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Emby/Shield problems with DD+


tman

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I've been taking some of my old Full HD MKV's with FLAC audio (big file sizes!), and downconverting them to 720P. For the audio, I'm converting this to E-AC3 (DD+). No problem with the conversion, and they play fine in MPC-HC and ET on the PC. When I playback through the Emby Android TV app though on my Shield (connected to my amp), it's just continual judder... The amp see's the audio stream as DD+ (and my amp supports DD+), but the video is just all over the place. I've checked the Shield and Emby settings, but there's not a lot I can change. The Shield apparently will passthrough DD+, which it appears to be doing, so I don't know what's going on with the rest of it. Full HD MKV w/FLAC play fine. 720P videos with AAC or DTS audio also play without a hitch, and the same DD+ video plays ok on the Samsung Emby Tizen app (albeit in standard DD5.1) so it's something to do with DD+ on the Shield.

 

Both server and Android TV apps are the latest release versions (not on any beta channels)

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Hi there, can you please describe the issue in more detail? What does  "all over the place" mean?

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Sorry, from the first frame, the video is stuttering and jumpy. Not the same type of stutter you get with incorrect refresh rates - just jumping and stuttering. I've fast forwarded, tried skipping to a chapter directly, but the same result. This only happens when using the Android TV app on the Shield - all other Emby clients I've tried work ok inc MPC-HC. Any video with a non-DD+ audio stream also works ok. I've only recently started converting FLAC to DD+ (using Vidcoder, which uses Handbrake).

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Hi.  We've had one other report of this happening with a DD+ conversion.  I think it must be related to the bitrate or other specifics of the audio encoding.

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If it is bitrate related, that could make some sense. FLAC is 24-bit's and high bit-rate, although how high I'm not sure, as mediainfo doesn't report this. The E-AC3 tracks I'm generating from FLAC are 1.5Mb/s (same as full bitrate DTS), so not excessive by any means.  The Emby Android app has specific options to passthrough DTS to the amp, but nothing for DD+. The amp is seeing a DD+ audio stream though, so is the Shield just doing this outside of Emby? There's nothing in the Shield settings I can see either that give you fine control of audio. If there was any form of audio transcoding going on the Emby Server, I'd expect to see the amp showing up as PCM.

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There is no conversion going on.  It is bitstreaming the audio untouched but I think something in the chain is not equipped to handle DD+ at that high of a bitrate (just conjecture at this point).

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That thread sounds like exactly what I'm experiencing - the video clip of the problem is identical. The solution mentioned seems to be to use an external player in Emby. It's the last comment I was concerned about - that the Shield doesn't have a license to decode DD+, but I'd therefore assume, it'll just pass it through to my amp, which supports DD+ decoding. I can playback Netflix or Prime streams on the Shield which do have a DD+ track (amp confirms this), and they stream without a hitch.

It just sounds to me that because the Android TV Emby app player doesn't have native support for DD+ (even a checkbox to allow passthrough), it's struggling with the audio stream for some reason - use an external player though (eg Archos), and it's quite happy with it (I have yet to test this though)

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Well, I finally got round to trying the the same movie (transferred to USB) on my Shield using Archos as the player. I set Archos to passthrough the audio to the amp, and the stream played perfectly. It switched to 24hz too, and the amp showed the bitstream was indeed DD+. No judder whatsoever.

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rechner123

Well, I finally got round to trying the the same movie (transferred to USB) on my Shield using Archos as the player. I set Archos to passthrough the audio to the amp, and the stream played perfectly. It switched to 24hz too, and the amp showed the bitstream was indeed DD+. No judder whatsoever.

Same that i have tried and what is working!

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Yeah, I suspect whatever is going on here is in Exoplayer - because I know it times the video based on the audio track.  So, I think there is something about these audio tracks that is confusing that logic.  Seems extremely rare though and related to specific content.

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Yeah, I suspect whatever is going on here is in Exoplayer - because I know it times the video based on the audio track.  So, I think there is something about these audio tracks that is confusing that logic.  Seems extremely rare though and related to specific content.

Thanks ebr. It's a standard 1.5Mb DD+ audio track converted from a 24-bit FLAC master. Here's the media info if it helps;

 

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, RefFrames               : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1 h 50 min
Bit rate                                 : 16.2 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 23.976 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.734
Stream size                              : 12.5 GiB (91%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 157 r2935 545de2f
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=2 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=9 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=1 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=30 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=13.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-02-09 15:51:58
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-02-09 15:51:58
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Menus                                    : 3
Codec configuration box                  : avcC
 
Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : E-AC-3
Format/Info                              : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID                                 : ec-3
Duration                                 : 1 h 50 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 62.500 FPS (768 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.19 GiB (9%)
Title                                    : Surround
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-02-09 15:51:58
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-02-09 15:51:58
Menus                                    : 3
 
I've tried a couple of other conversions using the same process - all judder when played back through Emby on the Shield, but in Archos, they all play fine.
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CBers

@@tman I have a lot of content with EAC-3 (DD+) audio and I don't have any issues with playback.

 

The audio is recognised in Emby as:

 

Audio
Title English Dolby Digital+ 6 ch Default
Language eng
Codec EAC3
Channels 6 ch
Sample rate 48,000 Hz
Default Yes

That looks different to what you have.

 

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CBers

The difference i only ca see is Title:Surround? You mean this?

Yes. Not sure if that is relevant though.

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