TrueHD Audio Dropout on High Bitrate (50mps+) MKV's

[FrostByte 5392]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

@FrostByte do you see these dropouts?

No, I'm not seeing anything like this at all and I have all the movies in the OPs log along with some others which are even higher bitrate.   

[FrostByte 5392]

@goat999 which HDMI port are you using as Shield input to your TV sine you're passing through the TV first and then out eARC to the AVR?

If I got the right model then according to the link below that model has 2 HDMI 2.0, 2 HDMI 2.1 and the eARC port is HDMI 3.

LG BX 55 inch 4K Smart OLED TV | LG UK

I believe HDMI 2.0 only supports 18gbs and HDMI 2.1 is something like 48gbs.

If the Shield is connected to one of the 2.1 ports are the cables also rated for 2.1?  

[goat999 5]

@Frostbyte - HDMI port that the Shield is in is HDMI 4, eaRC is on HDMI3. Cable into the Tv is 2.1 rated, the eARC to Sonos cable is the cable tha Sonos supplied with the Arc.  I believe this cable is ok and it works fine with Kodi so

@rbjtech - thanks for the pointers on direct file access.  Your great instructions have confirmed what I have tried is correct.  The only thing I didn't do is wait sometime for the Shield to mount them.  I'll try later on today.  Unfortunately I have a boring thing called work to get out of the way beforehand

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated.

 

[goat999 5]

ok, so still streaming in HTTP, despite waiting several hours.  I am of course assuming a few hours is long enough for the shield to sort its self out?

 

 

 

 

[CBers 7450]

8 minutes ago, goat999 said:

ok, so still streaming in HTTP, despite waiting several hours.  I am of course assuming a few hours is long enough for the shield to sort its self out?

Did you enable the "Pass Direct Path" option in the Playback settings?


 

Edited November 11, 2021 by CBers

[goat999 5]

Yes, Pass Direct Path is enabled.

 

[CBers 7450]

Just now, goat999 said:

Yes, Pass Direct Path is enabled.

Well if you have followed everything in the instructions from the KB, then perhaps there is a bug, or something in your set up casuing it not to work.

I have used it in the past, but found it worse to use than HTTP.

Others find the FILL access method works better.

Perhaps play something, identify it's still in HTTP mode and then send in-app logs so Eric can check.
 

[goat999 5]

k, i'll give that a go.  Thanks for your help.

[rbjtech 5284]

You can test this independently.

On the Shield, first of all check you can see the shares mounted in X-Plore - re my previous post.

edit - Infact you can play the media file directly from X-Plore, if this works ok - no need to load VLC 

Then load VLC onto your Shield.

using VLC, you should be able to now use these 'local' mount points to play files directly from your NAS - if that works, then you know you have a working NAS > Shield solution.  ie All File Account and Permissions are good from the NAS.  Emby uses exactly the same path.

So if VLC does not work - then this is why Emby is not working either so you need to fix the issue - likely to be Account and/or Permissions on the NAS.

ps - on the time to mount - if you go into the Shield settings and onto the NAS host, click it and it should list all the shares with a calculated size for each share.  If they exist (and are not stuck on 'calculating..') then the shared is mounted and is ready for use.

Edited November 11, 2021 by rbjtech

[FrostByte 5392]

If you use VLC as an external player within Emby would that be the same thing? Wouldn't Emby then have to pass the direct path.

[rbjtech 5284]

3 minutes ago, FrostByte said:

If you use VLC as an external player within Emby would that be the same thing? Wouldn't Emby then have to pass the direct path.

Not 100% sure if Direct File play works with VLC as an external player - as when used normally, it picks up the 'stream'.  It may well work Direct Play too - I've never needed to try

If X-Plore can see and play the OP's files - then there is nothing wrong with the NAS > Shield part of the setup.

Can you screen grab your library setup page - lets check the 'Optional' settings vs a Synology user ..  

[goat999 5]

 

Yes I can see the shares in X-Plore and this shows the Total Drive Size/Used in Gb but when in shield settings and on NAS host they show 0 Kb (after calculating).  I think its KB or GB (not sure off the top go my head) but the figure is definitely 0.  Should this also be show the amount of data stored there in KB/GB?

Permissions I'm damn sure are ok but will try VLC as a check.

 

[goat999 5]

and one more question about direct file access is will Dolby Vision still work or will this drop back to using HDR as does Kodi when streaming mkvs?

[rbjtech 5284]

1 minute ago, goat999 said:

 

Yes I can see the shares in X-Plore and this shows the Total Drive Size/Used in Gb but when in shield settings and on NAS host they show 0 Kb (after calculating).  I think its KB or GB (not sure off the top go my head) but the figure is definitely 0.  Should this also be show the amount of data stored there in KB/GB?

Permissions I'm damn sure are ok but will try VLC as a check.

 

On mine it shows the share file size in GB

So something is not quiet right ..

Can you 'play' a media file in X-Plore ?

[rbjtech 5284]

7 minutes ago, goat999 said:

and one more question about direct file access is will Dolby Vision still work or will this drop back to using HDR as does Kodi when streaming mkvs?

DV works perfectly

edit - I should add, for single track MKV's ie - Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.07.06, BL+EL+RPU, Blu-ray compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible

Dual layer/track will never work in any software, so you need to combine the layers with MakeMKV

Edited November 11, 2021 by rbjtech

[FrostByte 5392]

Here is a screen shot of my movie library if you want to compare.  MyEmbyMedia is the actual shared folder on Synology

 

[FrostByte 5392]

Also, I mentioned this in another thread where they were having issues with TrueHD.  There was a commit change by Exoplayer in Sep for dropouts

Properly account for the number of samples in every TrueHD audio fram…
…e when bitstreaming

Resolves an issue with A/V sync and possible audio skipping when
bitstreaming TrueHD

Properly account for the number of samples in every TrueHD audio fram… · Nevcairiel/LAVFilters@d5088c6 · GitHub

[FrostByte 5392]

6 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

DV works perfectly

edit - I should add, for single track MKV's ie - Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.07.06, BL+EL+RPU, Blu-ray compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible

Dual layer/track will never work in any software, so you need to combine the layers with MakeMKV

Dual tracks don't work.  Makemkv creates a dual layer file because non DV TVs can throw away the DV layer and still play the HDR10 layer.  

[rbjtech 5284]

So I guess a good question to ask, is do you get the TrueHD drop outs on a low bandwidth movie ?  If yes, then the bandwidth is irrelevant.  If no, then it's likely bandwidth/latency related.

You can easily create one yourself using mkvtoolnix, use a SD Video with TrueHD Audio ... 

[rbjtech 5284]

2 minutes ago, FrostByte said:

Dual tracks don't work.  Makemkv creates a dual layer file because non DV TVs can throw away the DV layer and still play the HDR10 layer.  

..That's what I just said   MakeMKV creates a single layer DV file by combining the DV layer with the main HDR layer.  A Dual layer file will play just fine (in HDR only), the DV layer will just get ignored.

[goat999 5]

1 minute ago, rbjtech said:

So I guess a good question to ask, is do you get the TrueHD drop outs on a low bandwidth movie ?  If yes, then the bandwidth is irrelevant.  If no, then it's likely bandwidth/latency related.

You can easily create one yourself using mkvtoolnix, use a SD Video with TrueHD Audio ... 

TruehD plays fine on low bandwidth movies.  Its the 50Gb + files that always give me dropouts.

[rbjtech 5284]

2 minutes ago, goat999 said:

TruehD plays fine on low bandwidth movies.  Its the 50Gb + files that always give me dropouts.

ok cool - so I highly suspect it's the smb > http translation which emby is doing that is causing your issues - Direct File should solve this as it simply removes Emby from the equation.

To be fair to Emby - it might simply be your emby server does not have enough 'grunt' to do the transforming quickly enough ..

Edited November 11, 2021 by rbjtech

[FrostByte 5392]

Maybe ebr can weigh in if he thinks that Exoplayer patch will help. 

[rbjtech 5284]

Possibly - but the OP has said TrueHD works fine on lower bandwidth movies - so this is pointing to a bottleneck/latency issue.

As emby is running on the NAS itself, I suspect it's cpu cannot keep up or the synology version of emby is restricted somehow.

@FrostByte You may recall we had exactly the same issue a couple of years ago with the Windows high bitrate streaming (it used to stutter @ 50Mbit+) - this is actually when Direct File was first introduced to get around the problem.  A few weeks later, the emby team fixed the limitation - and now http streaming works just fine as well.

[FrostByte 5392]

3 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

Possibly - but the OP has said TrueHD works fine on lower bandwidth movies - so this is pointing to a bottleneck/latency issue.

As emby is running on the NAS itself, I suspect it's cpu cannot keep up or the synology version of emby is restricted somehow.

@FrostByte You may recall we had exactly the same issue a couple of years ago with the Windows high bitrate streaming (it used to stutter @ 50Mbit+) - this is actually when Direct File was first introduced to get around the problem.  A few weeks later, the emby team fixed the limitation - and now http streaming works just fine as well.

Ya.  It did seem to help a few people including myself that were in that thread.

If X-plore/VLC work I can post a bunch of screenshots of my NAS/Shield/Emby settings if needed