This affects every version of the player from what I have been able to test.
In one case, I have a movie in French, but it has 3 audio tracks.
The first (and default) track is the original French audio with 1ch.
The second track is its 6ch score (also French).
The third track is in English and is the commentary track (2ch).
The player ignores the default flag and instead change use the English audio track.
This also affects English movies where the default track is 1ch while the secondary is 2+.
Though I have quite a few movies that have subtitles with the “Forced” flag (like that one for instance).
But even with English movies, if something is older and its primary track is mono, then if there’s a commentary track, Plex will default to using it despite me making sure only the actual track is both ordered at the top and is given the Default flag.
Though I’ve also noticed a few (English) where Plex chose a secondary commentary track that was 2ch AAC over the 7ch AAC primary track (again, default flag being set properly). This last one varied though on if playback was being “forced” to Direct Play or if it was on “auto”. It could still be changed after playback began though.
Figured it’d be good to include some examples, so I’ve uploaded 5min chunks of 4 different movies and labelled each one with what I’m seeing from them.
I’m not sure if you are aware but the “default” flag for an audio track does not mean to “use this track”. It means to follow the default settings of the video player. Not having the “default” flag would do the same thing so in your example, there is nothing to say use this 1ch audio track. What you want to use is the “forced” flag.
But then again, you have your audio preference set to English. So PMS will prefer the English tracks first. If you have 2 English tracks and one of them has the “forced” flag, then that track would be preferred over the other. In your other example of the 2 English tracks, you are again using “default”, and Plex’s default is to choose the track that will direct play.
Only Plex behaves this way, every other player out there follows the Default flag.
Then there’s still the issue within fully English content where it still skips over the first audio track to then play the second.
I’m not sure what other apps do as that is not what “default” is meant for. Maybe the app has a setting that sets that apps’ default to use a specific track. Or they aren’t following the idea for “default” and using it interchangeably with “forced”.
As far as the English issue, again, that’s not what “default” is for, so it won’t use that track. It should follow the app’s (Plex’s) default option which is to choose the audio track that will direct play.
To me, both of these are working as designed, although that may not be what you expect.
I’m saying that every other bit of software that that can read video content that I have used, including VLC, the default flag is respected and is what the software uses until told otherwise.
On the other point, I’m not stating in this instance for a file that contains one English and one of something else, in this case, it would be one primary English track and then one secondary English commentary track. I have tried this on a Roku TV and a Roku Ultra while forcing direct play, and the commentary track is then used, but the track can be changed while playback has begun without issue.
A snippet from one film that I’ve seen do this is included in the above link.
Again, the definition for the “default” flag is to set the track when the app does not have a language specified to look for. In Plex, there is a language settings, so that flag has no impact. See if those other players have a language setting and if so, set it and see if you get the same results. If they don’t have a language setting, then they are doing the correct thing also.
If you don’t like that Plex has a language setting, then maybe you can request a feature to ignore that setting and use the embedded tags.
Yes I understand, and in that instance you have 2 tracks with different number of channels. Depending on your setup, Plex will prefer a track that can be direct played over the other. Again, the default only works when the player itself has no preferences.
The other player apps you are using are strictly players, that probably don’t have any settings to remember what your preferences are so it relies on the flags to identify what to play. Plex has preferences so it doe snot need to rely on the flags.
Again, you need Plex to ignore it’s own preferences, which can’t be done right now.
