Some x264 videos show play time as 18:18

[Manutd7]

Hi All,

Some my x264 media files show playing time as 18:18. This is for movies, tv shows, etc.
Any idea how to fix this?

I use UMS 5.4.0 with Java Client VM 1.7.0_67

I tried to disable subtitles but that's the same (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=874).

Thank you

PS : I searched on the forum and seen nothing to solve my issue

[Duxa]

I am running into the same issue trying to play some movies from UMS on a WD TV.

Some more info. I am using the latest version 6 from the front page. The movies are MKV h264, have multiple audio tracks and subtitle, as well as chapters. Ive found some posts from 2013 stating that turning of subtitles may help, but I need to keep subtitles. I also need to re-encode the video as its being streamed as its sending the video over WiFi (no wiring is possible with my house unfortunately).

If attempting to play the video it will play beyond 18:18 and as far as I know will play the entire thing, but if you try to fast forward or rewnd it will exit out, probably because time code is messed up. Really inconvenient when stopping in the middle of a movie the night before and then trying to go back.

The videos have 6 channel audio if it matters.

In my rendering settings I have Mencoder at the top as I found that FFmpeg wont play some movies for unknown reason (give Error Code 1), while Mencoder plays those same files just fine :/

[Nadahar]

I have no idea why 18:18 is shown (or where it is shown), but when transcoding the total length is basicly unknown (as the stream is being generated on the fly). It varies how the renderers tackle this situation, but I'm in no doubt that the transcoding is what's causing this. It's also what's causing the loss of seeking/ff/rev. Some renderers are capable of communicating well enough with UMS to allow seeking/ff/rev during transcoding but many are not. If there is an option on the renderer to "allow remote control" or some variant of that, enabling that might allow seeking/ff/rev.

[Duxa]

I have no idea why 18:18 is shown (or where it is shown), but when transcoding the total length is basicly unknown (as the stream is being generated on the fly). It varies how the renderers tackle this situation, but I'm in no doubt that the transcoding is what's causing this. It's also what's causing the loss of seeking/ff/rev. Some renderers are capable of communicating well enough with UMS to allow seeking/ff/rev during transcoding but many are not. If there is an option on the renderer to "allow remote control" or some variant of that, enabling that might allow seeking/ff/rev.

Thanks for the reply. One thing of note though, it only seems to happen with mkv files. I have other files, like home movies exported from iMovie, some are 6 hours long and 30gb in size. They are mp4 files, but I think underlying codec is h264. Those show time fine. Also AVI files (divx,xvid) work correctly.

This seems to be purely an MKV issue. This leads me to believe that if it works on all other formats it should be able to work on MKV.

[Nadahar]

Many renderers can't read mkv even though they can decode h264, so mkv probably has to be transcoded while mp4 does not. The renderer must know how to read the mkv container to get to the h264 stream (and the audio track(s)) to be able to play the format. Matroska is an open standard and isn't necessary something the company making the renderer want to support. Several of the big ones have their own agendas and formats they want to push or DRM they want to enforce.

[Duxa]

Many renderers can't read mkv even though they can decode h264, so mkv probably has to be transcoded while mp4 does not. The renderer must know how to read the mkv container to get to the h264 stream (and the audio track(s)) to be able to play the format. Matroska is an open standard and isn't necessary something the company making the renderer want to support. Several of the big ones have their own agendas and formats they want to push or DRM they want to enforce.

That makes sense. Is there no hope of this being addressed then? Id be more than happy to provide logs and test stuff if it would help.

As a renderer (streamer box) I use WDTV, which plays MKV files natively.