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audio sync issue for movie but not live tv


rawdrewage

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rawdrewage

A recent update to this app is causing issues when I am trying to watch movies that I know are fine (for more than 6 months) as I can watch them in vlc or directly on my televisions (3 of them) with built in media player. Live TV is fine but my movie playback is messed. I cannot tell you exactly when it started but it is probably within the last month.

 

I can straighten it out if I push down on my remote and then select Remux playback option. I think this issue may have appeared at the same time that the playback options were added to the app.

 

I am running the latest beta server for freebsd,

 

Any help is greatly appreciated as I would love to be able to watch my movies DIRECT instead of having to use server resources to watch my movies.

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Are you sure it is direct playing? Because if that's true then there's not much we can do about this, other than remux or transcoding, and you just said you don't want that. We simply pass the video off to the Roku video player.

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rawdrewage

The tv screen says it's direct but it obviously is not as the files are fine but playing out of sync so the app is causing this.. And when I switch to remux it's ok. So something must have changed in the app because I did not change anything. How could I change it?

 

Is it possible that the although the app is showing direct play it is not actually direct playing? Either way something is messed in the app as I can play on my pc's in the web app with no issues as well as on my phone using the emby app. It's just the emby app I have on my roku devices that is messing up. 

 

I spent some time trouble shooting to be sure it is not my server. It just messes up on my roku tv;s and my roku ultimate.

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It wasn't a recent update to our Roku app causing your issue. Your Roku firmware has updated. Our app uses on-device detection to find supported codecs. These codecs it then reports as usable to the Emby server. Lately Roku has added support for Mpeg1(h261), Mpeg2(h262), and Divx/Xvid(h263). In adding this support some of their chipsets on some devices do not play correctly. This might be green artifacts with high bitrates(mpeg2 issue), audio drift(your issue), or even failure to produce a picture and instead produces an entirely black screen but with audio(known issue in 8.2 on RokuTV). These issues are something Roku must address in these codecs. When we ask the Roku to direct play it is simply giving the Roku a url to play. We then control the OSD and can react to playback issues that may arise. We can see button press of the remote, etc. But for general playback we really don't do anything. The native player on Roku is playing your media when it is direct.

 

The fact you can fix the issue by using Playback Correction (Remux) means that we are allowing you to correct the issue. The Remux then fixes the issue. But this does have a cost. It will use your CPU to repack the entire stream into an m3u8 playlist built from small .ts slices so it can be served by HLS to your Roku by the Emby server. This is still using the direct stream of the video during Remux. If the issue isn't present viewing this way the issue is likely a bad container header or bad/invalid/out-of-range values in the container header. On some firmware the Roku is incorrectly reading the header of the item, rather than the streams themsevles to render with. This was an issue with incorrect SAR/DAR earlier that I reported to Roku. They've since corrected this in firmware 9.0.x.

 

What model is your Roku device? What firmware is it on? Can you provide a serial # of the device so that I may pass this along to Roku. This is clearly a Roku platform defect. Thanks and have a very happy holiday. I apologize for the issue we will work with Roku to resolve this.

 

EDIT: Please make sure your HDMI Audio settings are NOT using Auto. You must choose the type of audio. DD DD+ DTS or a combination of them. You can use Auto in Audio mode and should be using Auto there. Do NOT use Auto in the HDMI setting. Repeating that to make sure you read it. :) (There is a firmware issue when you use Auto)

Edited by speechles
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Happy2Play

If it is the same thing I see randomly on Direct Play, the video and audio segments are not aligned at least for the Roku properly and stopping and starting media fixes the problem most of the time for me.  Will have to check my audio setting..

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rawdrewage

Thanks for the info and sorry for accusing you guys. I should NEVER assume a huge company like roku won't release crap software that is not properly tested. That clearly explains why live tv is working for me as they are already being remuxed. 

 

I have tried the HDMI settings on Auto and all the other ones and it makes no difference for my config which is roku into multimedia receiver and then to tv. I did leave it on Dolby Digital +/ DTS to be sure. 

 

Starting and stopping media does nothing for me.

 

Most of my movies are using non-transcoded ac3 if that means anything. But I have the same problem with MPEG2 and AAC audio as well. I have no others to try at the moment.

 

Roku ultra 4660-X

software version 9.0.0 build 4083-46

serial number YJ000A675223

 

Thanks again for the info and help.

Edited by rawdrewage
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  • 2 weeks later...
rawdrewage

I am planning on getting in touch with Roku as this issue is taking WAY too long to deal with. What info can I give them to help get their poorly tested software straightened out. I don't want them to say "we don't know what you are talking about", so any info to help with that is very much appreciated.

 

I have searched extensively and I cannot find any reference to this being an issue for Roku since October. I cannot be the only one having this issue out of the millions of people using these things. It's really strange and has me a bit concerned.

Edited by rawdrewage
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rawdrewage

Yes but it's going to be relatively big ~ 2 GB. How to get it to you?

 

All my DVD's were ripped by me using handbrake starting in April of 2018 so it's all recent software I am using.

 

My testing shows a latency of approximately 130 ms. I am a recording engineer and a software developer and work with video regularly so I am used to looking at this stuff. I took the source video and captured the emby output via HDMI. I then used adobe premiere to compare the audio tracks from both to see how far off they are.

 

How are you going to test if I may ask? I am always looking for a more efficient way to do this. Thanks.

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The HDMI audio setting for your Roku is set to Auto? Can you set it directly to what your equipment supports. Dolby D, Dolby D+, Dolby D, DTS, Dolby D+, DTS.

 

Settings>>Audio>>HDMI

 

The problem is with some audio codecs the Roku is decoding/recoding (transcoding) them on the device to aac, or decimating them to stereo on the device. It may report it supports 5.1 audio and you may have equipment that supports 5.1 but the reality is it might be downsampling it all to 2.0 and ruining things. Roku is supposed to eventually address this issue. There is a huge issue right now with audio desync on firmare version 9.x (see here). The issue seems to happen on the newer Roku ultra (#4660 & #4661) and the newer streaming stick+.

Edited by speechles
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rawdrewage

My device supports all those formats. I do not have it set to auto I have it set to Dolby Digital, DD+ I think is how they have it. 

 

I did some checking and my audio that starts at 5.1 DD comes out the same way with no change. There is no way that the audio is being decoded and reencoded. Decoding and recoding from a lossy compressor has definite audio artifacts that I am very familiar with. The audio starts 'splashing' and you lose you r audio imaging. So if it's stereo you will probably hear the audio moving slightly left and right as the codec tries to remove 90& of the audio from something that already had 90% removed. Recompressing 5.1 forget about it. It's just un-listenable. 

 

Thanks for your help. So it was mentioned that you can deal with Roku directly? I am only able to get the useless help desk. 

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Dropbox, google drive etc will be great. But granted if this is a platform defect, then there won't be much we can do about it.

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rawdrewage

I can verify that Netflix is off by the same amount, ~130 ms. I didn't bother to check any others as the media player, emby and netflix all have the same issue. One would think that rolu would have repeatable test procedures to avoid this issue ever occurring. Or maybe they let some intern handle it. Not sure if I should even bother trying to contact roku.

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You can use this link (to use this link you must create a Roku account on their forums). The link will take you to where you can contact RokuDale directly. He is the fellow who I have contacted numerous times about issues on their platform. He can get the issue escalated upstream to their engineers. It should also be noted to RokuDale that the problem also exists for you in Netflix. They have a vested interest in keeping issues with Netflix at zero so knowing that will raise the priority for them better than just saying it is an issue with Emby alone. Don't vent to him though. This is the Roku community liaison and isn't directly responsible for your issue, or in solving it. He is merely a known employee who helps out in these circumstances. He should be able to give you more information than we ever could. Be nice in your reply and be kind. It isn't necessary to show anger to them. Thanks.  :)

Edited by speechles
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rawdrewage

I am unable to do this so I will not be using your contact. I was trying to figure out a way to be nice to a giant company like that that dropped the ball so bad and then they did another update that made the latency even worse, about 200ms now. I will be going after t5he company with harshness as they are incompetent. I appreciate your trust in using your contact but I can't use it. What reason could roku possibly have for making such a gigantic mistake at least twice now.

 

I am moving for a class action lawsuit to take place against them when they do not deal with this issue, which they won't.That is how I think large companies that don't care about their customers need be treated. Thanks for your help but I will be getting new equipment made by a different company..I already have an interested law firm in NYC.

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