Emby Web on Sony Vewd Browser does not transcode FLAC although browser cannot play it

[Fluxcompensator 1]

Description:

I found what appears to be an issue with codec detection or playback profile matching in Emby Server 4.9.5.0.

 

Environment:

• Emby Server: 4.9.5.0
• Platform: ReadyNAS (Linux)
• Client: Emby Web
• Browser: Sony Vewd Browser (OMI)
•  

User-Agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 12; BRAVIA 4K VH22)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/127.0.6533.120 Safari/537.36
OMI/4.25.1.92.StableAVB_Sony.1

 

Problem:

The Sony Vewd browser is unable to play FLAC audio.

However, Emby does not transcode FLAC to AAC (or another supported codec). Instead, it serves the original FLAC file directly, causing playback to fail.

Audio transcoding is enabled for the user.

 

Expected behavior:

Since the browser does not support FLAC playback, Emby should automatically transcode the audio to AAC (or another supported format).

 

Actual behavior:

The playback request is made through the UniversalAudioService with:

AudioCodec=aac

but the server responds with:

Content-Type: audio/flac

The original FLAC stream is sent instead of a transcoded AAC stream.

 

Relevant log excerpts:

User policy:
EnableAudioPlaybackTranscoding: True

GET /emby/Audio/.../universal
...
AudioCodec=aac

Response:

Content-Type: audio/flac

 

Additional information:

The issue only occurs with the Sony Vewd browser.

Other clients (Android TV app, desktop browsers, etc.) work as expected.

It appears that Emby incorrectly assumes that the Vewd browser supports FLAC playback, or the browser's playback profile incorrectly advertises FLAC support.

Could this be a bug in the Vewd browser device profile or codec detection logic?

 

embyserver_sanitized.txt

 

[Luke 42917]

Hi that’s odd. The browser must be reporting that it supports it.

 The next release will have a section in settings to force transcoding of certain formats so you can use that.

[Fluxcompensator 1]

But I want FLAC to be played by default. I don't want to have to convert the format every time just because of a browser.

[visproduction 368]

Which browser supports flac

 https://caniuse.com/flac

[Fluxcompensator 1]

Interessting, thanks.

[Luke 42917]

1 hour ago, Fluxcompensator said:

But I want FLAC to be played by default. I don't want to have to convert the format every time just because of a browser.

But that's not what you said in the expected behavior section of your original posting.

[Fluxcompensator 1]

Yes, if the browser doesn't support FLAC, it should be transcoded. But I don't want FLAC to be transcoded for all browsers in general.

[Luke 42917]

1 hour ago, Fluxcompensator said:

Yes, if the browser doesn't support FLAC, it should be transcoded. But I don't want FLAC to be transcoded for all browsers in general.

It's an app setting that only applies to the device you're on.

[Fluxcompensator 1]

Ah. Missunderstood. Great!