Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit 4K (Finally!)

[SamuriHL]

One thing I don't understand is why the disc can't be backed up until the keys are updated. I understand why I can't open and remux the content of the disc but surely I can backup anything that can be read by windows?

Who says you can't? Use the backup to folder function of MakeMKV. That's what it's for. When the key becomes available, you can then make MKV's from that folder backup.

[Cannikin]

Why not just use "Append files" in MKVToolnix?

There are ~4 seconds of black at the end of part 1 and ~2 seconds of black at the start of part 2. If you just merge the two together you'll have ~6 seconds of black in the middle of the movie. This more complicated technique removes the black and gets you back to a seamless cut between scenes just like it would be if the entire movie was on one disc.

[siriusbox]

Why not just use "Append files" in MKVToolnix?

There are ~4 seconds of black at the end of part 1 and ~2 seconds of black at the start of part 2. If you just merge the two together you'll have ~6 seconds of black in the middle of the movie. This more complicated technique removes the black and gets you back to a seamless cut between scenes just like it would be if the entire movie was on one disc.

Thanks for notice me that.

[spaced]

Finishing up ripping the extended versions. The - part1, - part2 tag for Plex doesn't seem to work right now for me, only sees part 1, figuring that out but my main issue is bandwidth.

Player is plex via 2019 Shield wired, server is Qnap Plex NAS over dual 1Gb Aggregated NICs (I know this doesn't double my bandwidth but noting it anyway), 24TB ironwolf 8TB drives, no ssd cache. CAX80 modem/router. DV kicks in fine, picture is stellar, Atmos is lovely but when I check the info panel, the bitrate is 80+ Mb/s! That's the most I've ever seen so far. When I play back, I will get stuttering here and there, enough to notice it especially in the spanning wide shots, so I am wondering who else may be seeing this or am I doing something wrong? Literally looks like frame drops due to buffering. Using rips from 1.15.3 direct with no remuxing. Plex is using Direct Play. I want to note no other 4k UHD rip suffers from this with or without DV.

Do you mind if I ask how you are seeing Dolby Vision?

Running a Sony 950H has display, Plex on Ubuntu server, rip from 1.15.3, and using Shield Pro as the client. Never can see DV only HDR. I've also tried to use the Plex server on Nvidia and do not see it. The only thing that comes to my mind is that I'm routing everything into an older yamaha avr that only supports hdmi 1.4 with its hdmi arc routed to the sony's arc/earc.

I've not received my copies of lotr or hobbit yet but saw this post and was curious.

See if your shield plays DV through another app like Disney+, netflix etc while still going through your AVR. If it's still not working then I'd wager it's not supported by that AVR.

Plex needs to be latest version to support DV playback, I like loading the apk manually:

https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-for-android/29115/367

Plex is still a bit shifty triggering DV, so sometimes you have to restart the movie or the app for it to work. That issue hasn't been as bad with the latest version.

[sonnumber5]

Final results after testing all discs in my LoTR set:

Disc Mastering Read Errors:
Fellowship Extended Part 1 & 2
The Two Towers Extended Part 2

All fail with output size in the 196-230MB window, no visible scratches and no change after multiple cleaning attempts, drive/PC power cycles etc. Luckily Amazon exchange option was available this morning, but looking at up to a month on the shipment. Hope the next round isn't botched too!

Glad my Hobbit discs seem to be ok, no issues with any of the Extended and I don't care about ripping the Theatrical, so I'm calling that a win.

Re: Playback Performance
- Plex server is an i7-4770k system with bulk drive storage
- Network gear involved: Unifi 8-port (core switch) & NetGear 5-port managed (client switch splitting to multiple devices in other rooms)
- I have 2x Shield Pros in different parts of the house, I'm having no playback issues/stuttering from my Hobbit/RoTK direct plays, everything is buttery smooth. The 4k HDR + Atmos experience in my jerry-rigged theater space is amazing.

[makememe]

Anybody else getting MEDIUM ERRORS right out of the box on any of their discs?

Yes. Fellowship Extended Disc 1 - It gets about 45% through the main title for me before tanking. I've tried 5 different times with various cleaning, etc. of the disc as well as voodoo attempts such as inverting the PC. I also tried a backup. The backup ended up reporting mismatches against the hash. I increased my read retry from 20 to 99 and that actually helped a bit, but it eventually gives up further in.

It seems there are some serious manufacturing issues of the discs as well as packaging (missing discs? that's terrible). What's worst of all is that it appears the first run may be sold out from the big sellers like Amazon and Best Buy. I immediately went for a return/replacement, but there are no replacements to be had. Since I have no alternative to view the discs, I'm out of luck until Amazon restocks.

did you get fotr disc 1 to work? if not, did you notice where it stops? does 23460.5M sound familiar as read from makemkv? if so, then questions regarding manufacturing? this is my first bestbuy disc purchase since I struggled with a rogue one irritation, and the first fing disk I try will not work no matter how I clean it. I am trying a second drive as I write, but I had to replace the rogue one disc. curious about your stopping point. thanks.

[spaced]

Final results after testing all discs in my LoTR set:

Disc Mastering Read Errors:
Fellowship Extended Part 1 & 2
The Two Towers Extended Part 2

All fail with output size in the 196-230MB window, no visible scratches and no change after multiple cleaning attempts, drive/PC power cycles etc. Luckily Amazon exchange option was available this morning, but looking at up to a month on the shipment. Hope the next round isn't botched too!

Glad my Hobbit discs seem to be ok, no issues with any of the Extended and I don't care about ripping the Theatrical, so I'm calling that a win.

Re: Playback Performance
- Plex server is an i7-4770k system with bulk drive storage
- Network gear involved: Unifi 8-port (core switch) & NetGear 5-port managed (client switch splitting to multiple devices in other rooms)
- I have 2x Shield Pros in different parts of the house, I'm having no playback issues/stuttering from my Hobbit/RoTK direct plays, everything is buttery smooth. The 4k HDR + Atmos experience in my jerry-rigged theater space is amazing.

Thank you for confirming solid playback. After more trial and error troubleshooting, I am betting it's my QNAP NAS causing the stuttering as it's not the most powerful solution (Intel® Celeron® J3455 quad-core 1.5 GHz processor, 2GB RAM). The mkvs play fine on my workstation locally in VLC and my gigabit network is very basic, not much using it at once, no managed switches. I also plugged the Shield to the main router instead of through a switch and it didn't help much. Should've gone for a faster NAS or built my own but maybe SSD caching and more ram will help me. Still debating if it's worth spending more money over.

Edit: Just realized you were talking about The Hobbit films but either way I think it's my NAS holding me back.

[shawnc22]

Thank you for confirming solid playback. After more trial and error troubleshooting, I am betting it's my QNAP NAS causing the stuttering as it's not the most powerful solution (Intel® Celeron® J3455 quad-core 1.5 GHz processor, 2GB RAM). The mkvs play fine on my workstation locally in VLC and my gigabit network is very basic, not much using it at once, no managed switches. I also plugged the Shield to the main router instead of through a switch and it didn't help much. Should've gone for a faster NAS or built my own but maybe SSD caching and more ram will help me. Still debating if it's worth spending more money over.

Edit: Just realized you were talking about The Hobbit films but either way I think it's my NAS holding me back.

For what it's worth, I have two QNAP NAS's (453BE & 653D) that have had no stuttering issues on any 4k playback. I did upgrade to 8gb of ram on both systems, but direct play should not be all that intensive to begin with. Some troublehsooting steps you can undertake is set up a Plex server on your workstation and host the lotr files there to see if that makes a difference. If you really suspect ram to be the issue, monitor ram usage on the QNAP admin dashboard during playback. Ram upgrades are luckily pretty cheap.

[spaced]

Thank you for confirming solid playback. After more trial and error troubleshooting, I am betting it's my QNAP NAS causing the stuttering as it's not the most powerful solution (Intel® Celeron® J3455 quad-core 1.5 GHz processor, 2GB RAM). The mkvs play fine on my workstation locally in VLC and my gigabit network is very basic, not much using it at once, no managed switches. I also plugged the Shield to the main router instead of through a switch and it didn't help much. Should've gone for a faster NAS or built my own but maybe SSD caching and more ram will help me. Still debating if it's worth spending more money over.

Edit: Just realized you were talking about The Hobbit films but either way I think it's my NAS holding me back.

For what it's worth, I have two QNAP NAS's (453BE & 653D) that have had no stuttering issues on any 4k playback. I did upgrade to 8gb of ram on both systems, but direct play should not be all that intensive to begin with. Some troublehsooting steps you can undertake is set up a Plex server on your workstation and host the lotr files there to see if that makes a difference. If you really suspect ram to be the issue, monitor ram usage on the QNAP admin dashboard during playback. Ram upgrades are luckily pretty cheap.

What's funny is I just did that, set up a test server on my workstation and indeed, playback is perfect on same network (workstation has 10G currently going to the 2.5Gb port on the router, but does that matter when the shield is 1G) to the Shield, so it comes down to the Qnap and I was coming back to my post to edit it haha. I was planning on going 10G for work purposes, their add-on card does 10G and adds a nvme slot for caching, so that will be my next upgrade along with maxing out the ram since that's pretty cheap. You are right, when I watch cpu usage while streaming lotr, it doesn't go very high, some peaks over 60- 75%, ram usage is very low as well but since the ram is cheap, might as well max that out. So I "guess" it's the raid5 config without ssd caching but it's a dice-roll. I know 10G won't help this specific situation but it will for work, just want that nvme slot.

I am using the 453Be and these are the only movies I have had stutter issues with. Using Ironwolf Pro 8tb drives x4. Was hoping for a free way to fix this and I may just leave the workstation as my LOTR server for now as silly as that is.

[shawnc22]

What's funny is I just did that, set up a test server on my workstation and indeed, playback is perfect on same network (workstation has 10G currently going to the 2.5Gb port on the router, but does that matter when the shield is 1G) to the Shield, so it comes down to the Qnap and I was coming back to my post to edit it haha. I was planning on going 10G for work purposes, their add-on card does 10G and adds a nvme slot for caching, so that will be my next upgrade along with maxing out the ram since that's pretty cheap. You are right, when I watch cpu usage while streaming lotr, it doesn't go very high, some peaks over 60- 75%, ram usage is very low as well but since the ram is cheap, might as well max that out. So I "guess" it's the raid5 config without ssd caching but it's a dice-roll. I know 10G won't help this specific situation but it will for work, just want that nvme slot.

I am using the 453Be and these are the only movies I have had stutter issues with. Using Ironwolf Pro 8tb drives x4. Was hoping for a free way to fix this and I may just leave the workstation as my LOTR server for now as silly as that is.

Ah that is puzzling. The bitrates of 4k rips today should no way come close to saturating a full 1G connection. I wonder if switching between the ethernet ports on the qnap might make a difference, or maybe a combination of the ports and different cables. I'll be getting my set soon so I can test it out myself in a day or two. Do you have the specific timestamps that's been giving you trouble?

[Trickyd-1]

If you want a single MKV for each extended movie with a flawless scene transition between discs, follow this guide. Be prepared to have a lot of scratch disk for this, preferably on NVMe SSD

• Rip each extended disk to its own MKV, for example, LOTR1a.mkv and LOTR1b.mkv
• Drag Disc 1 into MkvToolnix by itself
• Go into the Output tab.
• Change Split mode from Do not split to After frame/field numbers
• Type in the large value in the list below for the "a" MKV and the smaller value for the "b" MKV
• The destination file can be LOTR1a-clipped.mkv as an example.
• When you click Start multiplexing, it will create two files - LOTR1a-clipped-001.mkv and LOTR1a-clipped-002.mkv
• Repeat for Disc 2.
• You'll see that for the first disc, -002 will be just a couple of seconds of black, while for the second disc, -001 will be just a couple of seconds of black.
• Create a new Multiplexer, and drag LOTR1a-clipped-001.mkv to the list. Right click that video, and do Append files and click LOTR1b-clipped-002.mkv.
• Make sure you don't touch the output section on this merge.
• Click Start multiplexing and verify the output. Dolby Vision should be preserved as well.

Here are the values to plug in under the Output section for the US editions:

Fellowship of the Ring:
Disc 1 - 151967
Disc 2 - 46

Two Towers
Disc 1 - 153305
Disc 2 - 46

Return of the King
Disc 1 - 183540
Disc 2 - 46

If these don't line up for you, load each file into MPC-HC:

• Go to the last visible frame and pause it. Use CTRL and left or right arrow keys until you get the last frame.
• Hit CTRL-G. That will give you a popup of the current frame.
• For Disc 1, you want the last visible frame before it goes black.
• For Disc 2, you want the last black frame before it goes into a visible frame.
• Verify by using CTRL-G and putting in that number as well as the number after it. CTRL-Arrow seeking isn't perfect.

Yes, but the audio is still fading out into the black screen so you will end up with an abrupt jump on the audio. Especially on the two towers.

[Cannikin]

Did you guys double check that frame rate matching is turned on in Plex and that it's working (checking through AVR or your TV's diagnostic menu)?

So if I turn on "Match Frame Rate" (on the Shield itself) then Plex starts transcoding both the video and audio and I loose DV and DA (reason is listed as "Direct Play was attempted but failed, fallen back to transcoding"). But from a quick test it did seem to run perfectly smooth...which seems like the opposite from what I'd expect! Transcoding is playing back faster/smoother than Direct Play??

I also tried turning on "Refresh Rate Switching" in Plex itself and it did the same thing: transcode audio and video, but smooth picture. The scene I'm testing is at 2:39:30 when the camera is panning over the bodies of the dwarves. The slow pans make it really apparent.

I tried Gemini Man again and there wasn't any skipping/stuttering to my eyes, but then I realized maybe skipping a single frame at 60fps just isn't as noticeable as skipping a frame at 24fps, and it's actually still happening? I'll have to try on some other 4K stuff and see if I notice it anywhere else.

[Cannikin]

Here's a thread of people complaining about frames being dropped in Plex since July on both AppleTV and Shield, so maybe we're not crazy: https://forums.plex.tv/t/playback-rando ... /609697/33

One person said they turned off the new player and it helped...I'll try that next. Not sure if the old player supports DV though?

[Floribraska]

Anybody else getting MEDIUM ERRORS right out of the box on any of their discs?

Yes. Fellowship Extended Disc 1 - It gets about 45% through the main title for me before tanking. I've tried 5 different times with various cleaning, etc. of the disc as well as voodoo attempts such as inverting the PC. I also tried a backup. The backup ended up reporting mismatches against the hash. I increased my read retry from 20 to 99 and that actually helped a bit, but it eventually gives up further in.

It seems there are some serious manufacturing issues of the discs as well as packaging (missing discs? that's terrible). What's worst of all is that it appears the first run may be sold out from the big sellers like Amazon and Best Buy. I immediately went for a return/replacement, but there are no replacements to be had. Since I have no alternative to view the discs, I'm out of luck until Amazon restocks.

did you get fotr disc 1 to work? if not, did you notice where it stops? does 23460.5M sound familiar as read from makemkv? if so, then questions regarding manufacturing? this is my first bestbuy disc purchase since I struggled with a rogue one irritation, and the first fing disk I try will not work no matter how I clean it. I am trying a second drive as I write, but I had to replace the rogue one disc. curious about your stopping point. thanks.

I have not gotten it to work. I tried once more today.

I don't recall the exact position, but I know it's right around 23000. It seems to be slightly different each time, but that's the general area. I put in for my replacement on Amazon this morning, but like others, it won't be available until late Dec thru early Jan. I'm considering reaching out to WB directly to see what they can do. This is nuts. There was a big debacle for the original BTTF Blu-ray discs related to incorrect framing in a few scenes, and I remember they issued a replacement program for customers who wanted them. Maybe this will become a big enough issue for WB to do something similar, especially considering this is a much worse issue for those who get bad discs.

One other thing of note... Most of the times it failed, it failed fairly quickly, meaning it was ripping at 7.x speed and then quickly slowed down and lasted for only a few minutes more before giving up. However, at least one time, the drive was locked into 2.0 speed for about 20-30 minutes and I think it got a lot farther in, possibly closer to 28000 or 29000. I don't know enough about layers and discs, but just spitballing I'm wondering if the issue is when it moves to a different layer because for this one time it seemed like it was really in the mud while trying to read several gigabytes and ultimately failing.

[Floribraska]

I have not gotten it to work. I tried once more today.

I don't recall the exact position, but I know it's right around 23000. It seems to be slightly different each time, but that's the general area. I put in for my replacement on Amazon this morning, but like others, it won't be available until late Dec thru early Jan. I'm considering reaching out to WB directly to see what they can do. This is nuts. There was a big debacle for the original BTTF Blu-ray discs related to incorrect framing in a few scenes, and I remember they issued a replacement program for customers who wanted them. Maybe this will become a big enough issue for WB to do something similar, especially considering this is a much worse issue for those who get bad discs.

One other thing of note... Most of the times it failed, it failed fairly quickly, meaning it was ripping at 7.x speed and then quickly slowed down and lasted for only a few minutes more before giving up. However, at least one time, the drive was locked into 2.0 speed for about 20-30 minutes and I think it got a lot farther in, possibly closer to 28000 or 29000. I don't know enough about layers and discs, but just spitballing I'm wondering if the issue is when it moves to a different layer because for this one time it seemed like it was really in the mud while trying to read several gigabytes and ultimately failing.

Upon closer investigation with some bright light I've found a diagonal scuff through the L and O (the unpainted letters) of the title on the top side of the disc that's deep enough to feel with a fingernail. I'm guessing this is where the issue lies. Regardless, I'm still trying to overcome it with some experiments. If anything turns up I'll report back.