Solving playback issues

[Thaum2u]

As stated in other responses, ROKU makes great products, but for some strange reason they refuse to do as they should for their customers and provided support for ALL common audio & video CODECs that may be needed. For example, I don't think any ROKU has ever supported .AVI files. But I'm fine with that since .AVI files seem to problematic in some ways. What I am not fine with is the following...

I have many files (some .MP4 and some .MKV) that play fine on my fairly new ROKU TV (less than 2 years old), but on my friends very old ROKU Ultra (probably the first version of it I assume), if those files were encoded as HEVC (high efficiency video codec) h.265 instead of h.264, the video plays, but not the audio.  At least that's what it seems like from my troubleshooting, but I'm pretty sure it is really the settings of just the audio portion of the program that was used to encode the file. ROKU just doesn't know how to deal with certain things because they did not give it all of the CODECs they need to to make it work with all possible combinations of audio and video CODECs. ROKU sucks for that. 

And ROKU also sucks for not wanting to adopt (at the very least for its newer devices) the new AV1 video CODEC, which provides better streaming performance and quality.  This was/is a major part of ROKU and Google/YouTube's dispute), because YouTube is going full in on the new AV1 CODEC because of it's improvements. This means that even if ROKU devices do allow for the YouTube App to be installed on it's devices, some content might not stream anymore because of ROKU's lack of keeping up with the times. At least that's my understanding of it all.

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[atc98092]

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@Thaum2u wrote:

I have many files (some .MP4 and some .MKV) that play fine on my fairly new ROKU TV (less than 2 years old), but on my friends very old ROKU Ultra (probably the first version of it I assume), if those files were encoded as HEVC (high efficiency video codec) h.265 instead of h.264, the video plays, but not the audio.  At least that's what it seems like from my troubleshooting, but I'm pretty sure it is really the settings of just the audio portion of the program that was used to encode the file. ROKU just doesn't know how to deal with certain things because they did not give it all of the CODECs they need to to make it work with all possible combinations of audio and video CODECs. ROKU sucks for that. 

And ROKU also sucks for not wanting to adopt (at the very least for its newer devices) the new AV1 video CODEC, which provides better streaming performance and quality.  This was/is a major part of ROKU and Google/YouTube's dispute), because YouTube is going full in on the new AV1 CODEC because of it's improvements. This means that even if ROKU devices do allow for the YouTube App to be installed on it's devices, some content might not stream anymore because of ROKU's lack of keeping up with the times. At least that's my understanding of it all.

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Every 4K capable Roku device can play H.265 video. This includes the Roku 4 which predates all of the Ultra models. As you stated, the video plays. So there's no issue with the video codec. What your media probably has is one of the lossless audio codecs (Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio). No Roku supports either audio codec, so you won't hear anything from those codecs. 

As to AV1, I have no doubt it's coming. I don't know if it can be supported with a software update, or if it's hardware dependent. The latest Ultra (4800) already has AV1 support in the MP4 and MKV containers.

[Thaum2u]

That's exactly the problem with ROKU, they do not care about this issue obviously. They've known about it for ages and refuse to give us what we need.  I've recommended people buy the Ultra to play their library of movie and TV files, only to be embarrassed because many do not play the audio portion, and the people I recommended the ROKUs to are now pissed at me because of ROKU's lameness.

Why does my ROKU TV play the audio on these files, but not the external players???

[Thaum2u]

Any idea why this is NOT an issue with the same exact files on my Hisense ROKU TV, but no audio on a many other external ROKU devices?

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@atc98092 wrote:

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Every 4K capable Roku device can play H.265 video. This includes the Roku 4 which predates all of the Ultra models. As you stated, the video plays. So there's no issue with the video codec. What your media probably has is one of the lossless audio codecs (Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio). No Roku supports either audio codec, so you won't hear anything from those codecs. 

As to AV1, I have no doubt it's coming. I don't know if it can be supported with a software update, or if it's hardware dependent. The latest Ultra (4800) already has AV1 support in the MP4 and MKV containers.

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[atc98092]

I would have to see the media contents of the file, to see what codecs are in use. Without knowing that, I can only guess. There is a free program called MediaInfo that can provide a list of the contents of almost any media file. You can post the results here, and we can quickly determine if there's an unsupported codec. 

[KostaSIES]

I have more problems first my ultra refuses to play MKV formatted files vi a USB so I purchased a video converter specifically Movavi I am selecting a MP3 or AAC codec but becouse the file has two voice track one in Russian and one in English this time my audio is combining both audio tracks, this getting to complicated for me any suggestions.

Thank you

Kosta

[atc98092]

@KostaSIES MKV is a container, nothing more. If the audio or video codecs within the container are not Roku compatible, then they won't play. Roku supports several different containers (MKV, MP4, MOV, TS/M2TS), but the number of codecs supported is smaller, especially video codecs. I have no information about the converter you're using, but it sounds like it's merging the two audio tracks by mistake. 

[KostaSIES]

Thank you for responding so soon,

I have created a ticket with Movavi about this problem and I am waiting to hear from them.

The problem is they will come back, and they will say they don’t know anything about Roku USB.

And then I am left to try to figure out what is happening by myself, and this is very frustrating.

I have converted about 4 to 5 files and did not have any problem, but I am having a problem with bunch of them now.

I will go back to the files that I have converted successfully and try to see what is different,

And I will let you know.

The funny thing is I can create a short version so I can try to see the qualities of the video and audio and when plays on my desktop via Movavi, window media player, or the regular video player of window 10 played with the correct track (English).

But when I play the same file via the Roku ultra then both tracks were combined.

Then I thought if I take the file that is already converted and plays in English and reconverted hoping only will convert using the English audio track, I was wrong when I try to play it via the Roku the same thing happened.

In conclusion I still believe is a Roku issue.

Will see I will try to get to the bottom of this problem.

Kosta

[atc98092]

There's another free video converter you could try. It's called Handbrake, and it extremely powerful, if a little daunting to use. You can convert the video and audio into any codec you want, you can only copy the audio tracks desired, and all sorts of other tricks. It might take an hour or more to convert your video, depending on the codecs used and your computer power. But it can handle almost anything. 

[KostaSIES]

Unfortunately, that is not a free software ither they only let you do a small file if you want to convert the whole file you have to pay, and that is what happened with Movavi, I don't know how good this software is until I put it through the paces.

I am in a limbo for now until Movavi comes back to me and offer me a solution.

If they don't have one, then I will get my money back and perhaps I will give this software a go.

let's you know what happened.

Kosta