Rasplex and HDMI / Toslink Splitter: DTS Perfect, AC3 Stutters

cad42 · October 11, 2014, 2:24pm

Hi,

One for folks with older surround sound amps with no HDMI input!

Rasplex 0.4.1

PMS 0.9.9.14.531-7eef8c6
512mb pi, 8gb class 10 sd card, wired network.
Pi connected to hdmi / toslink splitter: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IMGJ5D2/

Splitter connected to panasonic GT30 TV via HDMI and to Yamaha DSP E800 via optical from the splitter.

Edid from file enabled in config.txt (otherwise plex could not set 24p refresh rate).
Splitter set to 5.1
Pass through enabled for AC3 and DTS in Plex.

RasPlex:~/.plexht/temp # tvservice -a
     PCM supported: Max channels: 2, Max samplerate: 192kHz, Max samplesize 24 bits.
     AC3 supported: Max channels: 6, Max samplerate:  48kHz, Max rate  640 kb/s.
     DTS supported: Max channels: 7, Max samplerate:  48kHz, Max rate 1536 kb/s.

Blu ray rip with DTS plays back perfectly with DTS reaching the surround amp (tv is silent).

Blu ray rip with AC3 constantly micro-stutters, dolby digital flashes on/off at the amp and audio similarly stutters - you can hear it's managing to decode half a second or so every few seconds. (TV is silent). Debug log has this error over and over:

ERROR: Error: Requested setting (pvrplayback.scantime) was not found.  It must be case-sensitive

There are also two of these errors just as I start playback:

ERROR: Get - failed to get stream

If I swap the pi for a windows laptop with latext PHT and hdmi out, both DTS and AC3 blu ray rips play fine.

If I grab the latest raspbmc and put the AC3 rip on a hard drive connected to the pi, it plays fine.

Would appreciate any thoughts on this? Meanwhile, I'll have some fun figuring out how to transcode my blu ray rips to DTS ;-)

Cheers.
Jonathan.

P.S. Media info for the two blu ray rips. DTS works, AC3 stutters:

General Unique ID : 327263561499903265684907051252962458527 (0xF634AB55EE3F6D80231C6C1D1FB67B9F) Complete name : E:\Films\Star Trek Into Darkness.2013.mkv Format : Matroska Format version : Version 2 File size : 24.7 GiB Duration : 2h 12mn Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 26.8 Mbps Movie name : Star Trek Into Darkness Encoded date : UTC 2014-10-02 19:01:49 Writing application : MakeMKV v1.8.13 win(x64-release) Writing library : libmakemkv v1.8.13 (1.3.0/1.4.1) win(x64-release)

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 2h 12mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 25.6 Mbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 31.7 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.515
Stream size                              : 23.6 GiB (96%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 2h 12mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 640 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 605 MiB (2%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

And the DTS rip:

General Unique ID : 289220704153271833940270102439838283826 (0xD995E1A7CAC96414E1BB8B0D0C56F832) Complete name : E:\Films\About.Time.2013.mkv Format : Matroska Format version : Version 2 File size : 27.1 GiB Duration : 2h 3mn Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 31.4 Mbps Movie name : About Time Encoded date : UTC 2014-10-02 20:33:40 Writing application : MakeMKV v1.8.13 win(x64-release) Writing library : libmakemkv v1.8.13 (1.3.0/1.4.1) win(x64-release)

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 2h 3mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 29.3 Mbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 33.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.589
Stream size                              : 25.2 GiB (93%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Mode                                     : 16
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2h 3mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 509 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.30 GiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

IanCass · October 11, 2014, 8:58pm

Your AC3 behaviour reminds me very much of what my Denon 1803 does with Sky AC3 output. In Sky's case, it's due to some bug in the chipset not able to parse the extra flags in the Dolby Digital Plus bitstream.

IanCass · October 11, 2014, 9:01pm

https://www.avforums.com/threads/dolby-digital-problem.29822/#post-171365

cad42 · October 11, 2014, 10:11pm

Interesting thread - thanks! In my case the same ac3 audio plays just fine on my trusty Yamaha if I use either raspbmc or PHT on Windows as the source, instead of Rasplex :)

Meanwhile I have figured out how to transcode DD True HD to DTS and mux back to MKV - the result plays perfectly (at least the ten minutes I've checked) from rasplex.

cad42 · October 27, 2014, 5:14pm

Hey,

I'm guessing no one here is using hdmi splitters for toslink audio output from Plex?

Cheers.

Jonathan.

IanCass · October 31, 2014, 10:50am

No, but it's on my list of things to do

mastoul · November 1, 2014, 9:03pm

Hello. Today I saw this thread and I ordered emediately this hdmi/toslink splitter. I was looking for this for a very long time. My setup is pms and pht on the same pc-server 10 meters away from the tv. I have bought a pair of aavara hdmi extender over cat cable, and everything works fine ( audio, video and cec). But the hdmi was going straight to tv witch cannot passtrhru DTS to amp, only pcm. So now I hope that I can split the audio and connect it directly to my amp. Does anybody has done this setup?

Sonnyboy666 · November 2, 2014, 1:53pm

I am using an older Samsung TV with a Raspberry Pi B - Model with RasPlex and an older Pioneer Audio-Receiver with no HDMI-Input.

So I bought this HDMI/Toslink-Splitter: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B002CAZ2Q8?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00 to get digital audio.

I had to edit the config.txt file on RasPlex to get it to work, because the Pi identifies the TV at startup as an analog-device so there is no digital output possible. "hdmi_force_edid_audio=1" in config.txt did the job for me!

Edit: I also have this issue with stuttering on some DD 5.1 movies. I converted them to a "clean" AC3 5.1 format, then it works.

adeban · December 29, 2014, 1:37pm

Hi, I have this stuttering behaviour all the time. Primarily in the beginning of a movie. Somtimes it settles after a min or two and then work all the way through. Recently, however, i have run into movies where this dont happen and they become unwatchable.

Have tried a clean install of Rasplex without any luck. This forces me to try out raspbmx (kodi) where this dont happen at all.

Quote:

Edit: I also have this issue with stuttering on some DD 5.1 movies. I converted them to a "clean" AC3 5.1 format, then it works.

What do you mean with clean ac3? Which tool do you use for this? I normally convert with eac3to using popcorn.

br

adeban

Sonnyboy666 · December 31, 2014, 10:38am

Hi, I have this stuttering behaviour all the time. Primarily in the beginning of a movie. Somtimes it settles after a min or two and then work all the way through. Recently, however, i have run into movies where this dont happen and they become unwatchable.

Have tried a clean install of Rasplex without any luck. This forces me to try out raspbmx (kodi) where this dont happen at all.

Quote:

Edit: I also have this issue with stuttering on some DD 5.1 movies. I converted them to a "clean" AC3 5.1 format, then it works.

What do you mean with clean ac3? Which tool do you use for this? I normally convert with eac3to using popcorn.

br

adeban

Sorry for the delay. I am using popcorn mkv audio converter to do this "cleaning" but sometimes it still stutters after encoding. In most cases changing to DTS works for me, or you try to encode to AAC audio.

Is this issue on every movie, or just AC3 movies? Did you overclock your Pi? This might help on some stuttering issues.

system · December 21, 2019, 3:22am

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Rasplex and HDMI / Toslink Splitter: DTS Perfect, AC3 Stutters

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