Plex Server and Plex App

[Kanoe]

Hi Guys,

I have been trying to get 4k blu ray rips with Dolby Vision and Atmos that can be played from the NAS.

As such I bought a Fire TV 4k stick as that was listed as being able to do so, my current devices could do the dolby vision but none of them (LG TV, Hisense TV, Chromecast 4k, Sony X800M2) could pass through the atmos soundtrack, all would just say audio not supported.

This is fine, not everything can but the Fire TV 4k stick can.

The difference with the fire tv stick is I am having to use Plex instead of just a DNLA built in media player that the other devices that cant do atmos have that the Fire TV stick doesnt seem to.

No bother I thought as my synology NAS can do Plex Server and there is a Plex app on Fire TV. Got that set up and then made some test 4k vision and atmos files that were 5 mins long as mp4's with the codecs below and the recommender encoder settings from the amazon device spec list for each codec:

- 264 10bit
- 265 10bit
- VP9 10bit
- AVI 10bit
- NVENC 265 10bit

chucked them on the NAS and updated the library and good news all the files played without issue and without transcoding with Dolby Vision and Atmos from the Fire TV stick.

So i picked the one i liked the best and did the whole movie in it but when i try to play it on the Fire TV stick i click on it and it seems to start trying to get some data for it, and i get a loading swirly on the screen then after about 10 seconds i get a something went wrong message.

It seems like its timing out trying to get metadata or something that it needs to do prior to displaying the play button and the review scores / cast member info that works on the smaller files.

If anyone has an experience with Plex (Server and App) and could suggest things to try I would be grateful as have exhausted everything I can find.

I tried VLC first on the Fire TV stick but it wouldnt play back files with atmos sound tracks so i ruled that out.

I could try jellyfin but its more of a pain to set up the server on the NAS that it is for Plex so ideally dont want to have to go down this route (something about Docker that i have no idea what that is or how to use it and I dont have the brain space or time to try and work that out).

[jimborae]

Can't really help with the underlying issue except have you checked if Quick Sync is enabled or not? In your case it sounds like it should be disabled as the FireStick is doing the decoding/transcoding not your NAS running Plex Server. One thing I am slightly surprised at is your JellyFin comment, as it's Synology then yes a docker container is required but it's very easy to do with plenty of guides available online. But be aware once you go down the route of docker containers it becomes a slippery slope and you find yourself trying out all sorts. Currently I'm running 14-19 containers at any one time on my DS920+ . Finally I suppose it may be possible that the AFTV stick doesn't have enough grunt to play larger files or possibly the NAS itself maybe a little under powered or running out of RAM etc if it's trying to do unnecessary transcoding.

[Jonatron]

I tried a bunch of things like Chromecast, plex on a raspberry pi, android on another SBC. I plugged my laptop into the TV HDMI and all the problems disappeared.

[Kanoe]

All transcoding on the plex server is off.

Anything that needs a guide is out. Guides are great until it doesnt work then it juat becomes a massive time sink.

Ive never understood what docker is as a concept let alone using it.

Seems like its virtual machine without being called a virtual machine.

Dont have a PC that i can connect to the tv plus trying to get dolby vision and atmos out of pc seems a massive headache too.

[AGTDenton]

I've not had much luck with 4K either. On any monitor/TV it's really dark. Regardless of playing the file directly in VLC or via Emby.

That said I don't have any buffering issues when trying to play a 4K file through either method, theres a 2-5 second delay before it starts playing, but after that it's no problem at all.
I have my data spread over a 3x HDD pool.

How is your storage setup?

[jimborae]

Which model Synology is it?

[Kanoe]

Its a DS216+ I think.

Its basically 1 4TB drive, there is another 4TB drive in the NAS but that is just for weekly backups from the other drive.

VLC will play the files and would have been my first choice but i cant get it to do audio passthrough. The file plays but with no sound.

Just found a DS Video app for Fire TV, going to try that seeing as i run DS Videostation anyway, and maybe try KODI on it too.

[jimborae]

Its a DS216+ I think.

Its basically 1 4TB drive, there is another 4TB drive in the NAS but that is just for weekly backups from the other drive.

VLC will play the files and would have been my first choice but i cant get it to do audio passthrough. The file plays but with no sound.

Just found a DS Video app for Fire TV, going to try that seeing as i run DS Videostation anyway, and maybe try KODI on it too.

I take it it's still chugging along on 1Gb of RAM then? If so I'd definitely recommend you look into upgrading it 8Gb (not sure it can take more), not saying this is the issue but it wont hurt giving it more RAM. Also you may be able to monitor RAM usage when you try to play the file by using the Resource Monitor widget which shows real time RAM usage I believe. If it spikes then you may be able to at least eliminate that potential issue by upgrading, if it doesn't then that's not the issue I suppose.

[Kanoe]

Hardly touches the ram or cpu as all transcoding is off.

Yeah its still on 1GB of RAM, do actually have an 8GB stick of the right stuff sitting around so might try it sometime. Seems a pain to get to.

Seem to have fixed it tonight by turning off metadata for the files. I can live without that.

[jimborae]

Hardly touches the ram or cpu as all transcoding is off.

Yeah its still on 1GB of RAM, do actually have an 8GB stick of the right stuff sitting around so might try it sometime. Seems a pain to get to.

Seem to have fixed it tonight by turning off metadata for the files. I can live without that.

It is a bit of pain to get to, however it's the perfect opportunity to clean out the all the dust bunnies. I found that running 8Gb of RAM was noticeable though, just generally using the NAS, especially after Memory Compression was disabled in the System Settings as you no longer need to have that turned on. Also, and I know this won't affect you, but having more RAM allows containers to run better. And for my NAS (as I use it as a Media Server & auto download box) containers are a game changer. (It really is worth looking into. (Last plug I promise)

[Kanoe]

Yeah, i might also take the opportunity to swap out the drives, being thinking about bigger ones for a while anyway so might be a good time.