Your TV can be a source of the problem when/if your audio runs through it.
Say you got a Roku plugged into the TV via hdmi, and then use the optical audio out of the TV to your soundbox - the TV (depends on TV) can cause a slight delay of the sounds going to your soundbox. This problem is usually constant. It doesn’t come and go because its due to sound processing by the TV, which your soundbox does too. That’s what those audio delay/advance sliders on your TV are for. You cannot use those sliders to correct it when its crazy far out of sync, or if the problem comes and goes.
the thing that cannot be forgotten is that, in my case and i believe in a lot of cases, this audio sync issue is isolated ONLY to plex. this is made crystal clear by the fact that no other app on the roku while playing through the same receiver/tv combo exhibit the same audio sync issue that plex has. additionally, in the past it was not an issue – so it’d be hard to blame the media files that worked at one point. something has changed in the behavior and it’s annoying as hell.
Same here. Latest Plex Android TV version app and server. No receiver, no HDMI, just cabled network. My pus7303 Philips can perfectly decode ac3,dts etc., almost everything I throw at it with Kodi,mxplayer,vlc, native media player,every other Android media player except Plex. The audio lags horribly, particularly in DTS and 7.1 audio streams. The same file is played perfectly by all other media players through network, sound lags or skips or out of sync in Plex.
Almost all files are direct played by the app, I can see that through the app’s info (video-audio direct), so no transcoding involved. By the way, the ‘info’provided by this option comes straight from 1997 and is laughable compared to other apps’ media info. Of course I don’t want anything transcoded,so please don’t tell me to choose ‘convert to’ anything,since I know that the tv fully supports the files I’m trying to play.
Enabled-disabled passthrough/frame rate change, all other useless options Plex provides, even disabled completely subs, which Plex so much hates.
Nothing works and it’s definitely a Plex (Android TV) app problem,the interface of which by the way seems outdated and the options extremely limited. The app and the infamous exoplayer ver.2 are just broken,period.
The Plex custom-made app in a semi smart TV of 2015 worked way better.
My gut feeling says that there is a problem with the downmixing of the multichannel streams to the 2 channels available, but this should some time trouble Plex software team and not the users.
This thread goes back two years and nothing has been fixed, it’s clear that no one is genuinely interested. Glad I didn’t buy this pass nonsense.
Same here, however My video is direct play and my audio is transcoding and I see a delay. It’s not as noticeable if both are transcoding or both are direct play
I have 2 Roku Ultras, one is direct wired so it does not need transcode video. But they Roku lacks pass through support for TrueHD audio so it ends up transoding that bit.
I can confirm this bug as I’ve been dealing with it from my users for the last week or 2 (and now that I think about it, the same issue has plagued me to a lesser extent in the past).
For me, it mostly seems related to HE-AAC audio and transcoding configurations that Plex tries. Unless audio, video AND container are either transcoded or not, this issue will appear for me (or worse, no audio at all!).
Configurations I’ve noticed that work / don’t work (these are all HE-AAC audio):
Container (transcode), Video (direct stream), Audio (direct stream) = Out of sync on some files, not others.
Container (transcode), Video (direct stream), Audio (transcode) = Out of sync on some files, not others.
Container (transcode), Video (transcode), Audio (direct stream) = No audio.
Container (direct play), Video (direct play), Audio (direct play) = Works fine.
Container (direct stream), Video (direct stream), Audio (direct stream) = Works fine.
Container (transcode), Video (transcode), Audio (transcode) = ALWAYS works perfectly.
At this point I’m telling my users to just force converting each video they play that has issues. This isn’t ideal obviously. This is also platform independent (Windows, PMP, Plex Web, Android & iOS) and server platform independent (Windows & Linux servers). Now that I think about it, I haven’t had a report about any Chromecast going out of sync.
I can also confirm the problem havent been solve for more than a year now. I use optical from my tv to amplifier and with some movies audio out of sync, and as Dreytac said you need to convert the video to lower bitrate and it works. if I switch from optical to only tv on my LG, there is never sync problems, throgh chromecast, never sync problem also.
@Anubis - Thank you for this quick fix! it worked perfect on my 4k roku. Fyi, this issue is only happening with my Roku box. Every other streaming device seem to work fine without any audio sync issues.
Sync issues as everyone mentioned and I have done the same thing turtlejay mentioned “I fixed it by disabling direct play but allowing direct stream.” and issue has been resolved. Audio and Video are synced as should be.
There is something very wrong with this. I have problems with one video file. If I set “direct play” to “forced” it works. If i leave it in “auto” I have audio sync issues eventhough in both cases are “direct playing” (checked in stream info). This doesn’t make sense to me !
I have another file whith same audio sync issues where neither direct play/stream option fixes the sound. Other files work ok with “direct play”.
Subtitles always follow audio. Problem is between video and audio sync only.
Transcoding works fine in every case. So i need to choose a lower quality in order to force a transcoding to have a correct lip sync in every case scenario.
No idea where the problem is, but I only have this issue with Roku Plex app (and since august update). If I use my samsung native plex app it works ok in all the same scenarios.
Plex Media Server: 1.18.0.1913 on Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019
Plex Player: 7.25.3.14365 on the same Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019
Tuner: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Connect Quatro
Network: Wired LAN 1Gbps
I was having the same problem with Live TV, initially starts playing fine but within 30 seconds the AV goes out of sync and progressively gets worse.
FIX: Change the Video Quality → Home Streaming from Maximum (Direct Play) to 20Mbps, 1080p HD (High).
For the last 3 years my TV has been a TCL Roku. Very slow navigation around the apps it was annoying, but Plex worked. I never had any sync issues. But I just got a new TV and a Roku Ultra. Here’s what I’ve noticed, most of my older .avi files that have .mp3 audio are out of sync. I tried some of the things mentioned here. I went to Plex roku settings, disabled “allow direct stream” but it would STILL direct stream. So I enabled direct stream and disabled direct play. Same. Transcodes video but direct stream’s audio. I’m not sure why my server shows “direct stream” when direct stream is disabled in my Roku…
but it’s only .avi files (and not all of them) just some of them. I reencoded the audio on one of them to AC-3 just to test, and that played perfectly in sync with video transcoding and direct stream audio…
As far as I can tell, no other files give me trouble UNLESS they are .avi with mp3 audio.
Can anyone explain why (if direct stream is disabled in Roku) why it would still direct stream, according to my Plex server stats.
I have noticed that this issue only affects my .avi files as well. MP4, MKV both work flawlessly. Currently in the middle of converting all of my .avi files…painful…
