corrupted sound with certain video formats

I am using Serviio on Windows 7 64-bit, with a Roku 4400 on our home stereo.
I have loaded the "Roku 4K Media Player" profile.

Now (with the Roku 4K profile loaded in Serviio) we see all our video files in Roku Media Player, with correct filenames.

However, I'm having problems with sound in some video formats. Here's what we see so far:
mp4: plays fine, audio and video

mpg, wmv: video is fine, but sound is corrupted; hard to describe exactly what's wrong, but it sounds like 3 out of every 4 samples are mis-translated or something, it's really un-listenable !!

flv: sound is good, but no video at all (I realize that's a very old format, but I have a bunch of older videos in that)

mov: either doesn't play at all, or we get sound corruption, like the mpg and wmv

My major concern is with the corrupted sound on mpg and wmv; is there some way to resolve this?

BTW, to address some points from the FAQ:
- we have a wired connection between the Roku box and our gigabit router
- the Serviio computer is a mid-range gaming machine, with an Intel Core-i7-3820 (Sandybridge-E) processor, OC to 4GHz,
and 16GB RAM, of which about half is available.

[atc98092]

Hi Derell, welcome to the Serviio forum.

As I mentioned on the Roku forum, we now need to determine what codecs are in use in the media that won't play correctly. When I created the Roku profiles, I could only test with the media I have available to me. And of course I have to work within the limitations of what a Roku device supports. You have the Roku 4, which was their first 4K player. I don't know if they extended MPEG2 support to that player, but if you have any such media we can test that by changing your profile to the one that says "w/MPEG2" in the profile name.

So, for at least one example of each type that isn't playing correctly, we need to determine what codecs are used. There's a link in my sig line to a support page that describes how to retrieve this information from your media. As I mentioned, one good program is MediaInfo. But if you're comfortable working from a command line FFMPEG can get even more detailed information. FFMPEG is installed in the LIB folder where Serviio is installed on your computer, so you don't need to download and install anything.

Once we know what codecs are in use, we can figure out what might need altering in the Roku profiles. I greatly appreciate users bringing untested media to my attention so I can ensure the profile works as perfectly as possible.

Here is ffmpeg output for two of the files that have corrupted audio.
I'm not familiar with ffmpeg, so I just used default options; if there are other options that provide more useful info, let me know and I'll happily re-run this!

  Code:

C:\videos Yes, Master?? > ffmpeg -i Ventures.live.mpg -hide_banner
Input #0, mpeg, from 'Ventures.live.mpg':
  Duration: 00:03:30.92, start: 0.261244, bitrate: 1718 kb/s
    Stream #0:0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p(tv), 320x240 [SAR 200:219 DAR 800:657], 1500 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 29.97 tbc
    Stream #0:1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 192 kb/s
At least one output file must be specified

C:\videos Yes, Master?? > ffmpeg -i Wake_up_and_meet_the_Puppy!.wmv -hide_banner
[wmv3 @ 0000000000591100] Extra data: 8 bits left, value: 0
Guessed Channel Layout for Input Stream #0.0 : stereo
Input #0, asf, from 'Wake_up_and_meet_the_Puppy!.wmv':
  Metadata:
    WMFSDKNeeded    : 0.0.0.0000
    DeviceConformanceTemplate: SP
    WMFSDKVersion   : 12.0.7600.16385
    IsVBR           : 0
    title           : Talking Cat (Wake Up Kitty 2)
  Duration: 00:01:07.32, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 517 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: wmav2 (a[1][0][0] / 0x0161), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: wmv3 (Simple) (WMV3 / 0x33564D57), yuv420p, 424x320, 384 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
At least one output file must be specified


[atc98092]

Well, that's interesting. As you probably noticed, they both end with "Output file #0 does not contain any stream". So you're right, the audio is corrupted, and shouldn't be playable on any device.

I don't know what the source of these two files are, but if it's something you can get a new copy of, they'll likely play fine. Based on the ffmpeg results, there's something seriously wrong with both of those files, and there's nothing we can do to make them play.

I also loaded MediaInfo, and it showed the audio for the ventures.live.mpg to be MPEG Layer 2, so I loaded the w/MPEG2 Roku profile, but that had no effect, we still get the stuttering (I think that's the best word for it) in the audio.

Well... all these videos play fine in VLC Media Player.

Also, I have the stuttering issue with *all* .mpg, .wmv, .mov, .avi files!!

[atc98092]

The profile with MPEG2 in the name only applies to the video codec, which I have a feeling your Roku 4 doesn't support. So you should stick with the "regular" 4K Media Player profile.

As far as stuttering, do you have Auto-adjust display refresh rate enabled? I've found with Roku players it has issues with some videos if it's turned on. It's subtle, but there's still a little stutter with it turned on.

Did you edit your post with different ffmpeg output? I now see the included codecs and I believe I see the issue. Yes, you have MP2 audio, which Roku does not support. You also have two different types of video codecs: MPEG1 and WMAV2. Again, Roku supports neither. And I must add that both the video and audio codecs used in these files are no longer commonly used. So now, we can fix this in two different ways. First is to modify the Roku profiles to recognize these codecs and transcode as necessary. Transcoding audio doesn't require much computer power, if the video is compatible. Transcoding video requires more power, and usually takes virtually all the computer has available, so it's not very useful for other tasks at the same time.

Now, I'm going to take the information you've provided me and work on the profiles. I'll try to find some demo videos so I can test them on my system. But that's going to take a little time. Got this little thing called Christmas that's going to take just a touch of my time. However, in the mean time you could use a program like Handbrake and convert your troublesome files into something that is better supported by Roku.

Handbrake (https://handbrake.fr/) is free software that is incredibly powerful, and can take your videos and convert them into a Roku compatible format easily. While it's very easy to use (it has presets for many different outputs, including Roku), it does take a little time to complete a file. However, you can add them to a queue and let it run overnight. I find that it takes just a little longer than the running length of the video, so a movie that is 90 minutes long might take closer to two hours to finish. Ultimately the power of your computer decides how long it takes. Handbrake also allows you to modify the preset, so if you want your audio converted to AC3 instead of AAC, it's very simple to do. And you can save your final tweaking as your own preset. If the video contains captions, you can burn them into the video so they're always visible.

By default Handbrake uses the Roku preset (there's more than one Roku profile, mostly for different output resolution and audio choices) to convert the video to H.264 and the audio to AAC stereo. For the two files that you provided the information, AAC audio should be just fine, although AC3 provides just a touch more compatibility with different players. And f any of your videos have more than two channel audio, you really want to use AC3 as your output audio. It's been a while since I've used Handbrake for anything, so please consider my comments about it in that light. I know they continue to improve Handbrake, and it might even be faster that I remember.

As a side note, I fired up Plex, and it plays *all* of our videos, of all formats, right out of the box.
It took a little poking around to find where to turn on the DNLA service, because it does so many other things,
but once we enabled it, it just popped up working !!!

So at minimum, I think that demonstrates that our video files are all fine...

[atc98092]

As a side note, I fired up Plex, and it plays *all* of our videos, of all formats, right out of the box.
It took a little poking around to find where to turn on the DNLA service, because it does so many other things,
but once we enabled it, it just popped up working !!!

So at minimum, I think that demonstrates that our video files are all fine...

Yes, the media is fine. It's just that the Serviio profiles for Roku devices aren't configured to play some of the codecs you have, since I had none to test with and no one had brought these to my attention before.

Plex simply has more refined Roku profiles, so they had already discovered those codecs and have them in their profiles. Plex is nice, and I use it myself for when I travel, but I've found it transcodes on occasion when not necessary. I will get the Serviio profiles updated, hopefully in time for the next release of Serviio (no idea when that might be). But I will be posting updated Roku profiles here in the forum when I've completed them, in case someone wants to update the profile file themselves.