I’m still very new to the world of WD Media players and I hope I’m not wasting anyone’s time, but based on my searches online it appears that I am having problems similar to what people had in previous models. I use handbrake to encode my videos and for anime in particular I like to create mkv files to support multiple audio tracks. Actually, even with other movies i like to use multiple audio tracks so I can choose whether to play the Dolby Digital track or a standard stereo track when I’m watching from my PC.
The audio and video appear to lose sync over a period of time and gradually gets worse and worse. It doesn’t seem to matter if they were Blu-Ray backups I created or if they are from DVDs…the .mkv files just seem to be problematic. All the mkv files work fine using wmpc and vlc. I thought that perhaps it was because I’m playing the movies over a usb wireless connection from our server. I then copied over one of the problematic mkv files to the built in hard drive and the issue remains.
What I’d like to know is whether this is a known issue or an issue that has a simple fix that I’ve yet to find. Was this perhaps an issue that was resolved for other models via firmware?
P.S. where can i submit a non-listed usb adapter that works just fine?
I’m guessing you’re encoding to MP4. MP4s and M4Vs have issues with audio sync more often, it seams.
Try encoding them to MKV instead. See if that helps.
Depending on the source, I encode using either MP4 or mkv. For all my high definition sourced movies that I have backed up, I use mkv. Back when I started backing up my movies as digital files there was no standard way of getting AC3 streams onto MP4’ files and it has just sort of become my default way of encoding. In any case, as I stated in the original post, it’s the mkv files that are giving me trouble and they play flawlessly on the PC and even my phone (Epic 4g) but have audio/video sync issues when played both through the network onto the WD TV Live Hub and when played directly from the built in Hard Drive on the Hub. Thanks for the response though.
Are you using the latest (0.9.4, actually quite old) stable release of Handbrake?
If so, try one of the more recent Nightly builds:
https://build.handbrake.fr/
They’ve changed / updated quite a few things behind the scenes that affect the encoding.
I do actually use the 0.9.4 release of Handbrake. In the past I have tried using a nightly build to fix a bug with encoding multiple audio streams and having it automatically detect the number of processor cores in my system (it would create a pop at the beginning of the encoding). Eventually I got around it, but the nightly build I tried ended up causing me quite a bit of trouble and I’ve been fine using 0.9.4.
Considering the files play fine on any PC I own using wmpc and vlc,along with being played just fine through my phone…is it really still likely that the problem lies with my file and not with the WD TV Live Hub?..the only device that does play the file with audio/video out of sync?
When I first redid my DVDs as MKV, I had several issues like that… It seemed to be an issue with sources that mixed 24p and 30i material in the same stream. My PC played it fine, but the Live would get out of sync. I recoded later with a nightly and the problem went away. You can point your finger at either end, but since different players implement the standards in different ways, you’ll not likely get a satisfactory answer. ;). I can only suggest like others to try a recent nightly…
For the sake of following up…downloaded a nightly build and tested out my first mkv encoding with the same exact settings I’ve always used…and I bitterly accept that it worked. Bitter because I really really really really don’t want to have to re-rip and re-encode hundreds of movies and tv show episodes. Maybe I can just take my old mkv files and re-encode without compressing it any more than before. …not sure exactly which settings to use to do that…but…meh, i’ll figure it out and it will still probably take less time. Thanks for your help everyone.
a follow up to a follow up…
in my original post i had made mention of a USB adapter that worked just fine. This may be the case for the non HD sources, but the LAN speed provided by a wireless usb dongle might not be fast enough. I tried playing my newly encoded movie via built in hard drive and it played fine. Moved a copy onto the network and it was as if it was playing 1fps without audio. I then connected my WD Hub over Ethernet Cable instead of wireless and it played off the network just fine. (For the record, I checked to see if the other mkv files would now play while connected through the ethernet cable, but it seems they will all need to be reencoded still.)
Anyone else using a wireless usb dongle that has issues with high def mkv files? The dongle i’m using wasn’t on the lsit, but it connected and worked so effortlessly and plays other non-hd movies just fine…so it’s kind of a tough call for me as to whether i should just buy one of the dongles that are on WD’s list.
*Edit* I just tried connecting my PC to the network through the usb wireless dongle and I was able to play the HD movie fine. This leads me to believe that the WD TV Hub just isn’t quite compatible with the usb dongle I have after all…or at least isn’t capable of getting the max speed out of it.
Edit #2: Was messing around with the Twonky Media server and I decided to try and play the same HD movie that I had saved onto the internal memory of the TV Hub and it played perfectly over WIreless USB Ethernet Adapter onto my PC desktop. Not entirely sure what this means…but yeah. It’s as though the only problem with the wireless usb adapter is when I’m trying to access the network from the WD TV Hub, even though it works fine from my PC.
Have you tried setting your TV in " Game Mode"?
I have found a lot of Audio Sync Issues are related to the TV unable to quickly process the image and not the WDTV or the network.
(I have a Denon AVR and a Samsung 6 Series TV)
Hope It helps
