HD100/H.264 Audio Problems

[MilkmanCDN]

Hello,

I have my entire DVD collection ripped and compressed using Nero Recode and the H.264 AVC codec. When playing these videos back over the HD media extender, there are sections in some movies that cause the audio to drop out and never come back. Like a Charlie Chaplin movie but without the piano music.

Certain spots in certain movies recreate this problem like clockwork. Other movies play through without a hitch.

I found that the only way to fix this problem is to reboot the media-extender and skip past the part of the movie that causes the audio to drop out.

I'm running audio over HDMI and I'm running Vista/SP1 Ultimate for my media server.

Has anyone seen this problem before? Are there any known fixes? I searched the forums but came up with nothing.

[Taddeusz]

What type of container are you re-encoding your movies to? What type of audio are you using?

[MilkmanCDN]

According to Wikipedia Nero Record uses one of the two following audio codecs when encoding DVD's to .MP4 files. They are:

- AAC-LC (the most widely used AAC profile defined in MPEG-4 Part 3)
- HE-AAC (defined in MPEG-4 Part 3, sometimes referenced as "aacPlus" or other, similar trademarks)

The end file is a .mp4 container.

[chiledog]

Try downloading

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

To get tons of info on the encoders for a media. (since this is a audio problem, I would look at the audio section).

FYI, I have a few .mp4 containers and the HD Extender can't play them well. Very choppy playback with horrible picture. The exact same files playback on my computer and XBMC (Xbox) without issue.

I have many MKV containers. All of them playback on the HD Extender without a problem. (So, I am using MKV containers now...)

[bastafidli]

I have the very same issues (movies encoded with Nero Recode 2) as I have mentioned in several threads. If this occurs, I do not have to reboot the exteder, what I do is to hit the stop button and then the play button again. The movie starts playing couple seconds past the moment where the audio was lost and it works OK again. I have several movies that have this issue, some movies have this issue at several spots throughout the movie (always the same spot).

My server is 6.3.10 running on CentOS, I am watching these via HD Media Extender.

Milkman, you can see what Sage says about the format of the movie when you view details of the mp4 files (e.g. Quicktime[H.264 22:9 704x288@24fps, AAC@48kHz 5.1 eng, AAC@48kHz Stereo eng, Subpic:eng])

[MilkmanCDN]

Thanks for the information on MediaInfo.

Yes I'm using Nero Recode 2.

The Audio Stream is:
129 kbps, 48.0 KHz, 6 channels, AAC LC-SBR

I should also mention, that I have tried stopping the movie and then restarting it with the play button. Unfortunately, the stop button causes the GUI to hang for a very long time (i.e. minutes). It's much quicker to turn the power on/off.

Though I would rather have Sage not hang on me at all.

[bastafidli]

Well, it doesnt hang for me, but it may be just different symptoms of the same problem.

[MilkmanCDN]

Update....

I have recently upgraded to the new beta (6.4.3) version of SageTV, as well as the new firmware for the HD-100 (05/19/2008), and I'm running the latest version of Java as well (1.60_05).

The audio still drops, but I can now use the stop button to stop the current showing of the video and then restart movie at the same location. Audio returns.

What I've also noticed is that the HD-100 now freezes up in certain movies thus requiring a hard-reboot (i.e. turn off/on switch on back of extender). This is a new symptom that has never happened before.

Perhaps the 05/23/2008 firmware will fix this problem.

[Taddeusz]

I had to go back to the 5/19 firmware. The 5/23 one broke AC3 and DTS passthru for me. I immediately filed a bug report about it. When I downgraded the firmware I did a beta firmware update check and it automatically told me that the previous one was newer and rolled it back. So apparently they pulled the 5/23 one.

[bastafidli]

I can confirm that 6.4.3 with 5/19 firmware has the problem with the dropping audio. I also had the problem before with 6.3.10 and the latest stable firmware. Last night I have reported bug to Sage since I have finally wrote down the time where it is happening in one of my movies so I have 100% reproducible test case.

[MilkmanCDN]

Has Sage figured out what's causing this problem yet? Did you get a reasonable response from tech support?

[bastafidli]

Yes I did. They replied that they were able to reproduce the problem on "older" version of Sage (I assume 6.4.3) and they have already fixed it on the new one (I assume 6.4.x, yet to be released).

[bastafidli]

I can confirm that the latest beta firmware from 6/4 fixed the missing audio from the clip I have provided to them. Good job!

[MilkmanCDN]

Problem solved on my end too! Thanks Sage crew!