Ripped&transcoded video freezes and pixelates when I try to fast-forward.

[Nossty]

What I've always been doing with TV series, is back them up by ripping and compressing them @ ~2GB, so family can watch them on their own TV. It all goes well.
I do a very simple encode with Vidcoder, copy the output .mp4 video file to a 32GB flash drive (FAT32 -never bothered formatting to exFAT), then play it in a Sony Bravia (KDL-32EX700 if that matters).

Recently I've tried doing the same with some of my movies, noticing that the picture completely breaks apart when I try to either skip to a later part of the film, or fast forward. It's a green hell of pixels, with some of the background still visible. The picture freezes completely, and the TV eventually turns off by itself and turns on again. Otherwise, the videos seem to be playing fine (at least for the 30 first minutes when I tested one). Needless to say that the encodes have no problem whatsoever when I play them on my laptop, it's the TV only.

Compared to the tv shows I did, I haven't changed anything in the encoding settings, the audio or the file size, if anything I reduced ref-frames and b-frames to smaller numbers. Only change is that files that play well are 45m-60m in duration, and the 3 films I tried were all >140m+

Here's the latest encode I did:

cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1856 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

I know that their TV can handle High Profile 4.1 and even more ref-frames. GOP size is the same. So what gives?

[sneaker]

I don't think it has anything to do with the settings you quoted but if you want to be sure try to compare to older encodings that work correctly. Maybe it's a muxing problem. Either a bug or a new muxing feature that breaks playback. As a start you could post complete MediaInfo logs of good and bad encodes.

[Nossty]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the late response, been a busy week.
By muxing problem, do you mean the way MakeMKV combined the video stream and audio into a single .mkv file, or the way Vidcoder encoded the streams?

I'm attaching complete MediaInfo logs of good and bad encodes as you asked.

Mediainfo of TV show episode encode that plays fine on TV
Another one of a TV show episode that plays fine on TV

-

Mediainfo of long film that can't handle skipping parts or fast-frwd while played on TV
Another encode of a movie, same problem as above

On a side note, I've heard that Handbrake's encodes (and consequently Vidcoder too) have always had problems with Samsung TVs. Not sure if this is true or not, but perhaps all I should do is try on megui or staxrip?

[sneaker]

I don't really see any difference between the MediaInfo files except duration (like you said) and file size (< or > 2 GB). Even the HandBrake version is the same (very old, 2 years).

Things you can try:
Remux to mkv using mkvtoolnix. Start MkvToolNix GUI, go "Preferences"->"Default values" and as "Default additional command-line options" paste "--clusters-in-meta-seek --disable-track-statistics-tags --engage no_cue_duration --engage no_cue_relative_position". Close and restart MkvToolNix GUI. Drag&drop one of the not working mp4 files onto it and click "Start multiplexing" at the bottom. Then transfer to USB and see if you have the same problems.

Other things to try:
- update to recent VidCoder/HandBrake
- set VidCoder/HandBrake to mkv output
- do try exFAT
- try StaxRip and MeGUI like you said

But most likely it is a Sony bug.

[Nossty]

Well, that's one damn stubborn TV. Didn't know this model was so support-lacking that it couldn't play .mkv files or even recognize an exFAT usb.
Looks like it isn't a software-related issue either, since encodes with MeGUI or xmedia-recode have the exact same problem.

However I noticed that I completely misunderstood the problem at hand: It's not a seeking problem. Seeking works fine in the first 40-60 minutes of all 3 films. After that, whether I'm fast-forwarding, skipping parts or playing at normal speed, the picture freezes and that causes my TV to turn off and back on a minute later. Weird.

Since you mentioned mkvtoolnix though, I'll try splitting the files into two ~90m parts and see if that works, even if duration of the video being the problem wouldn't make sense (or would it? I'm just taking a guess here).
Thanks for all the time you took looking into it, helped me to narrow it down until I find out what's wrong. But as you said, if it's a Sony bug, the only solution might be to convince my folks to buy a new TV