4K keep freezing/stopping with Shield and Gig Connection

[epayson85 72]

12 hours ago, ebr said:

Please let us know about that.  If that plays it better (while actually passing the THD track), then this may be fixed in the next release of Exo (which that app is using).  However, since this is also occurring in VLC, I imagine it is going to require a firmware update from Nvidia to fix.

So far there is no skipping at all on 3.1.47.  My receiver picks it up as TrueHD and everything sounds fantastic.  At one point though the audio/video sync was way off.  It happened after I fast forwarded the movie.  Even after stopping the movie and resuming it, the issue continued.  If I switched tracks to a regular Dolby 5.1 track then it all played fine.  If I switched back to the TrueHD track then it was off again.  It wasn't until I restarted the movie that it went back to normal.  I then fast forwarded to that same spot and everything was fine.  I haven't been able to reproduce it on that movie or any other that I tested.  

 

On an unrelated noted, I am noticing the player is a bit less responsive than the current version.  Sometimes when I press a button on the remote it seems to take a minute for it to register and bring up the UI over the movie.  Its also slower when its rewinding and fast forwarding.  I didn't have time to see if its related to the 4k content I was watching or TrueHD content but I can mess around later this weekend to get a better idea.  I will add any comments to the 3.1.47 topic Luke linked too.

[Luke 36999]

Thanks for the feedback.

[justinds89 3]

I am having a very similar issue myself. It appears any DTS or TrueHD is freezing within seconds of playing. It shows it is direct playing and my device is capable of playing DTS and TrueHD.

Any updates or is the only thing we can do now is try side loading that Emby version?

[ebr 14902]

1 hour ago, justinds89 said:

I am having a very similar issue myself. It appears any DTS or TrueHD is freezing within seconds of playing. It shows it is direct playing and my device is capable of playing DTS and TrueHD.

Any updates or is the only thing we can do now is try side loading that Emby version?

Hi.  We'll help you in your topic.

Thanks.

[epayson85 72]

Just wanted to update after playing around more with both release and beta of Android emby plus kodi. 

 

First kodi I figured out why it wasn't passing through truehd. I just needed to turn advanced settings on and there was a setting to passthrough / bitstream all the different audio formats.  Interesting enough once I changed that, kodi had the same issue as every other player. It also had similar issues to the beta emby app when it came to voice sync.  It seemed kodi was using lpcm prior to the setting change.  This explains why it sounded great but not quite as good as emby when it was playing correctly.  

This obviously tells us it's something wrong with either my devices or the shield so I started messing around with other settings and seeing what I could get to work in both versions of emby.  First I was finally able to duplicate the voice sync issues I reported earlier in the emby beta. It happens on just about any video I play after lots of fast forwarding and rewinding.  It was certainly more common with truehd, dts hd, and dd+.  If I just played a video from start to finish though there was no issue.  One thing that bothered me about the beta app compared to the released app is the lack of options for resolution / fps change.  I found even in the release app that sometimes when the shield was trying to force 60hz the voices would be slightly out of sync.  This lead me to the next discovery.

I went into the actual shield settings menu and instead of the default 4k 60hz I changed it to 4k 23.98 which is the standard for most tv and movies besides live sports.  Instantly all of my problems went away. On every single player.  Oddly enough even changing it on the emby app itself had no impact compared to changing the actual shield setting.  When I changed the setting on the emby app it would fix voice sync issues but the audio / video would still stutter and pause on truehd.  By changing the setting in the shield settings everything works as intended on all 3 players.

So my first question is if I change those settings in the emby app but leave the shield setting as is does the shield just stay at 60hz but the player is playing at 23.98?  When I changed the setting in the app it acts like any other computer when there is a resolution change, but clearly there were still issues.  The reason I ask is I'm begining to wonder if it's a bandwidth issue from the hdmi.  What I don't know is it a shield bandwidth issue either cpu (which I doubt) or hdmi port. Then it could also be an issue with my cable. I'm using very high quality cables from the shield to the AVR and then again to the projector so I doubt it, but who knows at this point.  I have always heard of odd handshake issues with newer hdcp standards but never experienced them myself.  Would love to get everyone else's thoughts, but I'm glad everything is playing correctly now and sounds fantastic.  I prefer the look of 23.98 anyway and always turn off any video processing.

[Luke 36999]

Yes but please try it and report your experience. Thanks.

[hifiaudio2 47]

In the last week I have experienced freezing as well (Shield, gig wired connection, Emby, playing back from Synology NAS with path substitution).  Seems like the movies do not do it until they have been playing for about 30 min, and then start freezing more and more frequently.  Stopping the movie and closing and restarting Emby and playing it again fixes it. Or at least it did last night.  This is with the auto update build, so whatever it has taken without intervention.

 

[epayson85 72]

59 minutes ago, hifiaudio2 said:

In the last week I have experienced freezing as well (Shield, gig wired connection, Emby, playing back from Synology NAS with path substitution).  Seems like the movies do not do it until they have been playing for about 30 min, and then start freezing more and more frequently.  Stopping the movie and closing and restarting Emby and playing it again fixes it. Or at least it did last night.  This is with the auto update build, so whatever it has taken without intervention.

 

I have had movies do it with-in the first few minutes, halfway through the movie, sometimes constantly, and sometimes only every 15 to 30 minutes.  Its completely random and does it on any player not just Emby.  The only thing I have found to fix it is go into the actual shield settings, not emby settings, and change the resolution to 4k at 23.98 hz instead of the default 60hz.  It has not happened since on emby, kodi, or VLC.  

[hifiaudio2 47]

OH I see.  Has this only been doing this to you in the past week or so, or for a while? This never happened to me until last week. 

[ebr 14902]

41 minutes ago, hifiaudio2 said:

OH I see.  Has this only been doing this to you in the past week or so, or for a while? This never happened to me until last week. 

Did you just apply the recent Shield firmware update?

[hifiaudio2 47]

I applied it only yesterday.  This was already happening.

[epayson85 72]

15 hours ago, hifiaudio2 said:

OH I see.  Has this only been doing this to you in the past week or so, or for a while? This never happened to me until last week. 

I recently built a dedicated theater room so I haven't been aware of this until then.  Thus my systems have been downmixing the audio to stereo and not been having any issues until now.  When I discovered this, just looking around the web it seems this has been an issue on the shield since late last year or early this year.  The fact its happening on all players its most likely a shield issue and not an emby issue.  Though the Android 3.1.47 player seems to play everything fine without any change to settings.

[hifiaudio2 47]

Hmm..  ill keep investigating then.  My kids and I watch something in the theater most nights of the week and have only had this happen starting early last week so who knows. 

[epayson85 72]

Have you happened to notice which movies are doing it?  Is it all of them or just some?  For me its anything with a really high audio bit rate.  Anything at 1500kbps or lower plays perfectly fine which is most 5.1 DTS or Dolby tracks.  Its only when you get into the HD tracks especially TrueHD and DTS Master tracks that I see the issue.  So I guess the question is how often do you play movies with those tracks?  Again I never noticed until I got my theater equipment and started actually passing through that audio.  If you are playing MKV's with multiple tracks, the next time this happens, see if trying a lower quality track stops the issue.  That's how I figured out what was going on and then a little search on google revealed I wasn't the only one experiencing this.  

[hifiaudio2 47]

Ill try to check.  One was The Patriot. .  which is LPCM.  John Wick (1st one)  as well..  not sure what the audio track is on that. 

[RanmaCanada 335]

On 20/11/2020 at 12:08, hifiaudio2 said:

Ill try to check.  One was The Patriot. .  which is LPCM.  John Wick (1st one)  as well..  not sure what the audio track is on that. 

If it's a remux, the primary audio track is basically 5000 kbs. 

#1:English Object Basedch Atmos @ 4 955 kb/s (Dolby Atmos/TrueHD Audio / 7.1-Atmos / 48 kHz / ~4955 kbps / 24-bit)

The compatibilty track is only 640kb/s

[hifiaudio2 47]

No freezes on any similar movies we have watched over the past few days.  john Wick 2 and we were soldiers