Server Version#: 1.27.2.5929
Player Version#: 5.42.1
I am a long time plex pass owner and fan and recently treated my self to a new Samsung QLED 4K 55QN95A and Samsung Soundbar HW-Q800A (connected using eArc). To get the most out of it I started gathering 4K video with dolby Atmos. It’s is pretty much always TrueHD but I would be happy with DD+ as I don’t think that will matter that much on my soundbar. I do like the atmos bit though. I have one thing I would like to double check and two questions (perhaps issues).
Double check.
The soundbar supports both TrueHD as DTS-MA. That is one of the reasons I bought this one. After reading this and other forums, it understand that the Plex client on Samsung Tizen won’t be able to passthrough TrueHD nor DTS-MA to the soundbar for direct play as passthrough is only supported for external devices and not tv apps. Is that correct?
Questions/Issues:
The movies I have very often have TrueHD with Atmos as the first audio track and then eac3 with Atmos as the second. Whenever I select the second audio track however, plex will transcode the stream into aac instead direct playing the eac3 stripping out the Atmos. When I enable ‘Playback information’ it says ‘Player does not support selecting alternative audio stream’ as the reason why the audio is transcoded. But when I check here is says that the plex client on samsung SHOULD be able to select it with direct play. Any idea whats causing this?
Most of the files have TrueHD atmos as the default audio track. Can PMS transcode this into eac3 (dd+) with the Atmos metadata intact? Currently it is always transcoded into aac and then the soundbar does not show the Atmos indicator. And, if so, is there some way to force it to do so?
Thanks for the very quick reply. Much appreciated!
Any idea if Samsung is working on the issue with only selecting the first audio stream? Is it from 2021 onward? If it’s by design in the latest mode it might be good to update that sticky thread with this info too.
What does ‘audio skipping’ mean? Intermittent missing audio?
Then I guess the only option I am left with is converting the TrueHD atmos to DD+ atmos when the content gets in right? And making sure it’s the first track in the container.
One last question, I also have a chromecast ultra attached. Would that be able to do passthrough? Or select alternate audio without transcoding?
I did some more digging that might be usefull for users stumbling into this topic later on.
First off, I did some experimenting with the Chromecast Ultra but that one is not able to play the TrueHD track either. Not when connectd to the tv and not when connected directly to the soundbar and the tv set to ‘passtrough’. The only benefit I found wit Chromecast is that it IS capable of selecting a different track than the default audio without forcing plex to transcode.
Second, it looked into to converting TrueHD to DD+ (with the Atmos metadata intact) on the server before playing it. There are all sorts of scripts you can trigger to make conversions automatically. However, it seems pretty much imposible to do so without losing the Atmos data with a free tool. As far as I can see, you need an expensive pro license. What suprised me even more is that tools like ffmpeg and mediainfo are not even capable of presenting whether the atmos data is in there in the first place. If anyone here knows of a tool that CAN or can tell me what to look for when using ffmeg I would be very interested.
Third and last, my statement in the first post that the Atmos is pretty much always in TrueHD format instead of DD+ was wrong. Seems some stuff was not correctly downloaded causing me to think I got TrueHD when I selected DD+. Anyway, if you use Radarr, setting up Custom Formats seems to be the way to let it know you prefer DD+. Those releases pretty much always have it as the first track so that hits two birds with one stone for me. It does seem that, although the title says DDP.Atmos, sometimes my soundbar still doesn’t detect it so you end up trying multiple releases. Not sure if it really is not in there or it is some issue with my soundbar as I have not tool to inspect the media…
Only the Nvidia Shield and Xbox can passthrough TrueHD audio.
MediaInfo identifies Atmos in both TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus.
TrueHD 7.1 + Atmos
Audio #1
ID : 2
ID in the original source medium : 4352 (0x1100)
Format : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID : A_TRUEHD
Duration : 2 h 24 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 642 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 7 500 kb/s
Channel(s) : 8 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 + Atmos
Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3 JOC
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3 with Joint Object Coding
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 768 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
TrueHD 5.1 without Atmos
Audio #1
ID : 2
ID in the original source medium : 4352 (0x1100)
Format : MLP FBA
Format/Info : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA
Commercial name : Dolby TrueHD
Codec ID : A_TRUEHD
Duration : 39 min 46 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 153 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 4 158 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 without Atmos
Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 1 h 26 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Hi,
I have struggled these last few month to find the right way for my set-up posted at the top. I think I have a proper way of working now I thought I would share it here for other users stumbling across this post.
So, like I said, I have a Samsung TV that supports 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos and a Samsung Soundbar that supports DTS, Dolby Atmos and TrueHD.
First off, playing TrueHD or DTS is not going to work as the TV does not support Passthrough for apps. Therefore, to have Atmos Sound, you would need to go for DDP+.
The way I tackled this is by using Custom Formats in Radarr to prefer DDP and ignore TrueHD, DTS and Master-HD. Take a look at this site for the proper codes: Collection of Custom Formats - TRaSH Guides
In Sonarr I use the same tricks only than using ‘Release profiles’
Second, Samsung tv’s don’t support Dolby Vision. If your media is in DV format you will get an error when trying to play it. I manage this in the same way as TrueHD, using Custom Formats and release profies to ignore DV releases
Last, Samsung Tv’s cannot play files that contain 30 or more streams (video+audio+subtitles). This will force Plex to transcode the audio and losing the Atmos defintion. Loads of releases are packed with subtitles in many languages and therefore exceed the 30 streams pretty often. I solved this by writing a post-processing script for SabNZB that will keep all audio and video and only some of he subtitles. I posted it here: Strip subtitles when mkv has 30 streams or more - SABnzbd Forums
It shouldn’t be to hard to expand upon this script to also exclude audio streams you don’t want or making sure the DDP stream is the first audio stream. That way you would have more (sometimes higher video quality) releases to pick from.
If you run SabNzb in a docker container, check out this link to mix in ffmpeg into the standard image: SABNZBD container with ffmpeg - Container Support - LinuxServer.io
Now all my stuff comes in 4K HDR with DDP+ Atmos sounds and I am happy.
Hope this helps users who run into similar issues.
With the recently released 1420.9 firmware (Samsung S95B) I could see that this problem was corrected which also existed when playing an .mkv file from an HDD connected via USB, so perhaps this limitation has been corrected by Samsung.
RE: First off, playing TrueHD or DTS is not going to work as the TV does not support Passthrough for apps.
Samsung supports passing through for apps not sure when this was changed, Netflix, pararmount, apple TV all work but not plex. Not sure why… Tested on my QN900B
Sorry for the late reply. Do you mean the ‘max 30 streams in a container’ limitation? My TV says it has firmware version 2111, which seems to be the latest.
I never found any documentation on samsung not supporting it to be honest. But all post I have found on the internet so far say passthrough is only supported for external, hdmi connected devices. Do you have any links where it says passtrough is supported for apps?
When I start netflix the sounds \ expertsettings still hass ‘passthrough’ greyed out.
