the background.

[theguymadmax]

I though that might be the case. There’s a bug with the Fire TV Max that causes a black screen with only audio when the content has both DV and HDR10+ metadata. Plex has addressed this issue in their client, but it seems there’s nothing in the works for the Jellyfin Android TV client as far as I can tell. Your options are to use Kodi with the Jellyfin add-on, strip the HDR10+ data from your file using this command:


ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0 -c copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=39" output.mkv

Or you can force transcode the media, as you’ve done by disabling E/AC3. I'm not sure why it's failing, it should work fine that way. Instead of disabling E/AC3, you could force a transcode by setting playback to stereo instead of direct. I also have a Fire TV 4K, and I make sure my media is only in DV/HDR, avoiding DV/HDR10+ altogether.

[calamari7207]

I though that might be the case. There’s a bug with the Fire TV Max that causes a black screen with only audio when the content has both DV and HDR10+ metadata. Plex has addressed this issue in their client, but it seems there’s nothing in the works for the Jellyfin Android TV client as far as I can tell. Your options are to use Kodi with the Jellyfin add-on, strip the HDR10+ data from your file using this command:


ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0 -c copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=39" output.mkv

Or you can force transcode the media, as you’ve done by disabling E/AC3. I'm not sure why it's failing, it should work fine that way. Instead of disabling E/AC3, you could force a transcode by setting playback to stereo instead of direct. I also have a Fire TV 4K, and I make sure my media is only in DV/HDR, avoiding DV/HDR10+ altogether.

Thanks, I ended up installing Kodi with the Jellyfin addon and enabling the metadata choosing option (only DV) in the Kodi advanced settings. That solved any playback issue I had with the Jellyfin server without the need to tinker with remuxing manually the files. Now the only problem is that I do not quite like the standard Kodi's UI and navigation compared to the official Jellyfin client :P