Wd live won't play AAC audio

I just purchased this unit. Played a MKV 1080 backup copy of Avatar without a hickup but when I tried to play 3 different videos with AAC encoded with Handbrake there is no audio. Live is connected through Hdmi and the three different videos definitely have audio. Specs state the unit plays AAC…anyone have ideas? Btw: just upgraded to latest firmware version

Welcome to the forums.

AAC encoded with Handbrake?  What  Mixdown did you select?  With stereo or Pro Logic II you should have no issues at all.  You cannot, however, use 6 channel discrete (the Live, like a lot of hardware devices, does not support 6 channel AAC).

Hey Mike,

Thanks for your response.  Funny thing happened.   The following day after I received your response, the files played fine.  Made no changes of any kind and they played without a hiccup.  Thought everything was fine, but now the WD Live won’t play the audio for a DTS MKV and an AC3 MKV.  I have a support ticket in with WD as I shouldn’t be having these problems.  Both the MKV’s play fine on my PC, so I would assume the WD would play fine.  All files are played via USB.  Could there be an encoding problem I need to work out?  I’m getting close to returning this unit, so any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks for your asisstance…John

What are your settings for audio in the Live, stereo or digital?  And how are you playing your sound - through a receiver or direct to your TV, and optical or HDMI?

I’ve tried both stereo and digital…didn’t work. Directly through the TV and Hdmi. My hitachi plasma can’t play the dts but was assuming it could play the AC3. I’m going to compare the file that did play correctly vs. the new batch that won’t play. Anything else to try

For sure you need to be set on “Stereo” – digital won’t work for you since your TV can’t decode it (not even the AC3 file – you need an audio receiver for that).

The Live *should* correct decode both DTS and AC3 as long as they are correctly encoded, but that isn’t always the case.  You didn’t say how you encoded with Handbrake, or what version you used.  I would recommend downloading one of the nightlies (NOT the old version .094) and encode with the High Profile, changing only output type to MKV (leave everything else alone and for sure don’t mess with the sound settings).  The default will convert your audio to AAC which is what you want here (since you can’t decode 5.1 surround).

That should do it – I’ll bet you a dollar everything will be just fine then.

The problem seems to be with my transcoding.  The original MKV of Avatar works properly and that video is DTS.  My “compilation” is also DTS but that won’t play.  Only difference when I view the 2 files in MediaRaw is that the audio bitrate on Avatar is displayed and there is no bitrate displayed for my “compilation”.  MKVmerge has all the same settings when compared.  I’m using MeGUI to transcode the “compilation”.  I’m not exactly sure what the difference is, but its going to have to be a trial and error till I figure it out.  Any other ideas?!?

Wait a minute – you said you used Handbrake to make the videos.  Now you’re saying you used MKVMerge and/or MeGUI?

That’s a whole different ballgame – you need to provide accurate information for us to help you.  If you used MKVmerge the odds are great that you simply used a version new than 4.0 (anything newer does not do the audio properly for the Live to work unless you turn off compression in the audio and video streams.  It’s best to just use version 4.0 or earlier).

Hey mike. Sorry for the confusion. The original AAC problem was with videos encoded with handbrake. That problem has since been resolved. The newest issue is building 2 1080 HD movies with megui and mkvmerge. One played fine (didn’t transcode that one myself) and the one I built the sound wasn’t working. I read some additional posts on this forum regarding your suggestion about using an older version of mkvmerge. I’m going to give it a try later this week and post the outcome. Thanks for all your help thus far!

Okay – but be careful about confusing an old man .

OK, I tried MKVMerge 4.0 which worked great.  WD Live decoded the AC3 and it played fine on the TV…except the audio and video didn’t sync up.  I also tried the same H264 file with the original DTS audio and ran those through MKVMerge and that too didn’t sync up properly either.  MKVMerge is set to 24000/1001 for the video, so that is set correctly.  Other than that, i’m not sure exactly what the issue could be.  BTW: Both video’s played back fine on the PC.

Can you be my savior once again?!?

When you say “didn’t sync up” how exactly far off is the sync?

If it’s only slightly off (and doesn’t get any better or worse the further you are in the video) then the odds are you’ve run into the decoding delay issue.  It takes time for modern receivers and displays to process both the video and audio, and seldom do the two things take the same time, particularly when they run through different devices (like a receiver and a HDTV).  To this end most modern receivers have what’s called by various names but basically is a audio adjustment (or lip sync as it’s sometimes called) that allows you to retard or advance the decoding (some HDTVs also offer this as well for the video signal).

You’ll have to check your manual to see if you have this and, if so, try adjusting it until it’s correct.  I have my own receiver set to delay the audio by around 100ms and that seems about right but YMMV.

If the delay is WAY off (say more than a second or two – count “one thousand one, one thousand two”) and gets worse the longer you play then your problem is more likely due to an incorrection transcoding.  If you used Handbrake on these files initially then you need to use the latest nightlies instead of .94 (which at this time is a VERY old release) as it has some adjustments which help in this regard.  If you didn’t use Handbrake then I don’t know what to tell you other than we can walk through ALL the steps you used to create your video and see if we can figure out what’s occuring (but, again, this is ONLY if the delay is several seconds off and keeps getting worse as you move through).

Couple of questions off your last comment. Could it be a transcoding issue even though the PC playback is perfect? Would the PC automatically compensate so the playback is correct? The lag is definitely in the seconds. I did notice the video sped up a couple of times as if the WD was lagging behind. I will watch it through today and see if that’s the case. Now… should I be experencing this lag with all my mkv files? I believe my Avatar copy doesn’t lag at all, but I’ll have to double check to see if that’s the case. Btw, the WD is going directly to the HDTV.

What you are describing sounds more like a ripping issue – some rippers don’t rip properly and thus the transcode has problems.

This thread is so long I’m not even sure where we are at so a recap might be in order:

  1. Are you using one of the nightlies version of Handbrake?  Not .94, but a far more recent downoad?  If not, do so immediately.

  2. Are you ripping the full DVD to your hard drive and then encoding from there?  Most rippers offer various options to only rip the main movie or some part, but I would not advise this (alternatively, you can directly encode from Handbrake from the original DVD if you have a ripper like AnyDVD installed).

  3. Can you post the MediaInfo for one of the problematic files?  If it’s not ALL files then it may just be a problem with some DVDs.  There are some known issues with very esoteric DVDs (like the ones the BBC produces, which do odd things with interlacing and frame rates).

Mainstream movie DVDs should not have any issues with latency encoded with the latest Handbrake to an MKV file and played on a local USB drive (playing network is a whole different ballgame – if you are playing these via your network you need to post this issue in the network forum) and going striaght to your display.

Let me explain fully what I’m trying to accomplish.  I own 2012 on Bluray and I’m trying to convert the movie into a ~10gig mkv for playback to my HDTV through WD Live.  I used DVDFab to rip the bluray to the harddrive.  Then used Tsmuxer to seperate the Audio/Video/subtitles.  Then used Megui (RYU profile) to transcode to a raw H264 file.  Then used MKVmerge to bring it all together.  So, the only thing that isn’t working at this time is the audio and video won’t sync up.  I have Avatar in a MKV file which doesn’t yeild any audio/video sync issues when played through the WD Live. 

So my assumption this far is that its a transcoding issue with 2012 since Avatar plays fine, but I’m stumped because the 2012 MKV plays fine on the PC, not the WD Live.

If you believe its also a transcoding issue, any idea where to start looking to resolve this issue?

Thanks again Mike!

Let me simply things for you.

Just use Handbrake to transcode the main M2TS file.  Use the High Profile preset, but change the output type to MKV and passthrough the DTS or AC3 tracks (in the audio options choose pass through for the main audio track).

This will yield a great quality compressed file (if you want to compress further, lower the RF setting to 22 – higher is more compressed – but don’t go any more than this) with perfect audio sync.  Then the only thing you need to do is worry about subs (a particularly problem with 2012 since it has forced subs).  Take TSMuxer and demux the PGS track from that same M2TS file and then use BDSub2Sub to translate it to an idx.  Mux this back into your original MKV file using MKVMerge (but NOT the latest version :>) and all will be well, I promise you (and now you have my workflow for ALL my blu-rays, all of which work perfectly on the Live).

(Oh, and for 2012, make sure you select “forced subs only” on the BDSup2Sub output, because that’s all you need.  Same for Avatar, of course).

Excellent…I’ll give that a try and let you know what happens. 

Finished transcoding in 4 hours.  Output size was 4GB @ 3519 kbps.  Next encode will be around 9000 kbps which should yield a better picture quality.  Two concerns though. 

1.  I had to transcode the movie Anamorphic at 1920x800 because the “strict” 1920x1080 kept encoding in 1 minute…essentially creating nothing.  Not sure why, but would rather have the 1920x1080.  I will play around alittle further to see what I come up with.  If you have any advise on this topic, any help is greatly appreciated.

2.  I have mixed results with the output.  First off, the playback on the PC was fine up till the end where the sound and video were off.  The WD Live issue was that  the playback seemed to stutter alittle.  (the scenes didn’t play 100% smoothly).  That is my biggest concern…I have no idea where to begin with that.

I’m going to try transcoding tonight to see what other results I yield.

Thanks John

John,

  1. Did you use one of Handbrake’s nightlies (NOT the .94 release)?

  2. Did you leave the High Profile settings alone (other than changing to an MKV and passing through AC3/DTS)?

  3. How are you decoding your audio?  What, exactly, is your playback setup?

  4. How are you playing these files – local drive, net share, wired or wireless?

You should not change ANYTHING – certainly not the anamorphic settings.  Otherwise there may be something wrong with your rip in the first place (often happens with rippers other than AnyDVD HD, which I *strongly* recommend).  But it also might be an issue with not using one of the Handbrake nightlies.

Hey Mike,

To answer your questions.

1.  No, I don’t use the nightlies.  I use .9.4

2.  Yes I kept everything the same except I removed the audio vs. passing-thru since the only m2ts file I had contained video, no audio. ( have to rerip again to get the original m2ts file)

  1. Playback is WD Live to HDTV through HDMI.

  2. Everything is played local, USB flash drive or a USB external HD. 

I think I may start back from square one with more knowledge this time around; restart with the ripping and go straight through.