Audio drop-outs on 4k BluRay rips

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Hi,
I’m having issues with my Vero 4K+ when playing back 4k HDR movie files.
Video is perfect, but the sound drops out for a couple of seconds randomly.
My setup is Vero 4k to LG OLED B9 with sound output to a Sonos Beam via HDMI ARC.
I normally stream the movies from NFS shares on an Openmediavault server.
Same files play back perfectly from the TV’s built in Plex app, and from a Zidoo Z9s streamer also connected via HDMI.
Things Ive tried -

  • Changing HDMI cables (tried various Ultra High Speed 18Gbps HDMI 2.0 Cables) - same problem.
  • Copying source files to a USB3 connected drive directly attached to the Vero - same problem

The annoying thing is that sometimes the files play back perfectly for up to 20 minutes before the drop-outs start. Very frustrating.
Can anyone help? I’d hate to have to abandon using my Vero, as otherwise I’ve been very pleased with it and prefer the interface to the TV’s Plex app.

Ive uploaded a log here -

https://paste.osmc.tv/idumifafez

( I rebooted my NAS before trying to play the file - still getting audio drop outs )
Sorry - forgot to enable debugging - new log -

https://paste.osmc.tv/ahadoyuxut

2

Is this similar to your issue?

3

Sound like it may be.
Ill check the audio bitrate next time.

4

Do these have TrueHD tracks? If so, it is unfortunately a known issue with Kodi. We are still working on it

Sam

5

Yes. Its mainly been TrueHD tracks.
However, when I switched to the DTS-MA track on one of the files, I still experienced a couple of audio drop outs.
Heres hoping for a Kodi fix…

6

If you put up a MediaInfo output of the file we can likely confirm it this is indeed the issue

Sam

8

MediaInfo output -
https://paste.osmc.tv/xefapekuyu.mel

9

Yes, seems to be an affected title unfortunately.

10

Thanks Sam.
In the meantime, I’ve remuxed the files using mkvtoolnix v48 which saves the core AC3 from the TrueHD Atmos as a separate track. Hopefully using this track will avoid the dropouts.

11

Yes, it indeed will.

12

Any status updates? is TrueHD still an issue? I’m getting stutters when audio bitrate goes over 10.5-11Mbit or so

13

As this is a Kodi bug, you can follow the discussion about it here: Kodi 18.4 crashes with high bitrate TrueHD+Atmos audio stream · Issue #16704 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub

1 Like
14

fascinating, thanks

looks like kodi devs are short on time and don’t take bounties either

15

We have, and continue to push it extremely aggressively.
We know how to fix it, but we don’t understand some of the previous design choices to justify the current implementation.

Cheers

Sam

16

I’m having audio dropouts for about a second in several movies and it is always at the same place. Checked the last movie were it happens and it is DTS-HD MA. This is only happening when I disable audio passthrough and let the Vero4k decode the audio. With passthrough enabled the audio plays fine (But my TV can only decode the core track). Is this the same bug?

17

No – I don’t believe this is related.

18

hello just checking in if the latest release still has this happening? kodi 19.1 / osmc august 2021

19

Unfortunately, yes (ie using passthrough, not @kallek’s issue).