Emby Roku app, playing this media in Spanish... English checked

[ebr 14913]

17 hours ago, jonesay said:

so if it fails to properly play

Hi.  That is the problem. The item is not failing to properly play as far as the Roku player is concerned.  There is no error that we can detect so there isn't anything for us to react to.

15 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

it is a Roku issue

Well, actually, it is a media/input issue.  The inputs are bad.  It makes zero sense for multiple tracks of the same type to be marked default.  Some players react to bad inputs better than others.  The Roku is strict about specs.

[speechles 1917]

https://community.roku.com/t5/Channels-viewing/Default-language-for-one-show-switched-to-Spanish-and-I-cannot-change-it-back-to-English/m-p/944434
https://community.roku.com/t5/Channels-viewing/Captions-not-staying-on-English-on-Paramount/m-p/836195
https://community.roku.com/t5/Channels-viewing/Primevideo-app-does-not-allow-change-of-subtitles-language/m-p/881512

All of the above are caused by the same problem. When multiple defaults are set for the audio or subtitle streams the first default will always be used. The Roku does this for sanity. It is assume the header is corrupt or broken or something. There should be no time when two things are marked default. It is impossible. So when the Roku discovers this it goes into "panic mode". It adopts the first subtitle and/or first audio stream. Nothing you do will change this if it is Direct Playing. The only way to work-around this is to Remux the file. BTW when you press "Attempt Playback Correction" it is performing a Remux. You can do this yourself once with MKVToolNix and save your CPU having to do this every single time on-the-fly.

Emby isn't the issue here. Emby is diligently telling the Roku to change subtitle and/or audio streams. The Roku is actively refusing to do so because it is in what we call "panic mode" and during this time it cannot switch streams during Direct Play. The Roku models are not the same. Some Roku models can switch subtitles and/or audio streams when multiple defaults exist. It seems the newer models are the ones which cannot. Likely because of programming/firmware differences. We should expect that when firmware 13 gets to the Roku this sort of problem becomes a thing of the past.

If we self-detect the multiple defaults and force Remux on all Roku models it will hurt the users who have no problems. We cannot hurt one side of users to benefit another side of users. Especially when the media has conflicting information within it. The media itself is to blame here. Some versions of HandBrake have a default behavior which will set every single audio/subtitle stream as default. You have to change this when you rip or you will wind up with a conflicted media file. This is why we suggest fixing the media with this problem. You will have less headaches.

Edited February 12 by speechles

[frankmb 27]

On 2/12/2024 at 1:22 PM, speechles said:

If we self-detect the multiple defaults and force Remux on all Roku models it will hurt the users who have no problems. We cannot hurt one side of users to benefit another side of users. Especially when the media has conflicting information within it.

This has also been a long running problem for me. Please implement an optional toggle (not default) in the server settings that would just always remux anything played by a Roku client. I know this is the "dumb" brute force solution but it would be by far the easiest solution for every Roku user like myself experiencing these problems.

My two threads for this from 2022.