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Video freezes when trying to play DTS 7.1 and TrueHD 7.1 on Amazon FireTV

assphaceassphace Members, Plex Pass Posts: 3 Plex Pass
in Android TV & Amazon Fire TV

This just recently became an issue. Videos with master audio tracks in 7.1 would play effortlessly. Now, for some strange reason, the audio will play, but the picture is frozen. I noticed that if I went into settings and unchecked the EAC3 (Dolby digital plus), the videos would play again, but the audio would clearly be different (as if missing all presence). What happened? I've got my unRAID setup properly and updated along with the latest plex docker. I even forced an update for the latest plex version.

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  • azulskyknightazulskyknight Members, Plex Pass Posts: 1 Plex Pass
    edited June 15

    I just bought plex pass lifetime today, and the first thing I did was install Plex on my fully up to date FireTV.

    It will stream ripped DVDs just fine, but all my blueray .mkv files have no video, I'll get a single frame if I skip forward or back, and flawless audio. I haven't tried disabling EAC3 yet, but it seems to me that I've never really had any thing working yet I do IT for a living. Plex is installed on Windows 10 Pro, sitting in a VM on my Dell Poweredge running Server 2016. I have a lab here, I've got two different android cell phones, an android tablet, two laptops, and four desktops. All of it works perfectly, except the FireTV. Which is annoyingly enough, the one thing that I need to actually work. Here's hoping we both get some light shined on this.

    Thanks for the tip on the EAC3 (Dolby digital plus) audio, disabling that seems to have cleared my issues up.

  • MovieFan.PlexMovieFan.Plex Members, Plex Pass, Plex Ninja Posts: 15,446 Plex Employee

    @assphace said:
    This just recently became an issue. Videos with master audio tracks in 7.1 would play effortlessly. Now, for some strange reason, the audio will play, but the picture is frozen. I noticed that if I went into settings and unchecked the EAC3 (Dolby digital plus), the videos would play again, but the audio would clearly be different (as if missing all presence). What happened? I've got my unRAID setup properly and updated along with the latest plex docker. I even forced an update for the latest plex version.

    The Plex app will communicate with the Fire TV and whatever the Fire TV is connected to, to determine what audio codecs are supported. The Fire TV has never supported DTS audio. Plex does not support transcoding 7.1 audio, so PMS will only read the DTS 5.1 core audio and transcode that to a compatible format. It's always been this way and nothing has changed in this aspect that I'm aware of. The AC3 and EAC3 options are there because sometimes the detection is wrong and this lets you override them. If you disable these options, then 2.0 AAC will be used.

    The video freezing is usually caused by 1 of 2 things.

    1 - Forcing the Fire TV to use an audio codec that isn't supported. Yes, it's weird but audio issues can cause problems playing back video.
    2 - The video is encoded in a way that the device doesn't like. Check the playback information on the screen. Does it say "Video: Direct"? If so, try changing the playback quality to a lower setting, which will force PMS to transcode the video. If this can playback without issue, then that means the original video is the issue.

    Plex Logs
    Plex Naming Guide
    Plex Dance
    Plex XML

  • ugh1nrugh1nr Members, Plex Pass Posts: 18 Plex Pass

    does this mean what should happen if we have the ac3 checked off and we have 5.1 content in for example aac5.1 or dts5.1, that plex will trans code it to ac3 5.1 so that the fire tv will have surround. in my past experience and in other reading i thought you had to already have the source in ac3 5.1, in the mp4 container of course to get the 5.1 to work

  • AndrroidAndrroid Members, Plex Pass Posts: 1,106 Plex Pass

    @ugh1nr said:
    does this mean what should happen if we have the ac3 checked off and we have 5.1 content in for example aac5.1 or dts5.1, that plex will trans code it to ac3 5.1 so that the fire tv will have surround. in my past experience and in other reading i thought you had to already have the source in ac3 5.1, in the mp4 container of course to get the 5.1 to work

    Plex transcodes to AAC I believe.

  • MovieFan.PlexMovieFan.Plex Members, Plex Pass, Plex Ninja Posts: 15,446 Plex Employee

    If the source is AAC, the Plex app should not be transcoding.

    Plex Logs
    Plex Naming Guide
    Plex Dance
    Plex XML

  • assphaceassphace Members, Plex Pass Posts: 3 Plex Pass

    @MovieFan.Plex said:

    @assphace said:
    This just recently became an issue. Videos with master audio tracks in 7.1 would play effortlessly. Now, for some strange reason, the audio will play, but the picture is frozen. I noticed that if I went into settings and unchecked the EAC3 (Dolby digital plus), the videos would play again, but the audio would clearly be different (as if missing all presence). What happened? I've got my unRAID setup properly and updated along with the latest plex docker. I even forced an update for the latest plex version.

    The Plex app will communicate with the Fire TV and whatever the Fire TV is connected to, to determine what audio codecs are supported. The Fire TV has never supported DTS audio. Plex does not support transcoding 7.1 audio, so PMS will only read the DTS 5.1 core audio and transcode that to a compatible format. It's always been this way and nothing has changed in this aspect that I'm aware of. The AC3 and EAC3 options are there because sometimes the detection is wrong and this lets you override them. If you disable these options, then 2.0 AAC will be used.

    The video freezing is usually caused by 1 of 2 things.

    1 - Forcing the Fire TV to use an audio codec that isn't supported. Yes, it's weird but audio issues can cause problems playing back video.
    2 - The video is encoded in a way that the device doesn't like. Check the playback information on the screen. Does it say "Video: Direct"? If so, try changing the playback quality to a lower setting, which will force PMS to transcode the video. If this can playback without issue, then that means the original video is the issue.

    But, I've had this server running for a full year and it played all of my DTS 7.1 HD files with no issue at all. Why would it start freezing the video? I don't know if this helps at all, but I just found this in my PMS log:

    error renaming "/config/tmp/pms-9f869214-84c7-4867-87f2-0ce626ba69cb/EasyAudioEncoder/Convert to WAV (to 8ch or less)/18042149ac20917b-com-plexapp-android_1506-1-60.tmp" to "/config/tmp/pms-9f869214-84c7-4867-87f2-0ce626ba69cb/EasyAudioEncoder/Convert to WAV (to 8ch or less)/18042149ac20917b-com-plexapp-android_1506-1-60.wav": system:2

  • MovieFan.PlexMovieFan.Plex Members, Plex Pass, Plex Ninja Posts: 15,446 Plex Employee

    @assphace said:
    But, I've had this server running for a full year and it played all of my DTS 7.1 HD files with no issue at all. Why would it start freezing the video? I don't know if this helps at all, but I just found this in my PMS log:

    The DTS is supposed to be converted to another format.

    error renaming "/config/tmp/pms-9f869214-84c7-4867-87f2-0ce626ba69cb/EasyAudioEncoder/Convert to WAV (to 8ch or less)/18042149ac20917b-com-plexapp-android_1506-1-60.tmp" to "/config/tmp/pms-9f869214-84c7-4867-87f2-0ce626ba69cb/EasyAudioEncoder/Convert to WAV (to 8ch or less)/18042149ac20917b-com-plexapp-android_1506-1-60.wav": system:2

    That indicates that PMS couldn't configure the codec it needed to make the conversion. Can you provide me the entire log file?

    Plex Logs
    Plex Naming Guide
    Plex Dance
    Plex XML

  • SiscoPlexSiscoPlex Members, Plex Pass Posts: 777 Plex Pass

    This has been ongoing for years..... untick the audio options you will have video.

    I leave those settings unticked whether on the Theater setup connected to an A/V receiver(HDMI form FireTV out to receiver in then HDMI from receiver out to TV in) or any other(no A/V receiver).

    On the Theater setup I still receive 5.1 or 7.1 audio in this passthrough method although it shows as PCM(Pulse-code modulation)

    Over the years I've played with the settings on each update, sometimes you can re-enable them but for the most part... nope.

    @MovieFan.Plex perhaps this info will help you narrow down the culprit.

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