Nvidia Shield Pro, UHD rip playback not always correct

[ben_uk]

Does any media player play DV titles ripped as MKV with the FEL?

[dcoke22]

The user RESET_9999 maintains this spreadsheet: Dolby Vision Stuff

Nothing seems to work perfectly at the moment.

[King_theNorth]

I use a Nvidia Shield Pro to play back all of my bluray and 4k bluray rips. If you are wanting dolby vision, you have to make sure you have the 2019 or 2020 revision for that file. I use jellyfin and plex to play media from my local computer, and everything works good that way. The only thing to know about the shield is that dolby vision will play, but as a minimum enhancement layer: that means the tv will switch into the dolby vision mode, and have some dynamic metadata, but may not have as drastic a change from the HDR10 version compared to forcing both on a local high-end bluray player. There is still a difference, but it is not as pronounced. Hopefully they launch a shield tv with an updated processor that supports more codecs and better dolby soon, but I am not holding my breath. To make sure your rips show the proper colors and everything, you cannot use handbrake to transcode/remux your rips. You will not have the same quality. I toss the makemkv produced files straight onto my server, and both plex and jellyfin have no problem playing them to my local or remote devices. So I hope this helps. Would say the color things you have talked about are because while handbrake does support 10 bit color, it may still not fully support hdr10/dolby vision disks due to the way bluray disks encode their HDR streams. It may just assume the 10 bit color is in a SDR format, and that is why it is washed out.

So can you explain how this works in general:

1- How to set up plex on the NAS
Any special settings i need to turn on or off so DV will work
Can i select only 1 map i want (only the 4K Map i have on the NAS) ?

2- What type of Rip i need from MakeMKV
Normal Rip (In expert mode) -> Just the Movie + audio & Subs i like (Mkv-File)
Or the full Backup Rip?
I would prefer The simple Mkv-file, but not sure if that 1 layer DV will work well vs the 2 layer DV from the disk?

3- Setup Plex on Shield Pro 2019-2020
This i can find myself so no need there unless you have an important remark there.

Is the DV really that small a difference on the Shield true Plex?
And do you know of any ways that a USB local file on the Shield (or any other divice) will give DV?

Still looking for what upgrade i want over my older Nvidia Shield 2015 or 2017.
Seems the Zidoo Z9X PRO (July 2023) still can't do those DV-decodings (FEL stuff)

So, not everything I say will apply depending on the the NAS you are using. I am using a linux computer as my plex media server, and all it does is plex anymore. That being said, there is one thing no one here has talked about when it comes to DV playback and that is display support, which I will get to after your other questions as it is also important.

1) settings wise for the server part, you should not have to do anything there to crazy. You need to ensure that the server allows both direct streaming and direct playing of files, and that those settings are also enabled in all devices. You also have to ensure that if you want HDR that no transcoding happens on the server side. Depending on your NAS system, the server may not support the metadata for DV, I know that Mac servers just got working DV in Feburary of this year, it was always broken when using OSX versions of the server till then. Check the plex forums to see if that is a known bug for your NAS version of the PMS application.

2)Just using expertmode and ripping the file to a .mkv is all I have needed to do. Plex will show all of my bluray rips as "4K DoVi/HDR10 (HEVC Main 10" in the video information section. I am not changing any part of the rips, I am not transcoding them or anything. I take the discs, I rip the main video file, and then label it and toss it in the folder to be part of my plex server. You need to ensure that you are using a libredrive compatable UHD drive, i use the Asus 16ht.... drives, and you also need to ensure that you have java installed. Some bluray movies hide the DV metadata tags in the BD+ data, so without java you do not get the DV metadata, I know that my copy of No Time To Die did not have the DV layer work properly as java was broken when I made my first rip. Just ensure that your video file is like one of these: for minimum enhancement layer media---MpegH HEVC Main10@L5.1 (dvhe.07.06 BL+MEL+RPU)[The Batman 2022], for full enhancement layer media---MpegH HEVC Main10@L5.1 (dvhe.07.06 BL+FEL+RPU){No Time to Die, 2021]. As long as your video files show those extra bits in parentheses after the Main10 profile, you are getting the profile 7 enhancement layer from the disc in its original form. Also, FEL can be played as a MEL, so don't worry about MEL vs FEL for playback. FEL technically is higher quality than MEL when supported, but don't worry about that as no streaming device I am aware of supports profile 7 FEL, only profile 7 MEL, and FEL will play as MEL for compatability reasons that dolby thought of already.

3)Just make sure that you have refresh rate switching on, sometimes DV layer won't load unless at 24fps. Make sure you allow HEVC playback. Enable directplay and directstream on the player side.

It is a smaller change using the rip on the Shield TV compared to forcing both the DV layer and HDR10 Layer on a dedicated 4k Bluray player. There is still a noticable difference, just not as much as when using a dedicated player. The good thing is though, if a newer shield or other tv device comes out with better support for these profiles and the full layer, your rip will already have all the data and a simple device change should get you more quality. As for playing directly on the shield, I have no clue there. I would assume that VLC may support it? I have not tried anything on that front.

My only other comment is display/soundbar/HDCP crap. This is actually usually the bottleneck. I am using an LG CX Oled and an LG Soundbar that both support dolby vision, and in particular, the soundbar goes on to mention that it has "true passthrough". This part is where things can get messed up in the chain. If you are using a highend AVR that supports all video and audio formats, you probably would not have this problem, but some companies do not liscense DV (Samsung) and so sometimes their soundbars do not offically support passthrough and can just when it passes the data through, it will remove it as the HDCP handshake is not relaying that the other devices in the chain both support DV. Some TVs support DV (some 2017-2020 Panasonics) but only the web profile. They do not support any other way of viewing DV, some players had to remux the DV on the fly from blurays to make DV work on those tvs. Any troubleshooting that is required to make HDR10 work, gets way harder when you try DV since there are ~6 profiles. 5 and 8 are usually used for streaming, but 7 is what blurays usually use and in that case you have the regular HDR10 layer as a base, then the enhanced layer is basically the dynamic metadata and extra color information. Some TVs support MEL profile 7, most don't. Sometimes, even if everything in the chain is a 2.0b device, using HDMI 2.1 cables(good ones, cablematters are the ones I have used and tested and they meet all optional spec features) can just fix handshake issues or metadata issues. All of these factors make getting DV to work more of a pain. Just make sure your rips have the layer, and the rest can be messed with overtime. Hope this helps

[WEZZEBE]

So my stuff:
1- TV LG G2 77"
2- AVR Denon Avr-X2800H
-> so no height speakers for me, but it's not handy to get in my room so...
-> using all HDMI 2.1 citified cables (48gbps)
3- Nas Qnap ts-453d(-8g)
-> No idea if that's ok or good for Plex (+DV)
4- Media player Nvidia Shield (2015 or 2017 model atm)
-> Normally if I get a newer Nvidia Shield(2019) I don't need transcoding from my Nas so that should be ok i guess.

So is my Nas ok for Plex DV?

You also said the upgrade is not so big from HDR10 to DV from the Nas+Shield combo vs a real 4k player using the 4k bluray.
Is it really that small a difference?

And can you give me more info on the MEL / FEL?