So everything works fine, with only a few customizations for me. For whatever reason, Pass through AC3 wouldn’t direct play on my Roku Ultra that is running off wireless. I switched it to FLAC Passthrough and it it does Direct Play, so I guess I’ll go with that. Also had to turn Sharpen off on my Concert DVDs…seemed to degrade the picture for me, at least on these ones. I"ve focused on my 480 sources now, will look at my 1080p next. thanks.
One question. Why not go with H.265 instead of H.264? Doesn’t H.265 have smaller file sizes?
Yea, if you encode them properly, but 265 is really only beneficial for 4K - to reduce the insane bit rates. 265 is notorious for causing all sorts of issues on devices and clients not able to handle 265 and when your material is 265 and Plex has to transcode, it usually transcodes to 264. 265 to 264 is a heavy duty operation opening up the possibility for a whole host of issues associated with not having enough horsepower to get the job done on the fly.
Unless you own an entire fleet of Shields - 265 is more trouble than it’s worth - IMO - and if you can locate some worth for it, you have to develop brand new 265 encoding skills - that could take decades to perfect (if there is such a thing).
Ok, thanks, I probably won’t spend another second on thinking about H.265 for my use case.
On another note, I did more throughout testing with encoding the sound settings, and these are the results.
(I’d prefer not to go lower than 320)
AC3 Passthrough will not Direct Play
Flac Passthrough will not Direct Play
AC3 Bitrate 320 and higher will not Direct Play
Flac 16-bit WILL Direct Play
(however, I don’t know what the bitrate is and can’t figure determine average bit-rate as it’s listed as variable in Mediainfo, so I’m unsure of the range.
I think I will settle on FLAC 16-bit, and “assume” it’s the hightest quality I can get to Direct Play. These are concert videos, and ideally, has the highest sound quality possible.
Not sure if I’m doing anything wrong here, or what settings would give me the highest quality audio, and still allow for DirectPlay…
…this particular concert only had 5.0 audio, so that’s why it is listed as such, fyi, so never mind that.
Well, what you want to do is make a few Previews of 265, plunk 'em down in an Other Videos Library and play 'em on everything you got - to see what happens.
That makes absolutely no sense. Your audio bit rate should have nothing to do with a transcode - unless your quality setting is so low a bit of extra bit rate throws Plex into a transcode. Quality should ALWAYS be set to ‘Original’, for local, at least.
2.0/4.0/5.0/5.1/7.1/etc WILL have an effect on Direct Play - as in when your device/client can’t deal with it. In this case you want to CREATE an audio track that IS compatible - and HB is OK doing that, but Xmedia Recode is BETTER!
Pass Through the audio in the HB encode, no matter what it is, then run it through XR to mix a compatible audio track (and maybe normalize it while you’re at it) before you add it to your library… that should fix any Direct Play issues:
Video - Copy
Audio - Convert - AC3 5.1 or 2.0, but be aware when you swap 5.1 for 2.0, you absolutely want to normalize the audio at 89db. If you can, create 5.1 and normalize at 84 to 86db - or whatever your system or earholes demand.
Don’t go over 89db. Distortion isn’t all that cool.
On this last pass through XR you can also import any srt subs - if you have any.
I’d rather take a beating than be forced to use FLAC.
You need to investigate this AC3 nonsense - if the above doesn’t help.
Agreed, this doesn’t make sense, and I’ve exhausted my patience with experimenting with different audio settings in Handbrake, for now. Will only revisit if I’m forced to.
The transcoding of the Audio really slows down load times. so I need to solve this.
Time to move on to Xmedia Recode. I’ll pass through the audio, as suggested and fix it there and cross my fingers. It sounds like this is what I should be doing anyway. thanks for you detailed knowledge share, especially after banging my head on this issue. Now back to work and I will try this when I get time.
1 Like
ok, I’m confused again. I thought by using Xmedia Recode, I would be following your instructions and keeping the Codec at AC-3, but the only options it gives me are shown below (4 options)? Maybe you could give me a screenshot of your XMedia Recode settings (I’m missing something in the translation). I tried other .mkv files and none of them allow me to chose AC-3 as the codec. Also, how do I normalize the audio…that wasn’t evident either. thanks!
ok, I found the Codec for AC3 by changing the Profile in XR., but there are a bunch of them. What Profile should I begin with? AGain a screenshot would be helpful. thanks. still can’t figure out how to normalize the audio.
Well, that is truly strange, but XR can confuse itself sometimes - graphically.
Grab the window at the red arrow and just drag it down a bit - see if your Volume comes back.
Other than that - I don’t have a clue.
PS - always give your audio a language and after you select it once, it remembers until you restart it.
yeah, I’ve been selecting the Language, but restarting the app a few times, so that’s why it didn’t appear. I tried your suggesting, but without any luck… On another note, on the AC-3 Direct Play front, I’m getting closer to figuring out the problem. it’s related to this Roku Ultra: No audio with AC3 direct play/stream. I got AC-3 audio to direct play on one of the tvs… I’m just going to keep experimenting with that now, and hopefully get them to direct play on all my Rokus. in the meantime, I’m not going to worry about volume leveling until I get more time to dig into this deeper. you have been a great help, I greatly appreciate it.
Hold The Presses!
You’re using the latest XR - Volume features are - somewhere else. Over there in ‘Filters/Previews’. I found it a PITA - especially so when ur doing about 10 at a time - so I backed up to Version: 3.4.5.2 <—pre-dumb-ass version:
https://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/version.php
at least we’ll be on the same page and apologies for not remembering that - old age? Too much ‘medication’? Not enough? Who knows…lol
ha. well, that xplains it! thanks. I did a quick look and found it…does seem like a pain being over there!
Oh, it is.
Single files are fine, albeit only slightly painful. Multiple files are ‘run from the building with your hair on fire’.
3.4.5.2 is the version right before the pain started - and I can find no fault in it. For what we’re doing.
The trick, at my house, is:
Roku Audio Settings: Audio Mode (Auto (Dolby Digital)) / HDMI (Auto Detect).
You pretty much have to pass AC3 audio to the TV - or whatever you have on that end that can deal with it - which is pretty much everything except a Roku - or Plex will transcode it into AAC.
I’ll try those exact settings and see how that goes. thanks.
So, after a few hours of experimenting, I’ve finally got AC-3 to direct play on my roku ultra where I primarily want to enjoy this. I almost gave up, but it seems like my older receiver simply does not play well with the HDMI Auto detect feature of Roku audio settings ( I tried switching cables, and Ultra boxes with the one tv that does work, but to no avail), so I have to force it to Dolby Digital in the Audio/HDMI settings of Roku. Then, Additionally, in Plex I must set Direct Play to Force, in the Roku Video settings. This is the only way it works. But it does work. I just have to turn Direct Play off for any media that I have not yet optimized via HandBrake.
So in the end, on Plex, my audio settings look like this.
Audio Mode (Auto (Dolby Digital)) / HDMI (Dolby Digitial)
the only difference with your settings is that I can’t do Auto for my HDMI. Wee! this is fun, lol.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
