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FLAC 7.1 to LG WebOS?


marky9074

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marky9074

Not sure if this is the right place for this, however having re-ripped all my media using FLAC given the lack of license with Synology (and others) for DTS, I am wondering why Emby is not handling the native 7.1 streams on 'newer' blu-rays and 4K UHD and outputting them as 5.1 to clients. Maybe this is an LG specific thing, as a quick test playing on Android phone and through the browser on my desktop (2ch) seems OK?

 

All I get through my LG 65" OLED (2018) is a blank screen and no sound, and on the LG 32" LCD a high pitched buzz/whistle. Going back to Plex (which I am trying to get away from), they play OK on both. Presumably Emby is also using some FFmpeg library (same as Plex), so there would be no benefit in me installing the one from the SynoCommunity?

 

Any help would be much appreciated. I don't really want to re-rip or remux my library having already done it once to FLAC....

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Edited by marky9074
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rbjtech

I'm a little confused by your synology/DTS statement.  The synology is presumably just being used as a NAS - so it is the end device (the LG) that must support DTS, this has nothing to do with the synology.   the good news is LG does natively support DTS,  DTS-HD and True-HD are another topic, but I'm not sure why you are converting DTS to FLAC ?

 

It's worth posting your ffmpeg logs - or look for the 'Stream Mapping' section within the log and it will tell you what it is trying to do.

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marky9074

Hi there,

 

Apologies was a bit busy yesterday to reply fully. Yes, bit of a long story and in all honestly cannot properly recall what happened. Think I started with DS Video and Kodi clients and regardless of client support DTS would not pass through, hence the decision to make the first default audio stream FLAC within MakeMKV, and keep the second stream as a backup (usually DTS). From then I moved to Plex server and Plex clients on Roku sticks and an Amazon Fire TV box.

 

When I moved house, new LG sets in each room, and yes you're correct even the lower spec 32" have good support. That said..... looking at the specs it doesn't support FLAC natively  :wacko:

 

5eb3d7c27ceec_Capture.png

 

I just re-encoded Endgame yesterday with three audio sets, FLAC7.1, DTS & AC3. On my 32" sets FLAC played, albeit with the buzzing noise, DTS resulted in just a blank screen, whereas AC3 buzzed for a couple of seconds then played normally. I just looked at my ffmpeg logs and they are days old and have no status from todays plays....?

Edited by marky9074
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marky9074

I meant that when I open the logs there is nothing there from today. I assumed that if Emby tries to push a file to a client that does not support a codec it tries to transcode the stream on the fly, and that process would be parsed to the ffmpeg log?

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marky9074

Hmm, well I have no idea what is going on then as there is nothing in the ffmpeg logs at all (for todays tests). Could it be that the TV is reporting that it supports these codecs, but actually it doesn't.. hence why it doesn't play (and doesn't try to transcode)? Actually trying again with FLAC and toggling on the nerd status it states that is is direct playing and audio codec is FLAC 8 channels...

Edited by marky9074
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marky9074

OK pretty much confirmed this then. Just tried same file on a geriatric Roku stick and when bringing up the nerd status is states 'Remux' and Audio Codec AAC (2 ch stereo). Clearly the LG sets are somehow fooling the server into direct playing the files?

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Yes currently we are considering flac as supported, but there may be some exceptions that need to be made.

@@SamES

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marky9074

I did some more testing last night using DLNA (Serviio) and when streaming Endgame on the 32" 6200PLA I get what you would expect - FLAC not playing (as its not supported by that set), and when changing the audio stream using the built in LG Picture and Video app to either DTS or AC3 they both play fine.

 

Interestingly, doing the same test on the LG OLED65C8 it doesn't play at all, and I don't get to the menu to be able to change the audio streams....  I find this a bit bizarre as this set is actually supposed to be able to support FLAC. In addition, when checking the same file in Emby, even when I select DTS or AC3 I get the same black screen.....

 

I played around with ffmpeg on the workstation last night with a test file to copy a track and make it AC3. This seemed pretty quick and efficient. I have no objection to batch scripting all my media to find track type DTS (for example) and change it to track type AC3 (or something else if better compatibility), though whilst I am sure this is possible it might be a little outside my comfort zone scripting wise.....

Edited by marky9074
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SamES

On the LG, I've seen 'at least' these two things occur with audio tracks that can't be played

  • Black screen and no playback (and no errors the app can detect - so we can't handle it nicely)
     
  • Automatic switching to the next audio track
  • This absolutely happens with TrueHD atmos if it is 'forced' to DirectPlay
  • The app isn't notified of this change and will think it it is DirectPlaying the selected track (and not the next audio track)

 

I suspect you have seen both of these outcomes!

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marky9074

Sorry for the delay in getting back. Today I had an oddity, my test Endgame file shows the DTS and AC3 tracks as 6 instead of 5.1 on the Emby client. As I test I used ffmpeg to remove these tracks (and the FLAC one) and re-ripped the blu-ray (for audio) using MakeMKV, but back to the default profile (no conversion to FLAC). I then used ffmpeg to add these two audio streams to the original H265 video... I tried this first using a USB stick on both sets and it worked fine, then copied the file to the server, and again success.

 

So it looks like I might be re-ripping my media to get the original audio back off...   However, this is a lot quicker than re-encoding everything again....

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marky9074

On the LG, I've seen 'at least' these two things occur with audio tracks that can't be played

  • Black screen and no playback (and no errors the app can detect - so we can't handle it nicely)

     

  • Automatic switching to the next audio track

  • This absolutely happens with TrueHD atmos if it is 'forced' to DirectPlay
  • The app isn't notified of this change and will think it it is DirectPlaying the selected track (and not the next audio track)

 

I suspect you have seen both of these outcomes!

 

Yeah, I can see now that this is more of the wishy washy handling of FLAC on the LG sets (sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't). Its kind of ironic that I embarked on the FLAC route as a way to ensure there was  no compatibility issues and now having to fix everything due to poor handling of FLAC. Is there no profile for each type of client on Emby that can be hacked to ignore FLAC?

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SamES

 Is there no profile for each type of client on Emby that can be hacked to ignore FLAC?

 

Not quite sure what you mean here.  Yes, each device app does have a profile to specify the supported types.   FLAC is enabled for LG, but if there is only limited support, then it does get hard to allow it in some cases and not others, unless this can be clearly described, and even then it may not be possible.  Maybe we need to limit FLAC support to only 2 channels for LG

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marky9074

Ahh OK, I wondered if there was something like an xml profile on the server side for each type of device, and that maybe this could be edited. I haven't fully tested yet, but some of my FLAC stuff is working... I wondering if it is actually just FLAC 7.1 that is causing my issues.....? I will report back, but maybe a failsafe of 5.1 would be a better way to go?

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marky9074

Yeah, definitely seems that it is FLAC 7.1 that is not compatible on LG's. FLAC 5.1 works OK on all my sets from what I can see. 

Edited by marky9074
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