Roku Developer Program

[gbcox]

I'm testing with Plex and Emby with videos encoded with AV1, however neither Plex nor Emby apparently is receiving the expected response from the Roku Ultra that it indeeds supports AV1 playback and instead transcodes to H.264.  If I force Plex into Direct Play mode, the video correctly plays with the Roku Ultra, but auto detection isn't working.  Is Roku reporting it supports AV1 and this is a software bug with Plex/Emby or is Roku not reporting that indeed supports AV1 playback.  Thanks!

[renojim · Accepted solution]

On my Ultra 4800:

di=createobject("rodeviceinfo")
vf={codec:"av1"}
?di.candecodevideo(vf)
<Component: roAssociativeArray> =
{
    result: true
}

My Ultra says it's a 2020 Ultra (model 4800), but I believe all the 480x devices are essentially identical.  I have no idea how Emby/Plex is doing their auto detection, but I'd say it's flawed.  I don't know of any external way to query a device for what codecs it supports.

[speechles2]

Brightscript Debugger> if device.canDecodeVideo({codec: "av1", container: "mkv"}).result ? "this works"

Brightscript Debugger> if device.canDecodeVideo({codec: "av1"}).result ? "this works"
this works

We all know AV1 is supported inside MKV. But apparently the Roku itself doesn't.

The rest of the codecs appear to work with container. But AV1 is a special case here.

You must know which containers AV1 is supported within without help from the device.

I would call this a Roku bug. But there are ways to work around it. ^_~

[gbcox]

Both Emby and Plex are aware of the issue and are working on an update to resolve.  In the meantime, on Plex you can force Direct Play, and on Emby its a bit more complicated. 

On Emby, you have to:

Settings>Users tab>edit desired user>untick Allow video transcoding,>untick Allow Audio transcoding, >untick Allow changing of container formats.  

Keep "Allow media playback" ticked.

Here is the entire emby thread:  https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/107987-av1-reason-for-transcoding-video-codec-not-supp... 

@renojim  Do you know if Roku is aware of this?  @speechles2 from Emby considers this a Roku bug, but apparently Emby and Plex are going to code around it.  It would be good if we could somehow get an official Roku reply.  Roku obviously has enabled AV1, because with the workaround it functions, but apparently their implementation methodology doesn't match what they are doing for the other codecs they support.  I don't know if it's a developer documentation issue or just an oversight on their part, but everyone needs to be on the same page here.  The end user shouldn't have to slug through reporting issues like this. 

[renojim]

I don't know if Roku is aware of it, but personally I've given up on reporting bugs to Roku.  The last bug I reported was a pretty significant bug in the Roku Pay process which was causing people to lose money and the response I got was, "No one else has reported this bug", as if that makes it not a bug.  Occasionally someone like @RokuBen will see a conversation here and indicate he filed some kind of  bug report, but Partner Success 🙄 has proven to be all but useless.  I've found it far, far, far, easier to work around Roku bugs than to get them to fix them or even acknowledge them.

[gbcox]

@renojimThanks for taking the time to reply. @speechles2 is developing a workaround for emby and he alluded to the fact it's some type of container issue, which is kinda weird since how does one play an AV1 video without it being in a container, and Roku Streaming Specifications talk about codes and supported container formats.  Oddly, they don't mention a suggested container for AV1, but then clearly state that they support AV1.  

[vanontom]

I guess this issue (with Plex at least) was never actually solved, because Direct Play must still be Forced for AV1 (and this prevents audio transcoding). I guess there aren't enough AV1 users yet for this to get needed attention.

I just bought a Roku Ultra for its AV1 support (the only one I know of, with UHD and Dolby Vision), and while it seems to work for many files when Direct Play is Forced, the audio can't be 7.1 OPUS or AAC (or there is an error and no audio).