No ac3 passthru with VLC on Fire TV

[fuzzthekingoftrees 10]

Just got the latest Emby update on my Fire TV. On the whole it's great, everything now direct plays no transcoding required.

 

Only problem I've noticed is on videos with an ac3 audio track. When the VLC player is chosen audio is downmixed and passed as stereo PCM. If I click the button to say that audio or video is not working, the app switches to the internal player and the ac3 is bitstreamed to my amp.

 

Is the VLC player capable of passing ac3 to the amp on a fire TV? If not then can the app send the stream as multichannel PCM? This works fine for videos with a DTS track.

 

Mediainfo for a file I'm having problems with below, but this seems to affect anything with ac3.

VideoCodec H264
AVC Yes
Profile High
Level 31
Resolution 720x384
Aspect ratio 15:8
Anamorphic No
Interlaced No
Framerate 25
Bitrate 1976 kbps
Bit depth 8 bit
Pixel format yuv420p
Ref frames 10
NAL 4

Audio

Language eng
Codec AC3
Layout 5.1
Channels 6 ch
Bitrate 448 kbps
Sample rate 48000 Hz
Default Yes
 

[ebr 14930]

When you force it into the internal player isn't it also transcoding?

[fuzzthekingoftrees 10]

I don't think so. I think it starts off as Direct/V then switches to Direct/I then if I press again it goes to Trans/I. I'll check next time I'm in front of the TV and I'll let you know.

[fuzzthekingoftrees 10]

I've watched a few things over the past few days.

For videos with ac3 audio it's always Direct/V which is output as downmixed stereo PCM. If I press the ! button it switches to Direct/I which plays fine with ac3 passthru. If I press ! again it goes to Trans/I.

[fuzzthekingoftrees 10]

Any thoughts on why this doesn't work with VLC?

[ebr 14930]

Any thoughts on why this doesn't work with VLC?

 

Bitstreaming of AC3 through libVLC on the Fire simply isn't supported.  Are you sure you're getting stereo PCM though and not 5.1 PCM?

 

The release that is going out now will favor the Google player with AC3 tracks in order to bitstream them.

[fuzzthekingoftrees 10]

Yeah it's definitely stereo PCM on my amp. If I play a video with 5.1 DTS then I get 5.1 PCM.

[greenlava 2]

I'm seeing this same problem, 1st gen firetv(box) with VLC from amazon app store.  hitting the '!' icon makes audio work, while still appearing to direct stream.  Is there a way to make this the default?

[ebr 14930]

I'm seeing this same problem, 1st gen firetv(box) with VLC from amazon app store.  hitting the '!' icon makes audio work, while still appearing to direct stream.  Is there a way to make this the default?

 

What version of the app (please don't say 'latest' the version is displayed in the settings page)?

 

Whatever VLC you installed separately is not related to our playback (unless you set it up to use an external player).

[greenlava 2]

sorry, I mis-reported

 

when I try to direct stream though VLC, I get picture but no audio.  when i click the 'I', it switches to Trans/V (if i recall correctly), so OP and I are not seeing the same problem, I think.  Sorry to thread-jack.  I'll troubleshoot some more and open my own thread if needed.

Edited January 23, 2017 by greenlava