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Can someone take al look at the Android TV App selection of audio tracks please?


jmoore85
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jmoore85

If I use Handbrake "HQ 1080p30 Surround" to encode with default settings the first audio is Stereo and the 2nd Audio is AC3 Passthrough of a 5.1 audio track. Both these appear as options when I choose the resulting file served from emby server on my Sony Bravia Android TV app. Surround sound does *not* get sent to my receiver.

When I repeat the encode process with Handbrake but this time delete the Stereo track so there is only one AC3 pass through. This is again correctly identified in the movie selection on the TV and the surround sound arrives at my decoder. ie when the App has no choice in sound tracks the hardware, tv, receiver etc. all get surround sound signals. It seems when there is a choice only the stereo is sent by the Emby app to my receiver.

Now when I change the order in Handbrake, or remove the stereo so the 5.1 track is first and then add back in stereo as either the second track or move it up top to be the first track or even if i use ffmpeg and -map the order of the tracks no permutation (and I tried all of them) allows me to get 5.1 signals to my receiver - yet in all cases the app correctly identifies the number of tracks, the order and which is "default" and one of them is AC3 5.1.

So for some reason selection of a 5.1 audio track in the TV app doesn't cause the App to send this to my receiver even though my TV, cabling and receiver are all able to receive and process 5.1 sound when I encode a file with *only* one AC3 5.1 pass through track.

Am happy to send example files (I have a 40mb excerpt of X-Men), videos of what I'm doing, debug logs, you name it, whatever you need if I can help someone who can work this out and save me having to re-encode all my mp4s to remove the stereo track.

For completeness. I am making no changes to either the cables or the TV or the App settings to get the 5.1 sound to work on the file that has only one track. The App doesn't seem to be able to correctly send 5.1 to my receiver when the video file has a choice of 5.1 and stereo tracks. I'm more than happy to repeat this and check all the usual stuff about TV audio settings etc. but I'm pretty sure this is something in the Emby App selection / processing / deciding what to do when there are more than 1 audio tracks in a file. I'm happy to run any diagnostics anyone cares to think of to get this working because I suspect from what I've read elsewhere a lot of people are struggling with this.

Much thanks in advance.

XBR75X850C, Debian 64, Emby S 4.4.3.0, Handbrake 1.3.1

Jonathan

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Hi.  This should be corrected in the current beta of the app.  Also, when you do your encodes, make sure that the language and channel count are tagged correctly in the resulting file.

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jmoore85

Nearly. When I select the 5.1 track from the screen where you command the movie to play (or resume) the stereo is always played irrespective of choice between the two tracks (stereo and 5.1). In the beta the audio button on the remote does something different from the non beta app though. When I press the audio button on the remote I get a two choice bullet list in the middle of the screen with a choice of two tracks (the text for both is identical) but when I switch to the "other" track - the one that is not highlighted - sure enough 5.1 arrives at my receiver. This is a nice work around but would be good to:

#1 Get the track selection from the Play menu screen working

#2 Offer a default setting for all movies to select 5.1 - if possible

#3 Add some more text to the audio track choice that appears when pressing audio on the report to details of each track beyond just the language which in my case was identical for both options

Keep up the good work and thanks for the Beta.

Jonathan

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17 minutes ago, jmoore85 said:

Add some more text to the audio track choice that appears when pressing audio on the report to details of each track beyond just the language which in my case was identical for both options

You can tag your audio tracks with titles and there is an option in the server for us to use those for display.

audiotrackname.png

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20 minutes ago, jmoore85 said:

When I select the 5.1 track from the screen where you command the movie to play (or resume) the stereo is always played irrespective of choice

Can you please reproduce this and then send a log from the app?

Thanks.

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jmoore85

I just posted the logs. I uninstalled the beta, reinstalled the normal app to see if the audio track menu overlay was present in that version and I just missed it. It wasn't there so I installed the beta again to send you the logs - now in the beta I can't get the audio track overlay selection menu to work again for the exact same movie so I'm back to square 1. Hopefully the logs have something useful.

 

Jonathan

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You are running this on a 2015 TV?

That device is reporting very limited audio support so, the audio changes are happening but, due to the device, it is mixing down the 5.1 track to stereo.

Exactly how is everything hooked together here?

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jmoore85

It's odd I changed nothing now with the Beta App the file that was giving me 5.1 is no longer giving me 5.1. It's not the TV changing it's mind over the audio output options? Amazon Prime App and Google Movie App 5.1 have been consistently working for us but right now neither of those apps want to send 5.1 down. Even after a hard power cycle / 60 seconds off for both TV and receiver.

Jonathan

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jmoore85

I just sent another log at 12:19 Eastern with the TV Sound output set back to audio device rather than TV speakers - for some reason it had gone back to the TV speakers. Amazon and Play Movie apps are working but the Beta won't play 5.1 using the file with one AC3 5.1 track - which was working previously.

 

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  • Solution
jmoore85

I think I have worked it out. The TV needs to be set to Audio Device in the sound settings and something other than PCM in the Digital Audio Out sound settings. The Emby App (either Beta or normal, both work) needs to select use external player. In my case I have no external player (e.g. VLC) installed so it is defaulting to one labeled Video that is a red film reel and reminds me of the player Google Play Movies uses (actually com.sony.dtv.osat.video). When the video is playing (doesn't matter which track you choose when starting the movie in emby) press the audio button on remote control and select a different track and 5.1 is now sent to the receiver. Thankfully when there is no external video app installed there is no nag screen - Android is smart enough to just choose the Sony TV pre-installed Video app without confirmation. If you have VLC installed you'll get a choice and the 5.1 still works if you select Video (not VLC) but if you choose VLC even though you can change audio track in VLC it doesn't send 5.1 to the receiver. I suspect something in the native App means it either queries the TV capabilities differently and gets information about the availability of 5.1 output options or it somehow forces this regardless of the reported capabilities. The com.sony.dtv.osat.video on my TV reports version 4.0.A.2.50. Thankfully I can use the Handbrake defaults and don't need to rescan my library since this now works with m4v files that have multiple tracks.

Summary to get 5.1 working from Handbrake files encoded using the HQ 1080p30 Surround preset on Sony Bravia

  1. TV Sound settings Output->Audio Device, Digital Audio Out->Not PCM
  2. Emby App Use External Player
  3. Start your movie and if offered a choice select the Video (Red film icon) player
  4. When the movie has started press the Audio button on the remote and select a track that isn't highlighted

Jonathan

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jmoore85

I've searched for an APK backup tool but can't find one for AndroidTV - if someone helps me I'll gladly take a copy of the com.sony.dtv.osat.video APK for someone to tinker with.

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jmoore85

For completeness I'm using:

  • Emby for Android TV 1.8.10g
  • Emby Server 4.4.3.0
  • Linux debian64 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1+deb10u1 (2020-04-27) x86_64 GNU/Linux
  • Handbrake 1.3.1 (2020010400) Preset HQ 1080p30 Surround - which adds an Audio track AC3 passthrough
  • Sony XBR75X850C FIrmware 6.827
  • Yamaha RX-V373 connected using a TOSLINK optical cable from the TV optical out (an HDMI on the ARC HDMI input/output also works just fine)
  • mediainfo reports an audio track AC-3 Dolby Digital, Constant bit rate, 448 kb/s 6 channels L R C LFE Ls Rs 48.0khz stream size of 405Mib lossy
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jmoore85
2 hours ago, ebr said:

You are running this on a 2015 TV?

That device is reporting very limited audio support so, the audio changes are happening but, due to the device, it is mixing down the 5.1 track to stereo.

Exactly how is everything hooked together here?

This isn't right and I've seen a lot of posts like this claiming there's something wrong with the TV support. The age of the TV and the device reporting are both misleading ideas. 5.1 surround works just fine and I've also seen a few posts making notes about the optical cable being the problem. This is also wrong. My set up is both 2015 TV and Optical cable and 5.1 works just fine. There is something wrong with either the way the Emby native player queries the TV capabilities or processes/reports those capabilities or there is a way to 'force' playback irrespective of those capabilities. I will gladly help debug / test as many permutations as needed to get to the bottom of this including finding a way to take a peek at the com.sony.dtv.osat.video app which is able to either query the TV correctly or is set with the defaults for this TV to force output of 5.1.

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Okay, you did not mention you were using an optical cable.  That's one of the reasons I asked exactly how everything was hooked up.

The player we use does not currently support sending full audio over optical.  There may be a way for you to force it to work with certain settings in the TV though...

Keep in mind that only rudimentary 5.1 audio is capable of travelling over optical as well (no 6 or 7.x no DD+ or DTS HD, etc.)

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Since you appear to have an HDMI option available, I highly  suggest using that.  It will support much more and should solve all of these issues.

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jmoore85
24 minutes ago, ebr said:

Okay, you did not mention you were using an optical cable.  That's one of the reasons I asked exactly how everything was hooked up.

The player we use does not currently support sending full audio over optical.  There may be a way for you to force it to work with certain settings in the TV though...

Keep in mind that only rudimentary 5.1 audio is capable of travelling over optical as well (no 6 or 7.x no DD+ or DTS HD, etc.)

Yep that's the problem. The external player works just fine though.

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jmoore85
21 minutes ago, ebr said:

Since you appear to have an HDMI option available, I highly  suggest using that.  It will support much more and should solve all of these issues.

Can you give me an example of something much more HDMI will support? The only issue I have now - and seems like others have is that we need to tell Emby not to use the Emby player but to use the native TV player. Not sure that's an issue as such because it's such a simple setting change.

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1 hour ago, jmoore85 said:

Can you give me an example of something much more HDMI will support?

All the things I mentioned above - audio greater than 5.1, DD+ DTS with bitrates of up to 1.5Mb/s, automatic detection of audio capabilities (not possible with optical) and our app should be able to bitstream your audio fine.

Basically, optical connections were replaced with the much more robust HDMI spec several years ago.

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