I'm running ErsatzTV for a year now both on a raspberry pi 5 (headless Raspberry pi OS) and a HP T530 Thin Client (dietpi OS). After upgrading to the latest versions of Ersatztv and install ffmpeg 7.1.1, all my mkv files don't output picture anymore on both machines.
The source mkv files are HEVC 720x576 at 50fps, with 900kb/s bitrate for video and 224kb/s bitrate for the aac audio. All mkv files created with Xmedia recode, that I upgrade frequently. ErsatzTV is set to output 720x576 with H264 at 2000kb/s and 224kb/s AAC audio.
With previous versions of ErsatzTV that didn't requiered 7.1.1 there is no problem. Actually, if I do a clean install of raspbery pi OS, install previous versions of ErsatzTV and install older ffmpeg versions, everything works as it used to.
My workaround solution is that If I simply remux the mkv files to mp4, the problem is solved. But, since I have countless mkv files, this is not a solution for me. It has to be fixed somehow!
After some search, the issue appears to stem from FFmpeg 7.1.1 introducing dropped packets with unset PTS/DTS (this is likely the culprit for black screens during playback) and more restrictive behavior on MPEG-TS and container formats (which may affect how .mkv is parsed and remuxed).
Please see the issue and fix it if possible!