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Direct Play Chromecast Blu-Ray Rips Stuck in a Loop

Saltyzip

By Saltyzip
in General/Windows

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xsnipuhx

xsnipuhx   2

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Wow. Google has intentionally removed support of AAC 5.1/Multichannel as of the new 1.28 firmware. Their suggestion is to use AAC stereo or AC3 or Opus. A fairly useless suggestion, unless we're all supposed to re-encode all of our AAC 5.1 audio. One of the whole reasons I use that codec is that it allows direct playing with Emby through the Chromecast. I started using Opus for new encodes, but that's only been the last few months. This decision seems short-sighted, and the fact that they still allow AAC stereo makes it even more confusing.

 

Luke, I did a test cast of a VP8/Opus webm file today, and it is transcoded to h264/mp3. Is that expected behavior? VP8/Opus/webm should be a direct play, correct?

 

Is there somewhere that I can see how Emby makes its decisions for the Chromecast Ultra? There must be a profile or something along those lines. Thanks.

Do you have a link for confirmation?

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damian

damian   6

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Why do you think it's intentional?

 

Hi Luke,

 

I found this on the official google issue tracker

 

"Status: Won't Fix (Intended Behavior)

Thanks for reporting the issue. We discarded support for 5.1 AAC & Multi-channel AAC streams for Gen 2 and Ultra devices from 1.28 onwards.

 

11-09 15:48:28.554  1145  1145 I cast_shell: [2604:2604:INFO:MediaSource.cpp(199)] addSourceBuffer this=0x28ead940 type="video/mp2t; codecs=\"avc1.4D401E,mp4a.40.2\"" -> 0x396b70b0

 

This is working as intended. We would recommend you to use either regular stereo (2-channel) AAC or AC3/EAC3 audio or 5.1 Opus audio stream or etc.

 

Do let us know if you need any other details.

 

Note: AAC is proprietary codec. Opus is free/open source"

 
The status of the issue in the issue tracker is "Won't Fix (Intended behavior)"
 
and the link to the exact issue is https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/69112577
 
Is there a way to force stereo for now in any setting or config?
 
 
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Luke Emby Team

Luke   37018

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Yea obviously we will have to adjust the decision making on our Chromecast receiver to adapt to this.

 

That's what these preview firmware builds are for, to learn about these things with a smaller audience before everybody gets them.

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x-cimo

x-cimo   23

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I guess I was hit first because I am in the preview program...  oh well..  good job everyone.

 

Can't wait to get my chomecast back....  wife will be happy.

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arche

arche   174

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I haven't seen anything, but wish google would have had a decent transparent changelog of the preview firmware instead of blindsiding most people. Definitely would have been alot less stressful to the Emby team and the users.

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Luke Emby Team

Luke   37018

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I haven't seen anything, but wish google would have had a decent transparent changelog of the preview firmware instead of blindsiding most people. Definitely would have been alot less stressful to the Emby team and the users.

 

Well it's preview, they are assuming everyone in the preview is there for testing and not depending on it for stable daily usage. If you roll with that assumption then there's nothing really wrong with them putting out breaking changes with little notice.

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mawazi

mawazi   1

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Well it's preview, they are assuming everyone in the preview is there for testing and not depending on it for stable daily usage. If you roll with that assumption then there's nothing really wrong with them putting out breaking changes with little notice.

Except that they have apparently rolled out the beta to quite a few devices not signed up for it. Odd that no Emby users with Chromecast who were signed up for the beta program encountered this problem earlier.

 

This seems to make direct playing of Opus even more important, but I can only get that to work by turning off transcoding in a profile.

 

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

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arche

arche   174

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Tonight I've pushed some changes to our Chromecast receiver so it will no longer direct play 5.1 aac.

 

This seems to have fixed my problem with playing these files affected by Google's changes.

 

But just a suggestion maybe changing the wording (if possible) to the info button "The media is compatible with the device regarding resolution and media type (H.264, AC3, etc.), but is in an incompatible file container (.mkv, .avi, .wmv, etc.). The video will be re-packaged on the fly before streaming it to the device."

 

Seems maybe a little misleading. But by any means not any priority to this at all, just a suggestion.

 

Great job on the fix, seems to be working great now. Thank you

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x-cimo

x-cimo   23

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Still broken over here.. it looks like it's still converting to AAC 5.1

 

I've restarted the casting app and the chromecast.

 

 

Input #0, mpegts, from 'file:\\ABCD.M2TS':
Duration: 01:15:16.19, start: 4200.000000, bitrate: 29332 kb/s
Program 1
Stream #0:0[0x1011]: Video: h264 (High) (HDMV / 0x564D4448), yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 1920x1080 [sAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 90k tbn, 47.95 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x1100](fra): Audio: ac3 (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 640 kb/s
Stream #0:2[0x1101](eng): Audio: dts (DTS-HD MA) ([134][0][0][0] / 0x0086), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s32p (24 bit)
Stream #0:3[0x1200](eng): Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle ([144][0][0][0] / 0x0090)
Stream #0:4[0x1201](fra): Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle ([144][0][0][0] / 0x0090)
Stream #0:5[0x1202](fra): Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle ([144][0][0][0] / 0x0090)
Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (ac3 (native) -> aac (native))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[libx264 @ 00000221b77fea80] subme=0 + direct=temporal is not supported
[libx264 @ 00000221b77fea80] using SAR=1/1
[libx264 @ 00000221b77fea80] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX FMA3 BMI2 AVX2
[libx264 @ 00000221b77fea80] profile Main, level 4.1
[libx264 @ 00000221b77fea80] 264 - core 152 r2851 ba24899 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2017 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=4 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x1:0 me=dia subme=0 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=4 chroma_me=0 trellis=2 8x8dct=0 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=24 lookahead_threads=8 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=2 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=2 keyint=250 keyint_min=23 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=10 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=16.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 vbv_maxrate=29332 vbv_bufsize=58665 crf_max=0.0 nal_hrd=none filler=0 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00
[segment @ 00000221b7a208a0] Opening 'E:\Emby-Server\transcoding-temp\3d95989589d01186b94ba685d7ae93090.ts' for writing
Output #0, segment, to 'E:\Emby-Server\transcoding-temp\3d95989589d01186b94ba685d7ae9309%d.ts':
Metadata:
encoder : Lavf58.2.100
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (libx264), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [sAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=-1--1, 23.98 fps, 90k tbn, 23.98 tbc
Metadata:
encoder : Lavc58.2.100 libx264
Side data:
cpb: bitrate max/min/avg: 29332000/0/0 buffer size: 58665000 vbv_delay: -1
Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC), 48000 Hz, 5.1, fltp, 384 kb/s
Metadata:
encoder : Lavc58.2.100 aac

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Saltyzip

Saltyzip   0

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Thanks to everyone who help resolved this one, although the resolution wasn't an expected one, and not ideal outcome either, thank you Google, not!

 

Now I need to try and find a way of converting my movie library from AAC audio over to AC3 to avoid emby transcoding, does anyone have any recommendations on how to do this without affecting the video source?

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ryandavidg

ryandavidg   30

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Posted (edited)

Thanks to everyone who help resolved this one, although the resolution wasn't an expected one, and not ideal outcome either, thank you Google, not!

 

Now I need to try and find a way of converting my movie library from AAC audio over to AC3 to avoid emby transcoding, does anyone have any recommendations on how to do this without affecting the video source?

 

Pretty easy using something like Handbrake or AVIDemux (both free) just select "copy" on the video stream so as not to reencode that and then convert the audio using the settings you want (eg: I'd choose a slightly better bit rate just to minimise the quality loss during reencoding, but no matter what bit rate you choose you will lose some quality unless all the formats involved are lossless). Test afterwards, I find 'quick and dirty' multi-channel conversions can sometimes be temperamental. If you want to do it all with a batch script or something it's best to Google it, plenty of people have done this sort of thing to get their media playing on different devices, easy to find a process that works for you.

 

If you're really after the best possible audio conversion you could use something like MKVCleaver to split the file into audio and video streams, then use the audio converter program of your choice (prepare to read long discussions on the merits of various approaches from the audiophile community) then use MKVToolnix to remux the audio and video back together into one MKV file. 

Edited by ryandavidg
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Luke Emby Team

Luke   37018

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It is still in preview. If negative reaction is loud enough it is always possible they will reconsider. I would probably wait before converting your entire library.

 

Ac3 is also not supported by most browsers so this will cause transcoding there.

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Saltyzip

Saltyzip   0

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I've tried with handbrake and dvdfab but neither appear to allow copying original video when in mkv container while converting audio from aac to ac3.

 

Seems such a simple ask.

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ryandavidg

ryandavidg   30

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Posted

I've tried with handbrake and dvdfab but neither appear to allow copying original video when in mkv container while converting audio from aac to ac3.

 

Seems such a simple ask.

 

Apologies, must have been remembering Handbrake wrong, could have sworn there was a copy video option. AviDemux definitely does, I converted some problematic audio the other day using it. If you have a lot of files in the same format though I'd seriously consider one of the batch approaches.

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Erik

Erik   120

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Posted (edited)

Hello,

 

I have a Chromecast 2 that will not display liveTV or recordings. Transcoding log attached. I can play ripped movies fine, but nothing to do with the HDhomerun LiveTV.

 

Theater on a laptop works fine.

 

I have restarted Emby, the server its on, Chromecast unit (even did a factory reset and re-configure) and the same result.

 

Ideas?

 

Thanks,

Erik

 

EDIT: Tested on a Chromecast Version 1 and it works, but still not on several Chromecast Version 2 units.......?

Edited by Erik
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