movie stops playing after 33 seconds

MKV playback, recompression, remuxing, codec packs, players, howtos, etc.
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ThomasWayne
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2024 9:18 pm

movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by ThomasWayne » Thu Apr 25, 2024 4:04 pm

I just tried my first 4K rip, using Lord of the Rings, and everything went well until I tried to play it on my TV off a USB drive. It plays for about 33 seconds, then goes back to the screen asking if I want to resume or start over. The files play fine on my PC. I reformatted the USB drive, ensured it was NTFS so file size wasn't an issue, and I tried 3 different parts of the movie.

I searched but haven't heard of this happening to anyone else like this. Is it more likely a problem with the speed of USB? My stick is USB 3, but the TV USB input speed is unknown, so might be 2.0. I suspect that's the issue, but wanted to ask if there are any other settings that I should look at?

dcoke22
Posts: 3103
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by dcoke22 » Fri Apr 26, 2024 2:42 am

I speculate that USB speed could be an issue. 4K movies are pretty big.

Can your PC play the file from the USB stick?

Billycar11
Posts: 4347
Joined: Sun Aug 24, 2014 5:49 am

Re: movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by Billycar11 » Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:21 am

likely just the dumb tv "smart tvs" are junk use an nvidia shield or a computer hooked up to it.
usb2 is fine for 4K its 480mbps most movies just barely peak above 100mbps

you also could have a fake usb drive seen that quite a few times
Buy a UHD drive from the guide and how to video maker: https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic ... 20&t=17831
UHD Drives Guide: https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic ... 16&t=19634
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ThomasWayne
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2024 9:18 pm

Re: movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by ThomasWayne » Thu May 02, 2024 1:59 am

I tested playing the movie from the same USB drive that was in my TV in a USB 2 port on my PC and it plays fine.

However, here is where it gets more interesting / crazy... I setup Windows 10 to be a DLNA server and shared the videos. I played a different video file and it worked fine. But with the LOTR 4K files, it does the same thing -- it plays around 33 seconds and quits. I tried it with both part 1 and 2 of Fellowship. Again, they play fine on my PC using VLC or Media Player.

I checked the specs on my TV again, which is 4K and HDR (a TCL with Roku OS), and in one place it says it supports MKV (H.264), although in another location it says it also supports MKV (H.265/HEVC). I figure LOTR in 4K is H.265, but if my TV doesn't support H.265, why would it play 33 seconds of the movie at all?

Any ideas what's going on here?

dcoke22
Posts: 3103
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by dcoke22 » Thu May 02, 2024 4:27 am

Pretty much all 4K UHDs are h.265 encoded video. MediaInfo can show you a lot details about files, including what kind of video encoding they have.

Does your TV play any other 4K UHD rips?

Decoding h.265 video is more computationally expensive than h.264 video.

In any case, before you spend a lot of time on this, think about if sneaker-netting movies to your TV via a USB stick is really the path you want to take. The convenience of running Plex, or Kodi, or whatever on a computer somewhere with the associated playback app running on your TV or on some kind of streaming box is very high.

ThomasWayne
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2024 9:18 pm

Re: movie stops playing after 33 seconds

Post by ThomasWayne » Fri Aug 02, 2024 10:17 pm

To update this, for anyone else having this problem...

I submitted a ticket with TCL to see if they would be helpful, and they actually were. They explained that 4K h.265 videos take a lot of processing power to decrypt (as someone else mentioned above), and that the processors in the TV may not be able to keep up. This fits with all the other testing I did to diagnose the problem. (It would be nice if the TV would display a helpful message regarding this, but at least their tech support was honest about it.)

For a solution I set up my PC as a Plex server and that works fine.

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