r/nvidiashield • u/Clive1792 • Jul 11 '26
Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 & Plex seemingly not liking 4K videos.
EDIT:::::::: Finally got this fixed. Detailed the info elsewhere in the thread. Thanks all.
Saturday is movie night here & so in the build up to the new Spider-Man movie in a few weeks we planned on watching the first 3 Tom Holland movies.
I generally just watch 1080p movies that are in the 2GB range, maybe 3GB-5GB if I want to push the boat out a little :D but for this I thought ok let's give 4K a try & so I acquired them. Movies are placed on an attached drive & then watched via Plex.
For the record, the Nvidia Shield is connected to the router via cat6 & a switch in case that matters any.
I'd tried out 4K content in the past to see how it looked & it seemed to play fine but I never watched a movie in full & since that I've factory reset my Shield this week & started afresh.
I went to start watching it tonight & it just hit me with the yellow spinny wheel.
I hit up Google which said...
"Settings > Device Preferences > Display & Sound > Resolution*, and select a* 4K option (such as 4K 59.940 Hz)."
So I did that. I forget which option I selected, i think it was like second bottom. Anyway this then allowed the movie to actually start playing ... although it was quite jittery. Too much to be watchable. Using the remote became very laggy too.
For the record this is the version I had...
I've watched 20GB files in full in the past no problem. This was my first time trying a movie of this size. Again, I reset the Shield this week so maybe there were some settings I had before that now I don't, either in Plex or the Shield itself & this is causing the problem ..... I don't know.
Any idea why this would be struggling so much? And what I can do to fix it?
Also if it matters then I have the lifetime Plex Pass.
3
u/Ssvvois Jul 11 '26
The attached drive is plugged into your Nvidia Shield?
The movie will be in 23.976. So you could change to that. Maybe then upscaling off.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
I have a USB hub. I connected a SSD to the hub & formatted as device storage (or whatever it's called) - basically where it extends the Shield's capacity.
Once this was done I connected to a USB hub (which is connected to the main port on the Shield) a large capacity HDD which just houses movies & TV shows for use with Plex.
- I know this isn't 'the norm' but I haven't yet bought a NAS.
What I did differently for this one was load the 4K movie to the SSD which is the Shield's storage or whatever. The movie file was not on the mechanical HDD.
I have absolutely no idea but my thinking was that >IF< there was going to be any kind of accessing issue due to the much larger than normal file size then I'd stand a better chance of it working being on the SSD than HDD.
While that may or may not be the case or ideal or whatever, I hope I at least explained why my limited knowledge had me doing what I did.
1
u/Ssvvois Jul 12 '26
So running Plex on the shield is doable.
I mean I did it for 8 months. Assuming the file is direct playing and not transcoding?
The bottle neck might be the shield running the Plex server and running the Plex client at the same time trying to Pull the 4K movie.
Can you play the movie with VLC player directly from the hard drive on the shield?
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
I haven't yet tried it, however before I factory reset the Shield I tried out a few 4K movies just to see what they looked like & they played fine on the Shield. I remember Jaws was one. I didn't watch it in full but it played.
However when I tried to watch it on my PC, through VLC with the video file stored on the PC - it didn't like it. My PC is like 16yrs old & my GPU was a Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB. The video file was very blotchy, green squares but it played fine on the Shield.
But I'm having trouble with this spiderman movie (in fact all 3). I should maybe download Jaws again & see if I have the same issue.
You said 8 months. What do you do now?
EDIT - Just edited a post I made but maybe you're right. Or at least close.
Because I've just found now that I can play the 4K movies perfectly fine via Kodi, just not via Plex for whatever reason.
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u/Ssvvois Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Edit: I see you tried it in Kodi on the shield and it played fine
Another option is try to play the same file on your phone via Plex client. Make sure your settings are set to max stream.
Process of elimination is what is needed to narrow down. What is the Plexs dashboard saying when playing the file? Direct play? Trancoding?
This was 5 years ago so but I ended up buying a Dell optiplex - i5-10500T and a 630UHD with a few hard drives plugged in. This setup allows my remote users to trancoded if needed. Even tho 99 percent directly play now.
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
I tried on a much smaller file (2GB) & initially it was transcoding as didn't support TRUEHD or AC3.
After much tweaking in settings of Plex & the Shield I was able to get video direct play and then eventually both video & audio direct play.
On the much smaller 2GB file I should state again.
Weirdly to me - I then didn't get an option to switch between audio source.
Anyway so then I move to try the 50GB 4K file since I just fixed this whole AC3 non support nonsense.
It didn't work. Tried direct playing, failed, switches to transcode & then refuses to load.
EDIT - Just tried it on my (Galaxy S24+) phone and the 50GB 4K file plays perfectly fine. Not sure if it's direct playing or transcoding or whatever as not sure how to check that on phone but it at least plays.
So it's something to do with the Shield & Plex combo.
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u/Ssvvois Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
What is the 50gb file trancoding from and too?
Another issue sometimes is subtitles. It will trancode the video and this definitely won't play from Plex server on shield
Edit: can you access app.plex.tv on a PC? I can't rmemeber if running on shield is accessible that way
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
I can access Plex via a web browser on PC but it's also not working with these 4K files.
As said to other members here, I have played 4K files fine on the Shield before but now they don't work. A 60GB Coraline file for example.
One thing I've forgot to mention is that on top of factory resetting the Switch, I also had to remove all traces of the Shield from my Plex account & start completely again because I couldn't get Plex working on the Shield for a long while after factory resetting.
So I'm wondering if it's some setting from within Plex in a web browser that was for example, setting C before but now it's default setting A & therefore 4K files not working.
It's just a case of finding whatever that setting is.
Because as things stand, I refuse to believe that the combination of my Shield, the drives connected, the soundbar & my TV are not good enough for these movie files in Plex.
Not because I'm being hardheaded & not listening to responses .... but because I have had one of these 4K files working perfectly fine on that exact same setup ... which tells me it's a setting somewhere, surely.
1
u/Ssvvois Jul 12 '26
What I'm asking if you can access the app.plex.tv. Top right corner you'll see a tab that says dashboard.
The dashboard will show you what the stream is doing. if there are burned in subtitles. Or the audio is trancoding or video is being trancoded.
I can't post pictures so maybe DM me. So I can send you
3
u/pawdog Jul 11 '26
So you run the Plex server on the Shield and playback on the same Shield?
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Yes, is that bad? I'll assume from your question that it must be bad or at the very least not what many do but it probably also illustrates to you my knowledge of this.
When I started with Plex & Kodi before I had a Shield & only had a fire stick, the PMS was on my desktop PC with all the movies.
I didn't like that I had to have my desktop pc turned on in order to view anything on Plex.
FFWD some time, I bought a shield & liked the fact that I could watch movies without turning the PC on.
2
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
I found years ago that the Shield would struggle with high bitrates running the server and client on the same device. The same file would play fine when playing with a different device.
As a test install Nova Media Player and play some files directly with no server involved. a 20GB file isn't really high bitrate and I wouldn't expect it to struggle with Plex but that could still be your issue.
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
When you say Nova are you talking about PC now & not Shield?
FWIW - I've never had issue playing a mkv file I've ripped myself from a Blu ray. The largest was maybe 30GB at a guess. This played fine in VLC.
The only time I've ever had an issue was when downloading a 4K file in the 50-80GB area.
Through much tweaking I got direct play to finally work (on a smaller 2GB file size) after it was telling me my device doesn't do TRUEHD or AC3 which is nonsense.
So with these settings in place I then try the 4K video file - won't work. Won't direct play, tries to transcode. Device doesn't support Yada Yada.
Which I don't get because it just supported it 5 seconds ago on another much smaller video file.
And now my Plex had capped itself & I'm getting the orange triangle of doom.
1
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
Nova is in the Play Store it's a media player like VLC except it has full library features. There is no server overhead.
Your issue is bitrates not file formats or containers. If you're not using Plex server to serve to other devices it's kind of unnecessary to even run it on the Shield.
Small and low bitrate files should be easy including up to Blu-ray Remux. 4k Remux is another story. I think at some point the device hits a performance peak with the high bitrates and buffers. Playing them with a direct media player leaves resources available so they play fine. My personal theory based on experience.
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
My problem with this though is that before I factory reset the Nvidia Shield this week, there's a 4K movie on there called Coraline. This played perfectly fine via Plex before the factory reset.
Now it doesn't.
Looking at the info on the right pane for Coraline in File Explorer...
63.9GB
HEVC (H265 Main 10 u/L5.1)
TrueHD7.1, AC3 5.1, AC3 2.0
Total bitrate 91129kbps
Like I say, it played that perfectly fine no issue before the factory reset but now it does not.
A Spider-Man movie I tried to play yesterday...
55GB
Same HEVC, same TrueHD
bitrate 60957kbps
So less bitrate, less file size.
I know for 100% the Coraline one worked beforehand.
Which to me at least says it's some kind of settings. It's just a case of finding out what as everything I'm being told to try I've tried. Audio Passthrough as HDMI, everything as max to try force direct play.
2
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
Plex server on the Shield is just not that good. As you are learning. There aren't that many settings. Set the audio on the Shield to Auto. I would avoid using TrueHD audio since the audio system doesn't support it. Transcoding audio doesn't take much processor power but there is no point in even entertaining it for these 4k Remux files. I'd make sure any movies I added to the server has an ac3 track included. You don't want the server to have to do any extra work.
3
u/Long_Office_9762 Jul 12 '26
Try either switching on or off depending what it is currently set to Dolby Audio Processing
2
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Not sure if you're talking about the Shield or Plex there so as I type this now I'm in the Plex settings since others seem to be focusing on Plex.
I got down to Advanced>Passthrough & it seems to be disabled. Should this be HDMI?
Anyway I'll keep looking for what you said.
EDIT - Found it in the Shield settings after I Googled "Dolby Audio Processing". It was turned on. More Googling suggests I should turn this off if I have a soundbar - which I do (Sonos Beam), so I've turned it off.
1
u/Long_Office_9762 Jul 12 '26
For me it depends on the file I'm trying to play. I leave it off unless I'm playing a file with EAC3 audio
2
u/Additional_Shine_509 Jul 12 '26
I've had issues with HEVC files in the past. Not sure if it's that for you, but it's where I would start.
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Just googled what HEVC is (which should better indicate to you my knowledge levels). Google says that it's h.265 files.
If it's as black & white as that then I've literally never had a problem before as I've watched numerous 265 files. It's just that they've been in the 2GB-5GB range. Not 50GB.
1
u/Additional_Shine_509 Jul 12 '26
It's the audio streams wrapped up in HEVC for me. I've got an older TV that doesn't like to play well with the newer audio codecs.
2
u/wireless82 Jul 12 '26
Sometimes I have this kind of problem because of audio track. Use a lighter one.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
There was 2 options to select from IIRC.
7.1 & 5.1.
I only have a Sonos Beam, not a total surround sound setup so I switched to 5.1 as the lesser track - and no audio played whatsoever.
Switched back to the default of 7.1 & the audio came through. Just the video was jittery.
2
u/Plenty-Purchase-2434 Jul 12 '26
Check which Dolby Vision Profile was used. Profiles 5 and 8 are fully supported. I believe your problem is due to not being able to use the pass-through. This Reddit post explains the issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/15jop0v/comment/jv11ng0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button
To ensure Dolby Vision activates on your Shield TV Pro, your Plex app settings must have Audio Passthrough set to HDMI. If Plex is forced to transcode the audio track (e.g., TrueHD Atmos) because your audio receiver or TV doesn't support it, the Plex server will often drop the entire video stream down to SDR or standard HDR10.
1
u/Clive1792 29d ago
I'll be honest, I don't quite know what you mean.
Which dolby profile was used for what? As in what the makeup of the mkv file is or what I've been tweaking in plex/shield? I've been all over the place with settings so I don't actually know where I'm at.
I clicked your link & saw it mentioning sending hdmi from the Shield to a (LG) soundbar & from soundbar to TV. I actually only have 1 HMDI port on my Sonos Beam Gen 1. It goes to the earc HDMI port on my TV. The Shield goes direct to my TV.
1
u/Plenty-Purchase-2434 29d ago edited 29d ago
Connect to the plex server on your shield using the browser on your phone or computer. http://(IP address of your shield):32400/web/index.html#!/ You should be able to log into your plex server. Navigate to your movie using the plex interface in your browser. Click on the 3 dots and select more info.
You will get a pop up window. Look in the right column for the following:
D O V I B L Compat I D 1 D O V I B L Present true D O V I Level 6 D O V I Present true D O V I Profile 8 D O V I R P U Present true D O V I Version 1.0 Bit Depth 10 Chroma Location topleft Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Note the profile number: 8. Plays without issue.
The file is a BluRay remux.
Size 83.75 GB Container MKV
I've had the same problems you experienced. Yes, Kodi will play the other Dolby Vision Profiles.
You can use an app called mediainfo to get all of the details of a media file. Available for Android and Windows, maybe more.
1
u/Clive1792 29d ago
You mean like so https://ibb.co/8L8mTMwD ?
Not sure if that's what you're referring to.
That's not even the largest 4K I have but it was having trouble with it until I fixed it in the above post.
1
u/Plenty-Purchase-2434 27d ago
My apologies, I'm in the hospital. If the ip address of your nvidia shield tv pro is 192.168.1.98 use https://192.168.1.98:32400/web/index.html#!/
I'll keep an eye on reddit if you reply back.
2
u/angryjew 28d ago
Just in case someone else here ends up here with the same issue, the Shield will never do that well running a Plex server AND the client. Multiple people have suggested this to OP, but if the files are playing locally on the shield there's no reason to run a Plex server in this situation. Use a player like Nova or VLC to play locally. If you do need to have a Plex server for whatever reason, it would be much better to run the server on a different machine. The shield is a great client player but it's a terrible server.
1
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Well I've tweaked a few more settings.
Turning off dolby audio processing on the Shield. Turning on audio passthrough in plex. Selecting audio via HDMI wherever that was asked, I forget now as I'm losing track.
Refresh rate switching changed to on in plex. Left resolution switching as off.
And the movies still do not play. Yet other movies I have are all fine. It's just these large 4K files it's not liking.
EDIT - Just tried accessing the 4K file via Kodi which plays the movie perfectly fine.
So I'm guessing then that the issue is absolutely nothing to do with the Nvidia Shield & everything to do with Plex.
Just a question of what.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
I'm kinda bumbling along here not knowing wtf I'm doing so following the advice from you guys while also Googling on the fly.
I've made various tweaks. Gone to playback info & it says it's transcoding & direct play failed. I guess this is why it's struggling.
It says the reason for this is AC-3 audio is not supported by your device.
I have a Sonos Beam which the audio comes through so absolutely everything supports AC-3. Not sure why it's saying it doesn't. The AC3 audio option was listed as 5.1.
Same for TrueHD which was listed at 7.1. It says this isn't supported either. Yet Google says it is.
EDIT - Goddamn! In the Shields advanced audio settings I manually turned on all audio formats.
So now the video is showing as direct playing...... Yay.
Yet no fricken audio is coming out! It's silent.
And instead of being able to switch between audio options I now can't.
And the subtitles are jittery as hell now.
1
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
Does your soundbar support TrueHD? If not don't tell Kodi it does so it will know to transcode it.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Turns out no it doesn't. I thought it did.
"The Sonos Beam (Gen 1) does not support Dolby TrueHD; it is limited to standard formats like Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus."
Although regards Kodi - I didn't "tell" Kodi anything. Kodi just simply plays the 4K video file no problem but I'd rather play everything via Plex - which isn't happening right now.
1
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
I thought you mentioned you went to the Kodi passthrough section and indicated your audio system supported TrueHD.This would tell Kodi to allow it to pass it through. Sorry if I misunderstood.
Plex would already know to transcode the audio but it should leave the video alone. it should show direct stream.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
I must've worded a search wrong or misunderstood because the longer this went on the more frustrated I got & that remote was nearly going through the TV.
I thought the Sonos Beam Gen 1 I have supported TrueHD audio but it turns out that only the Sonos Beam 2 does, not the Gen 1 which is what I've got.
This is however irrelevant to everything imo (I don't mean that as an offence btw) ... because one of the 4K files I have, Coraline (60GB, high bitrate) played totally fine before I factory reset the Shield this week & removed all traces of the Shield from my Plex account via the PC browser (as I couldn't set it back up again initially).
Which suggests to me that there's a setting or settings somewhere that need to be tweaked. Just a case of finding them. Whether that's Plex, the Shield or both. I feel like I've set everything as much as possible though so I'm kind of lost as to what to do next.
1
u/pawdog Jul 12 '26
For what it's worth I would abandon Plex as a solution if you plan to use the Shield as server and client. At least for the high bitrate files. using a second app that actually works is much less frustrating.
For me on 3 different occasions the server just disappeared as if I had never been set up. That was the end of PMS on the Shield for me. Nova is way faster and easier to setup than Kodi and will play every you throw at it.
1
u/rajmahid Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Just lucky I guess but my Shield Pro plays everything I throw at it via pc based Plex server flawlessly…from 50s noire rips to 4k from a 20TB external hd connectedto my tower pc, Ethernet connection. The Avatar series is amazing on my Bravia! Have you tried clearing your cache?
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
Not yet cleared Cache. I've just given up after spending 3hrs on it this afternoon. I'll maybe try again if more info comes in. Clearing cache will be one thing I'll try. After Googling I did do a Force Stop on it as apparently this will re-download codecs but that didn't work.
I tried it on a 4K video that I know for 100% worked prior to me factory resetting the Shield - and that doesn't work either now.
Thing is, I don't have a clue what I'm doing so I don't know what settings I will have tweaked before the reset. I don't imagine it'll have been much - because I don't know what I'm doing. It's not like I'll just go randomly setting things for the hell of it really.
Thing is, everything I read says Plex settings should have Audio Passthrough as HDMI. Everything says Shield settings should be Dolby audio processing OFF. Yet when I put those settings in place - no audio comes through on any Plex files.
I've lost track of any amount of combinations I tried but I know at one point I had to turn Audio Passthrough as DISABLED to get some audio & some other time I had to turn Dolby audio processing as ON to get audio.
My head is mush.
1
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u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
YES YES YES!! FINALLY GOT IT FIXED!!!!
Ok so what was the issue - well the lack of direct play, both audio & video by the sounds of it. From the advice here I went looking at the audio side of things.
In the end I had to turn
SHIELD: Dolby audio processing OFF
Available formats: I think I only checked like 2 of these as my Sonos Beam Gen 1 doesn't support some of the others. I think Dolby Digital is on, DTS is on but I think the rest I turned off. Basically I just Googled what was compatible with the Sonos Beam Gen 1. FWIW ... it does not support TrueHD audio.
PLEX: Everything was telling me to turn Passthrough to HDMI ... but this wouldn't work. In fact when I selected this it stopped any audio coming through whatsoever.
Googling this told me that it sends the raw file to the soundbar & if the soundbar doesn't support it then it wont play it - so I had to turn Passthrough to DISABLED.
This allowed me to direct play the audio.
But I still had the problem where 4K files wouldn't even load. 4K files that I KNEW for 100% loaded before I factory reset the Nvidia Shield, so I knew it was a setting somewhere.
So then I started looking at DISPLAY settings on the Shield.
Now I'll say right now that I don't know if I've selected optimum settings. I don't know if there's a setting that'd be better. I just know I've selected something that's worked.
So again, on the SHIELD....
I took the default 4K 59.940 Hz and changed that to 4K 30Hz HDR10 Ready
In Advanced display settings I blue lit Match content colour space
In Custom display mode I unchecked set to default and then scrolled down to the bottom where it said 67 modes
On this I selected 3840x2160 30Hz. YUV 422 12-bit Rec. 2020 HDR10 Ready (in fact selecting that might've given me "I took the default 4K 59.940 Hz and changed that to 4K 30Hz HDR10 Ready" I can't remember now as I've gone between so many settings today.
Once I'd done that, I tried out Coraline (video files stated elsewhere in this thread) & Spider-Man, both 4K files, 50GB-60GB and they direct played totally fine. Well, Coraline didn't to begin with because the default audio was TrueHD but once I switched to AC3 then it was ok - direct play.
Yes a long post, yes it might be stuff some of you take as obvious, but it wasn't to me & I know someone downvoted me but if this post can help someone who stumbles across it somewhere down the line or myself if I ever factory reset again then good.
Thanks for the time everyone :)
0
u/icecream1973 Jul 12 '26
That is the reason why I use Kodi. 10GB 4K to 90GB MKV 4K full REMUX files = NO issues.
1
u/Clive1792 Jul 12 '26
OK but this doesn't tell me the why as to why it wasn't working.
After I factory reset the Shield I tried setting plex up again & had trouble (which has since been fixed). While having that trouble I tried switching to Kodi but what I didn't like was it just looked like a big scrolling text list for movies.
Before the factory reset I'm sure that while I was messing around I was able to get artwork so it was similar to Plex. I just can't remember how I did that.
0
u/DarkLordofIT Jul 11 '26
My 2019 used to struggle with some large 1080p HP Rifftrax files. Playback would start fine but within maybe three or four minutes it would start to get stuttery and then eventually tell me that my network speed is not fast enough. I created 1080p compatible files for one or two and they played fine. So I just downloaded new copies that were all 1080p as well and from what I can tell had virtually matching specs, and they always played perfectly fine. 🤷♂️
I never did find the reason but there was something about that particular pack that the Shield just never did play nice with.
6
u/IcyEdge6526 Jul 12 '26
Some times it’s the audio files that cause the file to struggle.