-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 66
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can't I see my server
Plex by default comes with internal security turned on. You have to log in through Plex Pass, and unfortunately they don't document this API. If you wan to use Serenity you need to turn off Security and allow everybody on the local network to access the system. If you need external access to Plex, you probably don't want to use Serenity as disabling security is not recommended if you are accessing a server remotely.
See: MyPlex in this FAQ.
Why doesn't Serenity support Channels?
Why doesn't Serenity support Transcoding of Video and Audio?
As of version 2.0.0 Serenity does support transcoding of content. All content should be playable on the internal player.
Android TV devices include the developer ADT-1, and the Nexus Player. Other manufactures will be releasing devices that make use of Android TV and each may have their own unique issues. This section covers common problems people run into with Android TV devices.
With the most recent MX Player 1.73 release, they had to remove Dolby Digital/AC-3 support from the player. However, you can get both DTS and AC-3 support re-instated by installing the custom codec. You will need to download the codecs at:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/mx-player/mx-player-custom-codec-dts-support-t2156254
Make sure you download the appropriate codec for your device. For the ADT-1, the NEON codec works.
Once you have the file down, you can copy the file over using the android ADB command:
adb push filename.zip /sdcard/Download/filename.zip
Replace filename.zip, with the filename you downloaded. After the push is successful, you can launch MX Player and it will install the Custom Codec automatically.
Once installed, playback of DTS and Dolby Digital audio will work as expected. If you have questions regarding installation of the custom codec, please ask on the MX Player support forums.
Please see the article regarding MyPlex in how to fix these issues:
https://github.com/NineWorlds/serenity-android/wiki/MyPlex
The Android TV devices base units only support MP4/MKV containers, and AAC audio and pass through of AC-3. If you are trying to use the internal video player, it will only reliably play back MP4 with AAC audio, or MKV with AAC audio. H.264 video is required for both containers.
For best results it is recommended to side load, MX Player or push it to the device from the google play store. If you need MX Player, you can download it from the developer directly, and then side load it on the device.
https://sites.google.com/site/mxvpen/translation/test-build
You can then set Serenity to always use MX Player as the preferred External Player, and video and audio will be played back as expected.
As others devices come available that support a wider range of video/audio codecs and containers, then the internal player will be able to play more items directly without the use of an external player.
The Amazon Fire TV has strict restriction on what Audio and Video containers can be played successfully together. This section covers common problems people run into with the Fire TV.
If you are being prompted to use a picture viewer to play back your MKVs. This means that the Amazon Fire TV is trying to launch the video with an external player and the only one that it finds is the default picture viewer on the device. You have a couple of options:
-
Install an external player like MX Player on the device, and then in the apps settings select Prefered External Player and select MX Player.
-
Go to the apps Settings, and uncheck Use External Player. Also check Prefer Plex Aspect Ratio.
Note that if you use the internal player then MKVs that have AC-3 audio will play but without sound. MP4s with AC-3 audio will play correctly. MKVs with AAC audio will also play correctly.
With Serenity 2.0.0 this is not a problem as transcoding is supported.
Dolby Digital is only supported with the Amazon Fire TV if the media in question is using an MP4 container. MKVs, MPEGS, M2TS, or other containers will not play back the video with sound. Only MP4s will work.
The work around for these cases are the following.
-
To side load a player like MX Player, VLC, or other video player that has a built in decoder onto the device and set Serenity to use the External player to play back the video. Unfortunately this probably won't output Surround Sound but just Stereo playback.
-
Take the videos and add a second audio track to them encoded as AAC 5.1 audio. Make it the first track and the Dolby Digital track the second track. When the video is played back you should get sound as the AAC audio track being the first will play back, and no transcoding will be necessary. Again you may only get Stereo this way.
-
Use Mencoder to copy the existing audio and video tracks to a different container without re-encoding them. This is probably the fastest method and you won't loose the quality. It is similar to what Plex does on the server side. More information here: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-selecting-codec.html
mencoder input.avi -o output.mp4 -oac copy -fafmttag 0x2000 -ovc copy
The above will take a video file and copy both the audio and video content unchanged to an MP4 container that can be played on the Amazon Fire TV. It sets the audio tag to AC-3 Pass Thru.
- Use Handbrake to re-encode the videos into MP4s that are compatible with the Fire TV.
It is unfortunate that Amazon has gone the route where they only support Dolby Digital in MP4 containers, but there are work arounds for people to get their content playing correctly.
Game controllers are mostly supported. Ones I know that work are OnLive Game Controller and PS 3 controller. The game controller must send back the standard Android D-Pad and Button keycodes in order for Serenity to handle them correctly. If it sends something that is different than the standards, then it won't support them. This has been tested on a variety of devices from OUYA to Android TV devices. So Amazon Fire TV should work the same unless they have messed with the keycodes.
See our MyPlex support page for getting Serenity and MyPlex configurations to play nicely.
- What are the available Keyboard/Remote Controls for Serenity.
There are several, and they can be found on the Remote-and-Keyboard-Controls page.
1. Some subtitles are missing for tv shows or movies.
There are times when the Plex Media Server can take as much as 20 seconds to return the complete metadata for a video. If this happens it will delay the showing of the Subtitle selection box. If this happens to you please report the issue along with Plex Media Server log files (you plex media server should be in debug mode), to our project web site so we can forward the logs onto the Plex developers. This is not an issue with Serenity but with the backend server, and the developer's need the files. The underlying issue is that Plex checks the last time the metadata was requested when accessing detailed information about a show or movie. If it thinks it needs to run a metadata scan on the data to obtain the latest information, it will run the Plex media scanners. Unfortunately this can take up to 20 seconds at times for this to run and data requested for subtitle streams to be returned. If the scanner doesn't need to run you should see the data immediately. This has been reported to the Plex deverlopers, but as of this writing there is no update on if this will be addressed.
If your Plex Media Server has been running a long time between reboots, you can try restarting your Plex Media Server service. This in many cases seems to fix the issue with the subtitle retrieval times.
2. The language for the subtitle is displaying as Unknown in the drop down box.
Make sure you have followed the naming rules from the [Plex Nine Subtitles] support page. There is a very specific format that needs to occur for the language of the subtitle to be picked up.
3. What subtitle formats are supported.
Currently only SubRip fortmats are supported. If you have a SubRip (SRT) formatted subtitle and it is not displaying in the internal player, we need a copy of that file for testing purposes. Please click the Issues link above and create a new issue. Info should contain where the subtitle can be found that is causing the problem.
4. There are three entries in the drop down list box but I only have one srt with the movie.
This is a Plex Media Server metadata issue. At one time you had another subtitle under a different name. Then either deleted one of the subtitles that didn't have a language code, or added a new one that does have a language code. The only way we have found to fix this, is to remove the movie and subtitle, run a rescan, and then add them back to the plex, and rescan again. Please report this issue to Plex so they can fix it on the server side.
5. I have an MKV/MP4 with embedded subtitle tracks, but they aren't displaying. How can I get them to playback.
Serenity only supports the use of SRT external subtitles. However, you can extract the subtitles from MKV and MP4 containers to an external SRT file. Once they are extracted, and the files named to follow the Plex Media Server naming conventions, plex will detect them and play them back. See How to extract subtitles for more information.
Another option for Google TV is to use the external player ViMu, which has some limited support for subtitles embedded in MKVs. See their docs for more information on how to enable subtitles from MKVs.
Last option is to encode your videos using Handbrake so that subtitles are burned into the video. This is useful for situations in which subtitles need to be forced at certain points in the movie, but are not needed through out.