Server Version#: 4.69.1
QNAP App Version: 1.25.5
Player Version#: 2.58.0 (Plex Media Player for HTPC)
I’m trying to watch the movies stored on my QNAP NAS on my HTPC which is connected to my Denon AVR Receiver using a S/PDIF optical cable. The receiver is capable of decoding Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital EX (7.1), DTS (5.1) und DTS-ES Discrete 6.1.
The audio of many of my movies on the NAS is encoded using AAC 5.1.
How can I make Plex transcode the audio to one of the codecs my receiver can decode?
In the configuration dialog of Plex HTPC I set
[Audio output] = “Digital audio (S/PDIF) …”
[Type of audio output] = “Standard” (not “Optical or S/PDIF”)
[Channels] = “7.1”
Then I can hear AC3 and DTS encoded movies correctly using my Receiver.
But AAC encoded movies are played as Dolby ProLogic II created from a PCM stereo signal.
If I set the [Type of audio output] in Plex HTPC to “Optical or S/PDIF”, I can only select “2.0 (Stereo)” at the [Channels] setting. But checkboxes for enabling AC3 and DTS appear in the menu which I activated of course. But then no sound is played from the speakers, neither from AC3 movies nor from AAC movies.
Is there a way to set Plex to transcode AAC to AC3 or DTS during playback?
I hope there is, because I really like the look and feel of the software.
When I run across things like this, I want to first check the file. Is it only in stereo? It can’t really up-convert audio. If it has multi-channel, what is the current setting on it? And what codec?
When all else fails, I just transcode it for better audio that is compatible.
As an example: One of the movie files with AAC encoded audio shows these media infos (audio stream):
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 2 h 35 min
Bit rate mode : constant
Bit rate : 576 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate : 44,1 kHz
Frame rate : 43,066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 650 MiB (4%)
So it has 5.1 channels audio.
Of course, I could use for example ffmpeg to convert the audio stream to ac3. But that’s a little inconvenient. In my opinion one of the main purposes of a media server is to provide the clients with tailor-made (meaning fitting) media data.
In my case I don’t really care who transcodes the stream. The NAS and the HTPC have enough CPU power. But as far as I can tell, I cannot tell Plex that my Receiver does not understand AAC.
Or can I? Somehow somewhere? Deep inside of a configuration file, maybe?
The path of the Plex user client profiles are located in the following path:
[Plex Application Data Folder]/Profiles
Note that the Profiles folder will not exist by default. You will need to manually create it and add the profiles to the folder.
User profiles are authored by individual users and are never changed by the server. User profile files are located in the Plex Media Server user directory, in a directory called Profiles. If you have never authored a user profile before, this directory will not exist.
So, the first source mentions the Plex Application Data Folder, the second source uses the term Plex Media Server user directory.
I would like to create my own user profile. The mentioned article about writing Plex profiles describes 2 ways a user profile is bound to a client:
The Identification section defines how Plex Media Server recognizes a device in order to apply a profile to a request. Two different identification mechanisms are used by the server: incoming HTTP header recognition, and IP address matching based on a-priori network discovery.
I would like to bind my profile to my HTPC using its IP address instead of the User-Agent substring. But I cannot find any documentation how to place the IP address in a profile. Does anyone know the syntax?
Hi sim53, did you get anywhere with Client Profiles? I’ve got the same problem - my TV (Samsung) doesn’t support DTS and my Sonos Arc doesn’t support anything better than DTS. I wish it would transcode the codec’s I’ve deselected in Plex Home Theatre.
Unfortunately not.
I didn’t find anything in the http header suitable for identifying my HTPC. So I wanted do use its IP address for identification but didn’t find any documentation or example showing the syntax.
That’s still an open issue.
Luckily I noticed that my receiver recognizes movies with TrueHD 7.1 audio as DTS 6.1 Matrix. I’ve read that Dolby TrueHD and the corresponding DTS format have core profiles for backward compatibility; meaning a Dolby Digital 5.1 receiver can decode the 5.1 part of TrueHD. But that doesn’t explain why my receiver decodes a Dolby format (TrueHD) as a DTS format. Anyway the resulting audio sounds good.
Doesn’t this backward compatibility work in your case, too? I mean, isn’t your Samsung TV able to decode DD 5.1 from TrueHD audio?
