Xbox One X VLC reports 0.00 for movie lengths

[wsetliff]

I ripped a bunch of my blue-rays to a new external USB hard drive I purchased for the purpose of making my blue-rays instantly accessible to my Xbox One X. The titles all show up as does the splash-icon in VLC on my Xbox. However, many, not all, but many of the movies show as having zero length and VLC won't play them. The ones that do show a non-zero length play fine. I tried Xbox Media Player and it doesn't show the splash-icon, just a dummy icon for the same zero-length movies, and the movies VLC will play, play, but with no audio. I can play them fine on my MAC. I tried using the USB port on the front of my XBox and that made no difference. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Woodstock]

What file system was the external drive formatted with?

[wsetliff]

Exfat, though I don't know why a different format would allow some movies to play on my Xbox and others not. Either way, Exfat so as to allow reading from pretty much any device and avoid the 4Tb limit (my HD is 8Tb). Thanks for your interest.

[wsetliff]

Something else - I had to rename many of the movies from the automatically generated names, Does this somehow confuse media players? Thanks again all!

[Woodstock]

VLC (normally) doesn't care what the files are named, so long as it can recognize the format. But some USB drives are formatted as FAT32, which limits file sizes to 4GB, which is not big enough for most Bluray files. XBox should handle NTFS, which is better suited than ExFAT for video. NTFS handles even larger drives than 8TB.

Where VLC falls down is when the file is damaged, hence the question about the drive formatting.

Do the videos play on the machine you used to rip them?

(actually, ExFAT limits you to Windows and Mac. NTFS can be read by Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, etc, but Mac refused to WRITE to it)

[wsetliff]

They play fine on my MAC, upon which I ripped them via an external blue-ray player/recorder. NTFS isn't a native option for MAC to use.

[Woodstock]

Technically, MacOS has the capability to write NTFS, but yes, it is blocked by default. You have to buy "drivers" that will enable the write capability in the operating system. I guess ExFAT is the only thing you can use as an intermediate.

If VLC plays them on the Mac, the XBox version should play them, too.

I take it you don't have a network connection between them where you could test accessing the files via the network?

XBox file system compatibility seems like a mixed bag - I see arguments between users that say the XBox reads exFAT and HPFS just fine, and ones that say they've never gotten anything but FAT32 to work.

[wsetliff]

Thanks for the time but that really wasn’t an “answer.” The movies play fine in WIndows 10 and on my Mac using VLC. Again, some movies play fine - the ones that show a non-zero length. The ones that show a zero length on my xbox, not on other devices, won’t play. Installing the HD as a network appliance would only add another layer of unnecessary complexity. The “problem” must have something to do with the way the encoding header for the files are set up, I’d think. WHen I ripped them I used the device specific setting for Xbox which, I’d have thought, would have ensured compliance.

Anyone else with ideas? I’m talking about around 8 tb of movies here I need help with! Thanks all.......

[Grauhaar]

Only for clarification (no knowlege abot the Xbox), what do you mean with "zero-length"? The file size is "zero" or the movie runtime in player shows "zero"?

- If the file size is "zero" there is a problem with the filesystem in the Xbox.
- If the runtime is "zero" there is a problem with the software player in the Xbox, because the same files plays fine on other platforms, this means that the mkv header is okay.

WHen I ripped them I used the device specific setting for Xbox

MakeMKV has no specfic options for decives. It saves the content of the Blu-ray as is (except for audio tracks in case of conversion profiles).

[wsetliff]

Thanks for asking - Media Player and VLC on Xbox report the movies' lengths are 00:00. Good question - on my Mac and Win 10 the movies file sizes are correctly reported, as are the movies' lengths. Thanks

[bingle]

I am having the exact same problem with recent blurays ripped via makemkv and my Xbox One. VLC on the Xbox says they are of zero duration and won't play. Kodi on the Xbox spins for a second and then returns back to the window that the movie was selected from. This is happening on two of three recent rips - Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse and Aquaman. The third movie ripped at the same time, Fantastic Beasts the Crimes of Grindelwald reports the correct duration and plays fine. I've compared directory and file permissions between working and non-working titles and haven't seen any differences.

[wsetliff]

Yep - same as me - glad I'm not the only one, but sorry at the same time anyone else is experiencing the problem. Hopefully some genius here will look into it and come up with a solution for us, eh?

[bingle]

Kind of surprised that we are the only two to have reported this issue.

[wsetliff]

Me too. Maybe we r the only ones smart enough to build a quickly accessible media library just for our xbox’s!

[bingle]

Attaching the MediaInfo files for both of the ones that are failing to play in case they are useful for someone.