Transcode FLAC audio

[wolfram84 10]

So, there's a known problem with FLAC audio and video playback on Samsung TVs, the audio is NOT supported but its playable so what happens is that you get an audio delay and the audio track will be out of synch for the whole movie. 

I'm trying to find a way to transcode the FLAC audio on my Emby Samsung TV app, but the app won't transcode it, it will direct play with the delay, is there a way to force the transcode without having to transcode the whole video? Like the app already does with DTS/HDMA for example, so u have the video on direct play and just the audio transcoded.. @SamES

[FrostByte 5392]

Agree, if it's not supported, then it should automatically transcode.  Or, somehow automatically adjusted for the delay.

I normally just convert it myself to PCM and remux, but others may have lots.

Edited October 17, 2023 by FrostByte

[SamES 1056]

4 hours ago, wolfram84 said:

So, there's a known problem with FLAC audio and video playback on Samsung TVs, the audio is NOT supported but its playable so what happens is that you get an audio delay and the audio track will be out of synch for the whole movie. 

I'm trying to find a way to transcode the FLAC audio on my Emby Samsung TV app, but the app won't transcode it, it will direct play with the delay, is there a way to force the transcode without having to transcode the whole video? Like the app already does with DTS/HDMA for example, so u have the video on direct play and just the audio transcoded.. @SamES

Can you please send me a sample and TV/Model specs, etc?  FLAC does play, but I suspect there are conditions to that statement.   I've not had issues with samples I've tested, so I'm keen to investigate if you have a sample that behaves badly

[wolfram84 10]

Sure thing, attached is an example, but this applies to any file with FLAC audio and it's a Samsung problem because even playing using an external HDD the delay is present hence why it would be good to force transcode those tracks.

TV Model is both Samsung QN65Q60A (2021) and Q50Q60TA (2020). 

sample.mkv

[SamES 1056]

10 hours ago, wolfram84 said:

Sure thing, attached is an example, but this applies to any file with FLAC audio and it's a Samsung problem because even playing using an external HDD the delay is present hence why it would be good to force transcode those tracks.

TV Model is both Samsung QN65Q60A (2021) and Q50Q60TA (2020). 

sample.mkv 65.05 MB · 1 download

I've tested this sample on both my 2017 and 2022 Samsung TV's and it plays perfectly on both.  DirectPlay and no noticeable audio delay.  Do you definitely see the same issue using this sample?  It's possible that creating the sample has corrected the delay

Are you testing through a receiver/ARC or using the TV's built-in speakers?  I presume that you've checked that you don't have any audio delay set in the TV's Audio settings.

@FrostBytedo you want to give this a go on your Samsung?

[FrostByte 5392]

Just tested the file myself and I can hear about a second delay in the soundtrack. I tried using TV speakers and soundbar and both were the same.

Looking at the file though in mediainfo I noticed there is a 55ms delay in the audio track.  Which is much shorter than what I'm hearing, but odd.  Tried demuxing the video and audio track and mediainfo said the audio track was longer than the video track for some reason.  Maybe the splitting caused that?  Would have to see the mediainfo from the original.

Audio 
ID : 2 
Format : FLAC 
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec 
Codec ID : A_FLAC 
Duration : 1 min 0 s 
Bit rate mode : Variable 
Channel(s) : 1 channel 
Channel layout : M 
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz 
Bit depth : 24 bits 
Compression mode : Lossless 
Delay relative to video : 55 ms 
Writing library : libFLAC 1.2.1 (2007-09-17) 
Language : English 
Default : Yes 
Forced : No 
Statistics Tags Issue : no_variable_data 1970-01-01 00:00:00 / no_variable_data 2010-02-22 21:41:29 
FromStats_BitRate : 619016 
FromStats_Duration : 00:00:59.989000000 
FromStats_FrameCount : 703 
FromStats_StreamSize : 4641776 
MD5 of the unencoded content : 15943E24789E02D019406CCA3F188EBB 

Edit: My TV is from 2018 btw.

Edited October 18, 2023 by FrostByte

[wolfram84 10]

5 hours ago, SamES said:

I've tested this sample on both my 2017 and 2022 Samsung TV's and it plays perfectly on both.  DirectPlay and no noticeable audio delay.  Do you definitely see the same issue using this sample?  It's possible that creating the sample has corrected the delay

Are you testing through a receiver/ARC or using the TV's built-in speakers?  I presume that you've checked that you don't have any audio delay set in the TV's Audio settings.

@FrostBytedo you want to give this a go on your Samsung?

Optical cable through a receiver, but the delay is also noticeable using TV speakers, I didn't notice the delay applied in the MI but that was really a random sample that I picked since the delay is present in ANY file with FLAC, I tried playing that exact sample using HDD external and through emby both with delay.

 

Edit: odd that worked on your 2022/17 Samsung TV without the delay...there are quite a few old thread about this issue, it might be affecting only some Tizen TVs but it really doesn't make sense...FLAC is not listed as a supported audio format on Samsung site.

https://images.samsung.com/is/image/samsung/assets/test/support/tv-audio-video/how-to-troubleshoot-an-audio-delay/video-codec.png?$ORIGIN_PNG$

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by wolfram84

[FrostByte 5392]

Just wanted to add that though I can hear a large delay on my Samsung also that playing the file with VLC in Windows the sound seemed to be synced with the video.

[SamES 1056]

3 hours ago, FrostByte said:

Just wanted to add that though I can hear a large delay on my Samsung also that playing the file with VLC in Windows the sound seemed to be synced with the video.

Great, thanks for confirming.  Sounds like results are mixed across model years. I'm assuming that for both of you it was always DirectPlay.

Maybe we will have to disable flac completely which will upset some people

[FrostByte 5392]

37 minutes ago, SamES said:

Great, thanks for confirming.  Sounds like results are mixed across model years. I'm assuming that for both of you it was always DirectPlay.

Maybe we will have to disable flac completely which will upset some people

Correct, no transcoding.  Thing direct played the whole minute.

The only way to please everyone would be to have an option.  As you mentioned it's mixed and you can't even make a cutline at a certain year from our combined results.  It's going to upset some I'm sure   but if you go by what it says in the manual then it should be transcoded.  Or, some users will have to use another codec.  I'm not really hurt either way as I use PCM, which is a little bigger but I don't have issues with it.   

Unless you had a way to change the delay in the OSD something like with subtitles.  Something with a little slider to make it play sooner, or later.

Edited October 18, 2023 by FrostByte

[wolfram84 10]

Yeah since it's random models I can't find an easy solution here without advocating for myself, but if Samsung considers FLAC an audio format but not a video one it's probably that the newer models the NEO line will have the same issue as they don't show FLAC on their manual as a supported video codec anymore, so maybe the best course would be to force transcode it from now on..but as I said I'm not a neutral part here

[SamES 1056]

@Luke, what are your thoughts on this?  I think we've proven that FLAC in video files is giving mixed results across model ranges with regards to audio delays.  Given that FLAC is not documented as a supported audio codec in video files, do we disable this for all models.  It will upset some, but I expect only a minority

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, SamES said:

@Luke, what are your thoughts on this?  I think we've proven that FLAC in video files is giving mixed results across model ranges with regards to audio delays.  Given that FLAC is not documented as a supported audio codec in video files, do we disable this for all models.  It will upset some, but I expect only a minority

Yea probably a good idea.

[SamES 1056]

12 hours ago, wolfram84 said:

Yeah since it's random models I can't find an easy solution here without advocating for myself, but if Samsung considers FLAC an audio format but not a video one it's probably that the newer models the NEO line will have the same issue as they don't show FLAC on their manual as a supported video codec anymore, so maybe the best course would be to force transcode it from now on..but as I said I'm not a neutral part here

Done, thanks.

[wolfram84 10]

Any idea of when this will be changed? I'm using emby 1.6.8 for Samsung and FLAC is still direct playing with delay...

[Luke 42077]

5 minutes ago, wolfram84 said:

Any idea of when this will be changed? I'm using emby 1.6.8 for Samsung and FLAC is still direct playing with delay...

Can you try the latest build? Thanks.

[wolfram84 10]

On 12/29/2023 at 6:49 PM, Luke said:

Can you try the latest build? Thanks.

Same thing with 1.7.0.. direct play with delay.

[izzy198888 2]

Will this ever be fixed? I'm tired of converting flac to ac3 every time.

[SamES 1056]

1 hour ago, izzy198888 said:

Will this ever be fixed? I'm tired of converting flac to ac3 every time.

Sorry, I did disable this in October, but it looks like it was still trying to DirectPlay flac on some newer models.

I've made sure it will definitely be disabled for the next release.

[kingy444 117]

Running Emby for Samsung 1.7.0 (which appears in the store as released 2024/6/13)

 

MKV with FLAC audio is still doing direct play and getting a noticeable delay in audio

 

If I drop the video down from 1080p to 720p (using the cog on the tv app) then this forces the Audio to transcode to AAC (stats for nerds) and the audio sync issue is gone.

 

Can we force transcode FLAC audio on Samsung App?

for context TV model QA75Q90RAWXXY which I believe was a 2019 model

 

[SamES 1056]

I think it's fixed in the next store update

[kingy444 117]

16 hours ago, SamES said:

I think it's fixed in the next store update

Thanks for the update - rereading the above it looks like 1.7.0 has been the current version since January (which is strange as that’s not what the App Store says)

 

What does the release cycle for updates look like / any sort of ETA for a new version to be available ?

[SamES 1056]

It looks like Samsung isn't be accepting updates for 2019 models now that it's more than 5 years old. Your best option is to try the USB Beta updates.  The only downside is that you will need to download and install an update about every 30 days, but it means you will keep getting regular updates

[kingy444 117]

Don’t say that  

Being on the App Store is 100x better than USB install.
 

I love the app being on the TV itself but it’s soo inconvenient to access the usb install (that’s a me problem) and then I’ve got to deal with reauthentication (with user passwords) every month too  

 

I know Samsung were difficult to even get the app on the store to start with. I am still seeing updates to other apps on the TV so fingers crossed Samsung care about their customers (I’m funny I know) and are just slow

Hopefully Samsung accept the update otherwise I’m probably just going to have to buy a google stream at some point, which is crazy for what was a top of the line tv that’s still running newish OS

 

Otherwise, so we aren’t held ransom to the likes of Samsung is there any way to force something from the server side?

I know the DLNA profiles used to have something similar.

Thinking along the lines of, in the devices section (where you can currently only rename a device with a friendly name), each device could have default direct play options per codec etc and then we could just until FLAC on the server side, which would then force transcoding to occur?

 

Appreciate you looking into it

[SamES 1056]

Yes, it's a pain, but this has been the problem once the models are 5 years old.