Descriptive Audio, previously noted as Visually Impaired, has been added to many broadcasters transmissions. Originally, these were to be added in a VI stream but no one included decoders that would pair that with the primary audio stream. So, they’ve returned to the ATSC 1.0 standard and added DA to, in some cases, SAP and in others it says “unknown”. I also noted that there is a flag which sets the audio channel as the main one. But, most people have coded for there only being one main. That’s not the case now. Main 5.1 audio can be flagged as well as the DA audio. This appears to be confusing Plex.
I’ve tried setting to record all audio tracks without picking up English. However, with a recording scheduled last year before the change, I’m still getting the DA track. I’m guessing I’ll have to delete the task and re-add.
Either way, whom ever designed the handling of audio tracks will need to revisit their code. For reference, here is what I found from way back when that discusses this change.
When are you going to move on updating your audio processing routine to account for the added Descriptive Audio Track and probably a change in marking two tracks as “main”?
I tried to explain to one lady or man here about the issue but they want to blame you. At this point, with no notice posted, I’d blame you for not doing anything. Come on guys.
If you have a scheduled recording from before you turned off the option to select the track for you, you’ll need to delete and re-add that scheduled recording.
I now have all my audio tracks recording. The first one selected seems to be the Spanish one, which is the Descriptive Track. I now have to select the English track when watching. Even with Live TV, I have to select English. I wondered why my newscasts were quiet. I looked and it was choosing Spanish. This is what happens when you shoehorn in a change to a standard. Each broadcaster will use their own method to make sure Descriptive Audio is broadcast.
It’s a complete mess honestly. Spanish, English. Often the audio is in English but the description says Spanish and vice versa. Or the audio is missing altogether. Trying to watch or record OTA channels from a tuner card has become nearly impossible.
Whoever wrote the code for selecting the appropriate channel was smoking some good stuff.
