Interesting you say that. Brand new disc, and once again, the version obtained from more questionable sources does not have this issue. What is it that they do differently?
EDIT: Here’s the answer…
“MakeMKV for video stream to include DV layer, DGDemux for audio, eac3to for the rest.”
If you look at the thread on github (already linked above too), others tried using DGDemux and reproduced the same issues with it.
Aliens also has this issue.
Right, that’s bad new… the one disc I seriously wanted to have working on my system.
It’s officially gone from an annoying issue affecting some lesser known movie releases, to an issue affecting the biggest 4K disc releases ever.
We still are like the only people, evidently, bothered or concerned by the fact that NVIDIA Shield and Plex does not offer a reliable playable experience for many movie titles (in fact it fails 100% reliably!), much less usable lossless bitsreamed Atmos audio.
Didn’t mean to imply that there isn’t an issue with seamless branching rips in combination with ExoPlayer. Simply wanted to point out that, once again, the scene/p2p releases do not have any playback problems whatsoever. So, what do they do differently, besides what’s in the release notes?
This is a really prevalent and annoying problem that other clients/players have solved. I have moved to using Kodi player and looking at streaming from Jellyfin instead of Plex. FIX THIS PLEASE!
Bumping this one again from my side.
As other people say, Shield Pro is the culprit (although LG C3 and Sonos Arc is the remaining setup).
Downgrading the audio to AC3 (of course) fixes it, but we really shouldn’t have to!! Can we get another update on when we can expect Plex to fix this?
I do not think it’s a Plex problem.
However, I post here from time to time in hopes the Plex people will use their clout to lean on the ExoPlayer people. However this may be a little bit like a concerned taxpayer trying to lean on the IRS?
It is still fair to to say however that Plex is not a 100% reliable playback solution for all 4K Atmos files on all clients… if we can shame Plex into a fix, so be it 
Dolby TrueHD 7.1/Atmos audio in these files? That is a requirement to replicate the bug.
Yep, all Atmos files, and I’d say (along with many others here) that Plex is 0% effective for this type of audio.
Plex could easily decide to change the player they use under the hood (Kodi isn’t affected, for example), or investigate a fix to ExoPlayer (or even provide a patch to ExoPlayer, they are open to this). Lots that they could do, or investigate…
@sixones @OttoKerner - any updates on what Plex are doing in this regard to fix?
Only TrueHD Atmos files with branching cuts are effected, not all files with TrueHD.
We have investigated and found the problem is inside the passthrough driver on the SHIELD, unfortunately we are unable to change this ourselves as its part of the OS. Kodi doesnt use the systems passthrough driver so it doesnt suffer from the same problem, we however can’t do the same due to licensing requirements.
At the moment, the problem is still being investigated by NVIDIA. We are also investigating alternative solutions.
@sixones ah, so is there something I can do to either figure out if my files have branching cuts, or to remove those cuts? (While the software solutions are being investigated.)
I use MakeMKV.
This is typically found on blu-rays with TrueHD Atmos audio that contain two cuts of a movie on the same disc. The extended (non-theatrical) cut of the movie is what would contain the seamless branches we are discussing.
A few movie examples mentioned in the thread:
But it can also be found for multipart movies split across two discs, with each part merged together using mkvmerge. Examples being Lord of the Rings and Zack Snyders Justice League. Merging the two files together would create the seamless branching issue at the merge point.
You can’t remove the cuts. The temporary “solution” would be to rip the Theatrical version of the movie. I don’t think the theatrical version would have the seamless branching issue.
The only real solution would be to identify and resolve the software issue that is causing the audio to get out of sync on the Nvidia Shield. There are a lot of theories thrown around in this thread about it being an issue in ExoPlayer (which note is now depcricated and has been merged into AndroidX Media) or with Nvidia’s passthrough. I’m hopeful it is a passthrough issue and Nvidia will come through with a fix.
Until then the only real option for watching the extended cuts of these movies without issue would be with Kodi, in a Blu-Ray player, or a separate hardware streamer (Zidoo, DuneHD)
Hmm. Interesting. This seems a little more regular than those. It’s every 5 or so minutes, and TrueHD / Atmos drops out for a tenth of a second (or so) then immediately comes back. I need to do more tests to examine if it’s in the same places every time.
It will happen at each branch point. So it should be very consistent where it happens. Some movies have more branches than others.
That sounds like a different issue, then. Maybe open up another thread for that.
Another good option is rip to DTS-MA 7.1 (ie transcode the TrueHD to DTS-MA) with e.g. DVDFab (although this will be max 16bit), or more fancily with (expensive) DTS Studio software on a Mac. Can also convert to 48kHz 24bit (or match the sample/bit to the TrueHD) FLAC 7.1 with eac3to, or even on fly with makemkv. There are a few kludges that are annoying, but not horrible. YMMV. You will lose the object-oriented spatial audio “trick” of Atmos this way, but for many users this will not be noticeable. (Pro tip: keep the Atmos track as a non-default track inside the MKV in case Plex ever works!) Transcoding the Atmos track is the only solution I’ve found I’m happy with. Transcoding the Atmos track is what happens on every other client (AppleTV e.g.), and those clients play the seamlessly branched Atmos files just fine.
Just FYI I also added another new issue which may be related (I don’t know - but seems to be high-bitrate or Dolby Vision files) I have noticed a lot lately which makes watching 4K Bluray rips pretty horrible to watch on PLEX/Shield - constant freezing of entire movie for a random number of frames and/or skipping of frames entirely - so entire movie stutters/stops and/or things in movie instantly teleport to another position eg the car at end of the example clip I added to linked ticket youtube clip. It completely takes me out of movie every time it happens. Some people said they did not notice it while watching, but I could see it every time - in the recorded example clip the video froze for 10 frames in the first glitch. Posting here as the new ticket seems to have been ignored.
So would it be fair to say this comment on Git MKVs from seamless branching blu-rays cause atmos audio drop outs and/or sync loss · Issue #10520 · google/ExoPlayer · GitHub is outdated, and you’re saying that Plex has figured out the issue is not with Exoplayer, but with the passthrough driver?
This issue is beyond pathetic to still have around at this point.
