I want to test out Aliens as well since these UHDs were authored similarly.
True Lies does not have any branching to it so that disc should be fine.
Does anyone have time stamps for troubled areas of Alien 4K UHD Special Edition?
If so, post them here and I will look at them as full BD folder, MakeMKV remux, and as an eac3to demuxed audio remux.
thanks for posting the info re eac3to, good to have an alternate to makemkv. I tried that but it still had a dropout in the submarine flooding scene using K21 stable on my Ugoos. However, there is now a nightly build that pulls in a TrueHD Kodi patch and that does fix the dropout on that platform, but there seem to be lip-sync issues, and discussions elsewhere suggest this isn’t completely fixed yet. When there is an equivalent build for the Vero I’ll be happy to test it.
Does this issue happen on that scene with your Vero or just with your Ugoo?
I can’t reproduce that issue on my Vero V with the UHD folder, the MakeMKV remux, or my eac3to/MakeMKV/MKVToolNix hybrid remux.
I’m waiting for the Kodi 21 release for the Vero and will then hook it back up to test.
Hi
Do you have a link to the specific commit so I can check its merge status within Kodi?
I can backport it if necessary
Cheers
Sam
Here are the links that were referenced in context of development builds on the CE forum, not sure if this helps you.
Sorry it took a while to check on my original issue but my Vero V got the OSMC patch yesterday so I watched Aliens again and admittedly fast forwarded to about 1hr15m then watched. It ran perfectly with no dropouts for at least 15 minutes. So not sure if this was a fluke but I need to do a full watch of the Abyss now which had more issues. These are all MakeMKV files.
Cheers
Tim
I can see these are upstream Kodi commits. I can make sure they’re in the v21 release, no problem.
Worth noting: some of the drop outs don’t manifest if you skip forward to them.
I tried a brief test play of The Abyss on the Vero, initially on the May25 build of 20.5 and then the new 21.0 release. I didn’t do the full playback as I don’t have the time just now, no issue with the flooding scene at the beginning on either build, but then if the 21.0 OSMC test build includes the new Kodi patches then there shouldn’t be. Appreciate that is far from a thorough test.
(mkv file was direct from makemkv, no eac3to rebuild of the truehd track).
I haven’t included the additional v21 patches yet. I’ll do that (probably) tomorrow. Keep an eye on the thread
Cheers
Sam
I watched The Predator (2018) last night and it had drop outs.
When back to the disc and sure enough it has Atmos and seamless branching.
Checked my remux and it was made by MakeMKV.
Used eac3to to demux the Atmos and DD tracks, fired up MKVToolNix and redid the remux with the eac3to demuxed audio tracks but still using the MakeMKV video, subs, and chapters.
No drop outs now.
I’m not going to scourer through my already remuxed discs to see what has the combo of seamless branching and TrueHD and redo everything, but moving forward if any discs meet that criteria I’m using eac3to to demux the audio and I’ll fix old remuxes as I stumble upon them.
I would recommend that others do likewise.
If Sam and the team can do something that fixes these then awesome, but it doesn’t really appear to be an issue on their end so I can’t imagine them spending much time trying to fix something after the fact when the apparent true fix would be at the root of the issue with MakeMKV.
IMHO, Mike at MakeMKV needs to collaborate with whomever does eac3to to see if they can get a fix.
See how things go with the next update with Kodi v21.
When is that expected?
There is already a test thread on this forum.
I just finished watching Interstellar and that movie had so many drop outs it’s ridiculous and toward the end there were two times the audio did not recover until I skipped back 10 seconds.
So this is really surprising to me since the audio is DTS-HD MA and not TrueHD or even DTS-X object based AND I’m pretty sure the disc is not seamlessly branched, but I’ll have to double check that tomorrow when I get home from work because it’s too late at night to do that now.
Has anyone else ever had issues with this movie’s audio?
another upstream development that looks interesting.
It’s a backport, so it will get picked up with the next Kodi v21 release. We usually release a new version of Kodi officially after the first point release for stability reasons.
We’ve worked with thexai on audio improvements in the past.
I’ve been watching UHDs that have Atmos and seamless branching lately for testing.
I just watched The Martian (2015) which I used eac3to to demux the Atmos and the DD and it still had issues with many dropout.
So that’s the first time I’ve experienced the issue with a remux in which I used eac3to for the Dolby demuxing.
Not sure what that means, but just throwing it out there for others since I mentioned previously that eac3to helps fix the issue.
I’m going to look at these branches closer and see how the disc was authored and what not, if I find anything worth noting I’ll post here.
It does appear to be a troublesome UHD:
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=133045&sid=3012008c7b7f69910e94d69479941773#p133045
Wow, The Martian Extended Edition is truly a mess.
Name: The Martian Theatrical Edition (English)
Source file name: 00800.mpls
Duration: 2:21:37
Chapters count: 32
Size: 45.7 GB
Segment count: 28
Segment map: 63,64,89,65,92,116,93,66,94,67,95,68,96,69,97,70,98,71,99,72,100,76,101,77,102,78,103,79
Name: The Martian Extended Edition (English)
Source file name: 00801.mpls
Duration: 2:31:20
Chapters count: 32
Size: 48.7 GB
Segment count: 28
Segment map: 63,64,104,65,105,116,80,66,106,67,107,68,108,69,109,70,110,71,111,72,112,76,113,77,114,78,115,79
Both versions start off with 63 and 64 so who knows why they made those separate m2ts files.
But the version differences at the third segment with 89 versus 104 is where things get interesting.
The extended version is 20 seconds longer and shows the main character struggling to get out of bed.
But no matter what I do, the audio drops at the segment switch between 64 and 104, that’s approximately 18 minutes and 10 seconds into the film.
I can fast forward to the 17 minute mark and watch it happen repeatedly.
I made a remux with the latest MakeMKV 1.17.7 and I get this in the logs:
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 0:21:19.946 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +1.233ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 0:38:03.657 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.98ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 0:40:08.156 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.65ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 0:58:03.397 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.65ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:13:09.385 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.666ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:16:05.353 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.652ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:33:57.049 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +1.027ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:37:20.877 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.647ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:53:19.960 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.666ms
AV sync issue in stream 1 at 1:58:09.375 with duration of 1.666ms : 2 frame(s) dropped to reduce audio skew to +0.652ms
So I was expecting to see the beginning of many issues at 21 minutes and 19 seconds, which is where segment 65 meets segment 105, but that is after the 64/104 branch which clearly shows issues around 18 minutes and 10 seconds.
There were other issues as well but I’m just focusing on the first observed issue I noticed.
I tried using MLP to demux but that made no difference since MakeMKV apparently uses the MLP code to try and repair broken TrueHD branching.
This is from MLP’s GitHub page:
Notes for MakeMKV users
MakeMKV 1.15.4 and newer uses the same method for joining TrueHD streams, and should produce flawless TrueHD streams as well.
If only…
So I tried eac3to, same issue.
Then I tried DGDemux, same issue.
Then I tried using MKVToolNix 100%, which isn’t a big deal since the title is not Dolby Vision, and it got past the 64/104 branch without any issues, so I kept watching… it gets by the 65/105 branch but then it has an audio drop out at the 105/116 branch.
Very frustrating to say the least.
Did some more research and found online that a “release group” had an issue with this movie and they re-released a “proper” version to fix issues, but they never mentioned that audio drop outs were the issue.
They just said:
NOTES
Reason for PROPER: subs been out-of-sync - commentary audio too! Apologies for that, but
it seems demuxing subs/commentary with eac3to was a bad idea on this one!
This is now fully done in mkvtoolnix and tested!
So I “acquired” this “proper” “release” and it behaved exactly as my 100% MKVToolNix remux.
No real surprises there since their notes say they did their remux with MKVToolNix entirely as well.
Funny how they tried eac3to for their “original” “release”.
I haven’t tried using the Vero V to playback the entire disc in a folder since I haven’t had much luck with that in the past with branched discs, but if I run out of things to try I guess I’ll give it a shot.
I have one more thing I can think of to try before I get to that point though.
EDIT:
The MKVToolNix remux is by far the best results.
The audio drop outs few and far between.
When they happen they are almost unnoticeable, and I’m looking for them!
They tend to happen at moments where in the movie there is a hard cut edit from one camera to another so the super fast drop out almost feels like it’s part of the edit.
But many branches played seamlessly without drop outs.
Then the next drop out I saw was the 108/69 branch, which is pretty far along into the movie and my wife didn’t even catch it until I pointed it out to her and turned up the volume.
Very subtle but there.
I’m tired of watching this movie.
This is my verdict: If you own this disc and you want to remux the extended version then you should use MakeMKV to make a decrypted full backup of the disc to a folder and then use MKVToolNix to remux it.
It will not be perfect but it is very watchable and if you are not looking for the issue then you may not even notice it despite it being there.
Another note though with the MKVToolNix remux is that a little bit before one of these small audio drop outs happens it appears to skip a video frame, like the player has a hiccup when filling the buffer or something.
If I skip back and watch it again it doesn’t do it.
So who knows?
Definitely weird stuff going on.
My wife didn’t notice the hiccup before the audio drop outs either.
I’m super sensitive to frame rates, stutter, judder, and the like so I always catch that stuff.
Hopefully all this info is of some help to those struggling with this movie and for developers looking to fix this annoying TrueHD issue on their end.