Movies with EAC3 5.1 codec dosn't play

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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AFAIK, EAC3 is a licensed codec. Either these apps have licensed the codec, are using a free version of some sort, or they are using an EAC3 decoder without permission.

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Kodi does have their own decoder. The code appears to be GPL2.0: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master/xbmc/cores/AudioEngine/Utils/AEStreamInfo.cpp

Closer to home, ExoPlayer FFmpeg extension supports EAC3 TrueHD, etc. decoding: https://exoplayer.dev/supported-formats.html

Or Plex Android Client could allow us to use external players?

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Can one of the mods/plex employees please weigh in here? Thereā€™s probably a dozen or so threads scattered throughout this site asking the same question. Do we all have to rely on disabling the new plex player and move on with our lives or are you willing to support the users actively paying subscription fees to use your service.

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Hi JD,

Very interesting solution, but donā€™t work in my case.
Using Synology DS911 as server dans Nvidia Shield as player.

I still have the loop and crash with the new player ā€¦

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So finally, I found the problem !!!
Itā€™s the DNS rebinding protection of my router who cause that !

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So my original write up seemed to work for me for several videos I had been experiencing issues with at the time I tried it, but now other videos are also having the issue despite the changeā€¦sighā€¦ Iā€™m going down the road of trying to force Plex to transcode everything, rather than play anything on direct stream, but again still having this issue on some videos. Iā€™m trying this DNS rebinding protection avenue, but Iā€™m not sure I understand how this will resolve this issue, as wouldnā€™t it then be occurring on any plex player, and not just the Shieldā€™s? The videos that have the issue on the Shield play fine via the web player, and on my Roku, as well as on my 1st gen Shield, itā€™s only on my 3rd gen Shield setup that Iā€™m having the issue. Iā€™ve been thinking itā€™s been some sort of audio incompatibility with my Sonos sound bar, but I have that being fed via optical cable, not HDMI, so it should be irrelevant as far as the Shield is concerned Iā€™d think?

I donā€™t understand why it seems like no Plex Dev has addressed this issue considering itā€™s been ongoing for so long.

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If I get anything which Plex wants to transcode like EAC3 for example i just use ffmpeg to change it to AAC. Super easy and does not take long to do. As I know shell script a bit better than powershell i just run up cygwin (shell env under windows) and then just run some code to do the changes

for file in source_directory/*.mkv; do ffmpeg -i ā€œ$fileā€ -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 384k destination_directory/"$file";done

which just alters the audio only leaving everything else the same.

done this to a lot of content.

cygwin does not come with ffmpeg so you need to download it and drop it into the appropriate location to work (or just run ffmpeg under windows if youā€™re windows orientated).

ffmpeg static binary for windows can be found here.

https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

You could use handbrake or some other gui to acheive the same thing but i find this easier, quicker and less painful.

Anyway hope itā€™s helpful.

cheers.
Adam

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