UE-50RU7090 4k HDR playback via USB HDD stutter/freeze problem FIX

[muratbalci]

Hello people,

i bought this tv on black friday so it's new.

But when i was trying to watch Witcher 4K HDR from a usb 3.0 external hdd (i had to download because my internet connection is 6mbps, otherwise i have netflix account. ) i had playback problems such as stutter/freeze/image corruption etc.

The images was getting corrupted/blocky and A/V was stuttering and freezing. I thought maybe TV was just not powerful enough to play this but for a new TV it was unlikely.

Then i realized stutters were happening when there was talking, and i saw there was more than 25 subtitles in the movie file including weird ones (chinese etc.)

Even though i disable subtitles or choose a subtitle from the enormous subtitle list, the playback stutters when movie encounters a subtitle.

So i removed the subtitles except English and Turkish from the file to try it out and now movie playbacks nicely. When you have a small list of subtitles there is no problems.

I'm not sure if the number of subtitles or weird subtitles creates this problem, even tough disabling subtitles doesn't resolve the problem unless you remove the subs from the file itself. (MKV container)

Samsung engineers might pinpoint to problem and fix.

Thanks for reading.

video: https://youtu.be/gjU_EEM-878

[AndrewL]

@muratbalci: As your issue relates to a third party, unverified download, it's difficult to pinpoint what might have caused the playback problems. Have you noticed any similar playback issues when viewing media natively?, as if not it is likely to be an issue with the individual Witcher file.

[Eddy-C]

I have similar problems with a 4 year old TV UE49KS7000 (2016) ever since I started making 4K videos. I play them from an external HDD (WD Elements). An HDD without its own power source. I have tried converting my videos to different codecs (H2.64, H2.65) file formats (.mov and mp4) and bitrates, but nothing helps. It is difficult to say what kind of scenes are more likely to stutter. Usually these are scenes with quite some movement. Footage is shot with different cameras (Sony A6300, FDR A53, Gopro Hero 5, computer generated animations). I have also tried to play back from a Samsung T5 SSD drive. Same result. It is not like the whole video stutters, but it happens at a few specific scenes in a 50 minute video for 10 to 20 seconds or so. When I play back on my iMac the video runs smoothly. No problems with 1080p videos either. But that  is not what I bought the S-UHD TV for! What is critical here?

[muratbalci]

the problem i explained is about subtitles. if there are quite a lot subtitle files (or different languages like chinese/greek) in the media stream even if you don't choose a subtitle to show on screen the video playback stutters when a subtitle string is encountered in the background.
but our moderator here doesn't think it's an issue worthy to be forwarded to the qa/dev team. so.

and for your problem it might be about image processing, try to disable all the smoothing etc. because smoothing makes the action sequences look stuttery, it only works in basic shots.

[Realcarey]

Hi. I am facing the same problem on my 7series Qled tv from 2018. How do you remove the extra subtitles and can you give step by step guide?

[muratbalci]

i don't remember all the steps but basically i have downloaded an open source tool called mkvtoolnix, dragged my movie file into sources window and then it will show all the streams in that file (video, audio, subtitles)

remove the subtitles you don't want and save a new target file and start the process, it can take some time if the media file is big

[zee11]

After months of trying to figure this out, you finally helped me solve an issue that had me practically pulling my hair out!!! This makes everything work perfectly! Samsung really needs to fix this issue, but it is nice you were able to find a workaround.

[hellshock]

It worked for me too! Thanks a lot!

[darkhorsedre]

Thanks Muratbalci - this worked for one of my Samsung TVs - removed all but English subtitles: stutters gone!

Samsung really need to fix this - theyve added so much ***** we don't want and the simple things we do, like these - have issues 😞

[Ditman]

I have a 7series Qled tv from 2018 too and have the exact same issue! I will try and fix it with mkvtoolnix and later i will update if it worked.

[PatrickS01]

Have the same problem with my NU8000. This problem not only occurs with random third party files, also my own files I make (nature timelapses) have this problem regarding subtitles. The TV doesn't even show them in the subtitle menu, yet somehow they make the video a complete mess whenever a subtitle should occur.

I have encountered a lot of these type of annoyances from Samsung's side and little care from them to solve these. They just don't care about their customers actually getting a sollution. Hence they ask for a premium price for their top TV's and  for example still don't support any DTS sound, or even send it externally to an AV receiver.

I know my next TV won't be a Samsung if they can't solve something as stupidly simple as playing a video file from a USB device with subtitles. If that is the case, then they either really don't care about the customers or they lack good software engineers, seeing this problem is still present after a few years.

[Ditman]

Hello again! I just want to thank Muratbalci because the fix worked! Atlast the issue is gone and the image is great. Samsung need to fix this. 

[wisetalk]

Same issue
But this is so stupid of Samsung to still have not fixed it. Its a shame we are talking about this issue in 2020, I had an old Xiaomi TV from 2016, played any 4K file you'd throw at it.

[wisetalk]

So I tried your solution and it worked perfectly!
However, when I tried to play the original file again (the one with 20+ subtitles) that file played flawlessly as well. Now that I think of it, all I had to do is plug and unplug the hard drive to make it work.

[pert]

this command with FFMPEG removes all subtitles. its quick and file is good not corrupted like with VLC i tried before. time duration is right and file is time searchable

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -sn -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mkv

[Tares]

Timestamps are unset in a packet for stream 1    . I have this error with your code. Do you know how I can fix ?