Today’s release of 8.44 (9572) fixes all the subtitle issues I’ve had, and also appears to fix the sync/stutter issues I was seeing in the last release… more in-depth testing to follow.
I’ve just tested AirPlay with the new audio engine on the latest beta. Unfortunately, the periodic short audio dropouts still occur with the same frequency (around once a minute) as when I started this thread back in June '23. Additionally, as before, the audio occasionally stops playing altogether.
The audio sync is much better with the new engine (requiring only a 125ms delay — same as Infuse) compared to the old engine (around 300ms). I’ve noticed that the sync can drift after fast-forwarding or rewinding, but during regular playback it remains consistent.
EDIT: Never mind, apparently there’s also a “newer” audio engine on builds with the experimental player. There’s no audio sync adjustment at all (which is necessary with AirPlay). The audio seems pretty stable, with no dropouts, but the sync is far from perfect.
Is there any way to get a setting implemented to toggle on or of Dolby Vision like on the infuse videoplayer?
@howchie Are you able to send a media sample? What tvOS and what hardware are you using? And is content direct playing or transcoding?
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Darn, auto credit skip was working on the last version. Seems to be broken again (loops when trying to auto skip credits)
Has this only occurred on one title or series of Episodes? Meaning more than one show.
Yeah that would be awesome.
Did some quick tests in terms of purely playback with the newer audio engine and the HomePods.
Movies and Tv shows now play normally with HomePods and the pause/resume delay is completely gone which is nice!
Live TV still does not play with the newer audio engine on Apple TV whilst connected to HomePods.
On both iOS and tvOS, any pause and resume or seek with live tv results in frozen video with audio continuing to play. The video sometimes will start to play 10seconds or so later but it does not jump to where the audio is up to. Unsure if any of that info is helpful trying to chase these mpegts/live tv bugs.
Will try send through the srt from the dvb_teletext next time I’m at my computer.
@Craig_Holliday - It does seem like audio via homepod (on tvOS) has improved, but there’s still a weird issue i keep experiencing.
Right now, i’m playing a mkv comprised of a 1080p avc video (specifically, V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC) and a E-AC3/DD+ audio track. (data and sample attached)
When I start the episode, it stutters and ‘restarts’ at least twice before starting to play – though now it’s playing smoothly, without dropped frames or packets. This stutter-start was happening before, but then it’d start either out of sync or not at all – so it’s an improvement 
I’ve also not yet seen an audio drop out (where it’d just stop playing sound altogether) but that is pretty variable as to when it triggered, so i’ll keep looking.
It’s also having massive issues resuming, or rewinding/forwarding between different timecodes – most of the time it’s out of sync, or won’t resume at all, and it doesn’t report the new time code to the server, so the app thinks it’s at a different spot than it should be.
Hope that helps.
mediainfo:
General
Unique ID : 259261146127950738829072644712903327033 (0xC30BE166C5264FAFEC483431297DBD39)
Complete name : The Curse of Oak Island - s12e06 - WEBDL-1080p - Hide and Seek.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 2.75 GiB
Duration : 42 min 7 s
Overall bit rate : 9 333 kb/s
Frame rate : 23.976 FPS
Writing application : mkvmerge v88.0 ('All I Know') 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 42 min 7 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 9 106 kb/s
Nominal bit rate : 10 000 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.183
Stream size : 2.68 GiB (98%)
Language : English (US)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 42 min 7 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 224 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 67.5 MiB (2%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No
mkv structure:
+ EBML head
|+ EBML version: 1
|+ EBML read version: 1
|+ Maximum EBML ID length: 4
|+ Maximum EBML size length: 8
|+ Document type: matroska
|+ Document type version: 4
|+ Document type read version: 2
+ Segment: size 2948418275
|+ Seek head (subentries will be skipped)
|+ EBML void: size 4012
|+ Segment information
| + Timestamp scale: 1000000
| + Multiplexing application: libebml v1.4.5 + libmatroska v1.7.1
| + Writing application: mkvmerge v88.0 ('All I Know') 64-bit
| + Duration: 00:42:07.400000000
| + Segment UID: 0xc3 0x0b 0xe1 0x66 0xc5 0x26 0x4f 0xaf 0xec 0x48 0x34 0x31 0x29 0x7d 0xbd 0x39
|+ Tracks
| + Track
| + Track number: 1 (track ID for mkvmerge & mkvextract: 0)
| + Track UID: 13852692142092491178
| + Track type: video
| + "Lacing" flag: 0
| + Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
| + Codec's private data: size 58 (H.264 profile: High @L4.0)
| + Default duration: 00:00:00.041708333 (23.976 frames/fields per second for a video track)
| + Language (IETF BCP 47): en-US
| + "Original language" flag: 1
| + Video track
| + Pixel width: 1920
| + Pixel height: 1080
| + Display width: 1920
| + Display height: 1080
| + Track
| + Track number: 2 (track ID for mkvmerge & mkvextract: 1)
| + Track UID: 6425320377464926209
| + Track type: audio
| + Codec ID: A_EAC3
| + Default duration: 00:00:00.032000000 (31.250 frames/fields per second for a video track)
| + Language (IETF BCP 47): en
| + "Visual impaired" flag: 0
| + "Original language" flag: 1
| + Audio track
| + Sampling frequency: 48000
| + Channels: 2
Hi Imajes, I’d be happy to take a look at your sample file, but I don’t see a link in your post. Could you message it to me?
Looking at the EAC3 mediainfo and the title of the file including the WEBDL tag, I’m wondering if there is an issue in the MKV file from source… I’ve seen some weirdness with other users and WEBDL files sourced from a specific streaming provider, and the files required a some re-muxing to get them to play properly on Apple and Roku devices in Plex.
Happy to check a sample to see if that issue is present in this example.
What issue are you referring to? I’m curious to see more details!
I’m going to be intentionally vague as this probably isn’t the place to discuss the source of the some of these files, but let’s just say that WEBDL files sourced from a HUge streaming provider can have playback issues related to stuttering and Apple and Roku devices. The fix is to extract the video track from the MKV using something like EmmGunn’s MKVTools and re-mux that video track into a new MKV file with any audio/subtitles you want using something like mkvtoolnix. You actually have to extract the video track though into its own file and not just remux the WEBDL mkv to a new MKV direct.
I don’t know the specific cause of this issue, but I see it come up quite often when users pull content from that specific HUge streaming provider, and the EAC3 bitrate is low and typical for that HUge provider’s audio track, vs something like 640-768Kbps that most of the other streaming providers use for audio.
Ah. yeah, that’s not the cause. but good call.
Gotcha, I’m still happy to test a sample file if you want to DM one to me or link here.
@Craig_Holliday I can’t explain it, but under the latest 8.45 release with the same movie I’m not seeing the extreme blowouts and colors on either my DV/HDR set or SDR set. I know you mentioned only PiP and audio sync were worked, so I’m not sure what to think. Things seem to be on the edge of blowout and don’t look as natural as Infuse, but it’s definitely not as extreme as what I was seeing.
However I am noticing one odd thing on at least one of my DV/HDR 4K sets with latest ATV 4K. I configure the “TV” button on the Apple remote to return to the Home Screen rather than TV App. If I’m watching a movie and hit that button, it goes to the Home Screen but I can hear the movie still streaming in the background. If open Plex again video shows instantly, basically confirming it continued to stream in the background. This is repeatable every time on that set. However this doesn’t seem to happen on the SDR set I just tried which has the same latest 4K Apple TV.
Yeah, i’ve reported this earlier – it appears to keep playing the video when you switch away from the app. come to think of it, i suspect that’s essentially what PiP is supposed to do – but on tvos, it’s not spawning a PiP window, so it’s not actually working.
Honestly, i’m seeing it on so many files, it’s hard to determine what’s the core reason exactly - however i have a suspicion…
do you have a homepod and any EAC 5.1 / 1080p tracks you can test with?
No homepod, but I can airplay to Sonos.
it’s interesting you use the TV button on the ATV Remote to navigate back to the Home screen. I have always used the double tap Back Button without issue. But I will say a single Back tap prior to completion or allow the Episode to finish bringing up the Horizontal Seasons list, I have witnessed after a short delay a burst of Audio. This corrects itself fortunately.
As I use a LG OLED I have the ATV set to Dolby Vision, I have not noticed any issue with 8.45. At present I only use TV Audio as output. This is set to Dolby Digital Audio on LG OLED G4. I have found it the best setting all round for all Entertainment Apps. For some reason Auto will result on some content distortion. Now 8.45 is out I will try Auto again.
I too use the TV button to exit to the Home Screen and I’ve see it occur occasionally as well. It’s reminiscent of how the “Preview” app for iOS is not actually pausing content when exiting to the Home Screen on iOS.
Playing DV/HDR10 file on SDR 4k TV is very blown out. Infuse seems to play it normally for comparison.
PiP on Apple TV does not launch. It continues to play in the background and when on the home screen. Clicking back on the Plex app will resume after quite a few second pause on the screen.
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