tvos 14.5 audio synch (computers/itune server)
Since moving to TVOS 14.5 and a TV 4k I am having audio issues with some of my itunes server video files (so through the "computers" app). I still haven't pegged exactly what is causing the issues. I've tried every single possible audio setting on the TV (auto, stereo, 5.1. 16 bit vs auto, loudness reduction vs not, etc.). Including moving the one Apple TV to a different physical TV to check it. Still the issues (I have not tried using optical output yet though, but I will be soon).
All impacted files seem to be HEVC, but the vast majority of HEVC movies and TV shows I have on my iTunes server are NOT impacted. All files, but impacted and not use AAC audio. Some stereo, some 5.1. A couple files impacted had audio 5.1 and between 192 and 384kbps encoded. Some that are stereo and 128kbps and 5.1 128kbps are also impacted.
What is happening is the audio is falling out of synch and relatively quickly. Some are faster than others and you can notice the audio is out of synch within just a minute of watching and 3-5 minutes in the audio is a good 3-4 seconds ahead of the video. Some take 2-3 minutes before you can start to notice and might only be a second or so ahead of the video by 3-5 minutes.
All of them the audio cuts out completely after watching for around 7-10 minutes.
Pausing the video and resuming doesn't fix it. Scrubing/faster forward or backward a small amount fixes the audio synch, but it falls out of synch faster usually. It also fixes the no audio, but it cuts out in just a minute or two then if it had already stopped.
If you exit to the menu and then resume the video it is completely fixed. Until it falls out of synch again in a minute and gets progressively worse.
Also of note, some of the videos the audio also has quiets popping sounds in it, but not all effected videos.
I haven't tracked down one of my older H.264 encoded videos yet to see if they are impacted (almost all AAC higher bit rate stereo encoded).
Some of the stereo AAC sources that were impacted, I did a quick recode for file and changed the audio source to AAC 5.1, no change to bit rate and it works fine. Some of the 5.1 impacted files I've tried re-encoding the audio to 128Kbps AAC 5.1 and they are still impacted. Sometimes re-encoding it a couple of times and magically it works. I've been playing with trying AAC (FDK) (my default for everything) and AAC (lav). I haven't noticed yet if there is a pattern, but I think AAC (lav) is more often working.
To be clear, my other two Apple TV 4k are on TVOS14.4 and do NOT have this issue. Nor have any had this issue on any previous TVOS versions for any of these files.
I'd really rather not have to go through my entire library of ~600 or so movies and 30 odd TV shows I've ripped from blu-rays to try to figure out which ones are broken and which ones aren't and try to re-encode the audio until I can get it to work. For now the "broken" Apple TV got moved to the room where that TV is only used for Netflix and Disney+ (no streaming service seems impacted).
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am honestly intensely frustrated with the entire TVOS 14 track with all of the audio issues Apple has had. Somewhere around 14.1 or 14.2 they broke 5.1 sound in Computer (iTunes server streaming) where you HAD to set the audio output to stereo. If you had it on auto for a 5.1 source or just set to 5.1 playback wouldn't work flat out. The video would freeze trying to load. Occasionally I could get it to work by scrubbing in to the video a little, but 9 out of 10 times it was just broken. Resuming an already started video worked, but anything from the beginning was just broken. They DID finally fix that with 14.5. But now this with the broken audio synch in certain videos (and no clue which ones!!!! At least if I could identify anything in common I could track down which files I might need to re-encode).
