Atmos Experiences, Frustrations and a Plea for Help

[AYanguas]

As I keep all my music audio and concert vids and docs in one directory and Kodi doesn't make that possible.

This is one folder/files navigation restriction that we have also with Oppo.

I clasify my library by Group/album and inside a Group folder I can find different albums in different formats. CD stereo, DVD, Bluray, Atmos files MP4, etc.
When navigating through an artist across his albums, if you find a different format, you have to navigate up... enter again by music instead of Video (or viceversa) and navigate down again.
You can override this using the Oppo App with his navigation, but then the 'remote' and the 'app' dont 'sync' and you may be stucked.

But with DUNE, and I guess other similar players you have no such restriction and you just enter a single top hierarchy. When hit a file the Player uses the needed program to decode the format found.

 

[omnipotent1]

That is true, Kodi needs to know on a directory level if the contents should be treated as music, movies or TV shows, because the Kodi library is organized that way.

That depends on the hardware and OS Kodi is running on. E.g. on my RPi 4 it works without problems.

Well it's only DTS-HD audio files on mkv rips that play fine from my A-500 all other DTS HD/MA movie files play fine via Kodi.

 

[quoddiophile]

I was able to replicate the issue, and I am almost certain its because you dont have pass-through enabled in Kodi. I disabled pass-through on Kodi and experienced the same bug. The first track plays, however not in pass-through, it played an Atmos M4A in 7.1, and then rapidly skips the remains tracks on the album after track 1 finishes.

For good measure as well, I make sure to disable Dolby processing completely on the Shield settings. Settings > Device Preferences > Display & Sound > Advanced Sound Settings > Surround Sound. Disable Dolby Audio Processing, Available formats set to "Auto".

You are correct. For some reason, I had forgotten to check that passthrough setting in Kodi. I guess that comes from installing and reinstalling the app several times in the wee hours of the morning. The Shield settings were alright. Thanks for this.

 

[quoddiophile]

I’ve been using Kodi for more than three years now, and it works beautifully with M4a and MKA Atmos files. It’s a matter of getting used to the tagging required by Kodi to playback the files correctly. Once you get to that point, I think it’s the only solution at the moment that will play Atmos, as well as 5.1, quad and stereo without issues.

But how does one find out how to properly do the tagging required by Kodi? For whatever reason, I can't seem to find anything that explains this.

 

[quoddiophile]

The Oppo 203 is the preferred player for me, followed by a Dune.
Regarding gapless and sound lost the first seconds, I decided that the best ripping method should be to get an ISO image of the BD, to be able to play it exactly the same as with the physical disc. Oppo could need jailbreaking but Dune plays natively the ISO image, with all menus and the like.

I then do not have individual tracks collection, but albums collection. I don't need 'jukebox' fancy apps with covers and the like, as I'm listener of full albums.

With respect to individual files to be played by the Oppo I have found the following:

- The artwork jpg file does not display when it is big size. I do not know the limit, but I use to keep the size below 1MB. If the JPG is bigger than that, just open it with a picture editor and take an screen capture and save it to JPG. This result in a lower than 1MB file. And remember to delete old big artwork files in metadata if they are there. I cannot confirm now if this apply to all sort of files MP4, MKV, FLAC, stereo, etc. or only to Oppo or Dune.

- Oppo does not play M4A files. But just rename the file to MP4 and Oppo will play it.

See my recent post in the MMH thread. Will renaming the M4A files to MP4: a) Preserve the tagging b) Playback in the original Atmos sound? Also, is there a way to do a batch rename of the extensions? My experimentation as well as a very recent post on the topic suggests that there isn't. It looks like I will have to bite the bullet and do the renames one file at a time.

 

[quoddiophile]

The Oppo 203 is the preferred player for me, followed by a Dune.
Regarding gapless and sound lost the first seconds, I decided that the best ripping method should be to get an ISO image of the BD, to be able to play it exactly the same as with the physical disc. Oppo could need jailbreaking but Dune plays natively the ISO image, with all menus and the like.

I then do not have individual tracks collection, but albums collection. I don't need 'jukebox' fancy apps with covers and the like, as I'm listener of full albums.

With respect to individual files to be played by the Oppo I have found the following:

- The artwork jpg file does not display when it is big size. I do not know the limit, but I use to keep the size below 1MB. If the JPG is bigger than that, just open it with a picture editor and take an screen capture and save it to JPG. This result in a lower than 1MB file. And remember to delete old big artwork files in metadata if they are there. I cannot confirm now if this apply to all sort of files MP4, MKV, FLAC, stereo, etc. or only to Oppo or Dune.

- Oppo does not play M4A files. But just rename the file to MP4 and Oppo will play it.

I forgot to mention that the Matroska specs for a portrait size picture are 600 pixels for the shortest size (i.e. 600 X 800 would work but not 700 X 800) and the name has to be "cover". I will have to experiment to see how fussy the Oppo is for the pixel sizes.

 

[quoddiophile]

I also use Kodi to play m4a Atmos files. They play fine. I tag them with tagscanner

Although probably a stupid question on my part, I am assuming that the workflow is create MKV files with MakeMKV, extract the files to M4a using MMH and then tag using (in your case) tagscanner. It looks like my wonderful MusiChi tagger will work as well.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Although probably a stupid question on my part, I am assuming that the workflow is create MKV files with MakeMKV, extract the files to M4a using MMH and then tag using (in your case) tagscanner. It looks like my wonderful MusiChi tagger will work as well.

Yep that's how I do it. The only weird thing I've noticed during playback is the track timer in Kodi round at what must be at least 5x the normal speed. It doesn't affect the audio, so it's not a big deal.

I also can't apply replay gain tags to the audio. So there is a volume adjustment needed now and then.

 

[AYanguas]

See my recent post in the MMH thread. Will renaming the M4A files to MP4: a) Preserve the tagging b) Playback in the original Atmos sound? Also, is there a way to do a batch rename of the extensions? My experimentation as well as a very recent post on the topic suggests that there isn't. It looks like I will have to bite the bullet and do the renames one file at a time.

I do the rename of all files (tracks of a single album) just with CMD command:
REN *.m4a *.MP4

This works with previous CD (change dir) to the album folder.

If you want to batch rename all files from different folders, I think a special script should have to be done for that. I did not check recursivity for a folder tree.

When I look for this kind of programming scripts I use to ask ChatGPT, and It has helped me a lot.

 

[quoddiophile]

I do the rename of all files (tracks of a single album) just with CMD command:
REN *.m4a *.MP4

This works with previous CD (change dir) to the album folder.

If you want to batch rename all files from different folders, I think a special script should have to be done for that. I did not check recursivity for a folder tree.

When I look for this kind of programming scripts I use to ask ChatGPT, and It has helped me a lot.

I tried your method on one folder and it doesn't work for me at least. The screen display is:

C:\Users\aquar>cd c:\Test
c:\Test>REN *.m4a *.MP4
The syntax of the command is incorrect.

The two files were named Test 1.m4a and Test 2.m4a

 

[AYanguas]

I tried your method on one folder and it doesn't work for me at least. The screen display is:

C:\Users\aquar>cd c:\Test
c:\Test>REN *.m4a *.MP4
The syntax of the command is incorrect.

The two files were named Test 1.m4a and Test 2.m4a

It works for me.

I assume you are in Windows, and the CMD command REN exists.

Try the command REN/? to see the help file for the command. To get something like:

G:\Test>ren/?
Renames a file or files.

RENAME [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.
REN [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.

Note that you cannot specify a new drive or path for your destination file.

 

[pat bateman]

But how does one find out how to properly do the tagging required by Kodi? For whatever reason, I can't seem to find anything that explains this.

I believe the answer is, if you want to use .mka files, you need to make a .cue file for Kodi to properly read the tags, and I believe this fixes gapless playback as well. I’m fuzzy on it, because I just converted all to .m4a and use conventional tagging, as it’s the much simpler solution IMO.

 

[kcrimson]

Here is my cheat sheet for making gapless, single file albums in Atmos for kodi. I copied much of it from another post on QQ.
Ripping ATMOS Gapless Files For Kodi

1) Rip MKV from Blu-ray
2) Convert MKV to MKA using MKVtoolnix (remove video stream)
3) Create cue file from MKA using MMH (MMH: How to Create CUE files for MKV files)
4) Remove chapters and tags in MKVtoolnix from MKA file
5) Convert mka to m4a file via MMH "Extract Audio From MKV" (this takes a while for big files, be patient)
6) adjust file name (mka to m4a) in previously created cue file, adjust milliseconds for all titles in file to "000" as Kodi seems to have a problem with the exact time in milliseconds.
7) Place m4a file, cue file and optional "folder.jpg" with album art in same directory and import in KODI

 

[quoddiophile]

It works for me.

View attachment 98082

I assume you are in Windows, and the CMD command REN exists.

Try the command REN/? to see the help file for the command. To get something like:

G:\Test>ren/?
Renames a file or files.

RENAME [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.
REN [drive:][path]filename1 filename2.

Note that you cannot specify a new drive or path for your destination file.

I tried renaming a single file using the above syntax and that worked. However, when using the wildcards it doesn't. This is a real puzzler. Oh, and I did make sure I had administrator permission when I opened the command prompt. I did run across that post again form October 22 saying that it did not work. I wonder if it has something to do with the Windows 10 build I am using.

 

[Albert Dagger]

Here is my cheat sheet for making gapless, single file albums in Atmos for kodi. I copied much of it from another post on QQ.
Ripping ATMOS Gapless Files For Kodi

1) Rip MKV from Blu-ray
2) Convert MKV to MKA using MKVtoolnix (remove video stream)
3) Create cue file from MKA using MMH (MMH: How to Create CUE files for MKV files)
4) Remove chapters and tags in MKVtoolnix from MKA file
5) Convert mka to m4a file via MMH "Extract Audio From MKV" (this takes a while for big files, be patient)
6) adjust file name (mka to m4a) in previously created cue file, adjust milliseconds for all titles in file to "000" as Kodi seems to have a problem with the exact time in milliseconds.
7) Place m4a file, cue file and optional "folder.jpg" with album art in same directory and import in KODI

You can convert milliseconds to frames, therefore 00. I can't remember if it's 60 frames per second though.

 

[Albert Dagger]

But how does one find out how to properly do the tagging required by Kodi? For whatever reason, I can't seem to find anything that explains this.

See post 33, that's a good start. I'm pretty sure there is another thread around that is specifically about Kodi. I can't remember the title, though.
For Atmos mixes, I use single m4a files when I don't need gapless playback. I use dBPowerAmp to do the tagging or Music Media Helper. It's important you use both Artist and Album Artist tags.
For Atmos mixes that require gapless playback, I extrack an MKA from the MKV and use a separate CUE sheet created with MMH. You need to convert milliseconds to frames in the cue sheet, and also the name of the file in the cuesheet (which is no longer an MKV but an MKA).

 

[madscot]

Here is my cheat sheet for making gapless, single file albums in Atmos for kodi. I copied much of it from another post on QQ.
Ripping ATMOS Gapless Files For Kodi

1) Rip MKV from Blu-ray
2) Convert MKV to MKA using MKVtoolnix (remove video stream)
3) Create cue file from MKA using MMH (MMH: How to Create CUE files for MKV files)
4) Remove chapters and tags in MKVtoolnix from MKA file
5) Convert mka to m4a file via MMH "Extract Audio From MKV" (this takes a while for big files, be patient)
6) adjust file name (mka to m4a) in previously created cue file, adjust milliseconds for all titles in file to "000" as Kodi seems to have a problem with the exact time in milliseconds.
7) Place m4a file, cue file and optional "folder.jpg" with album art in same directory and import in KODI

WOW, all this to avoid putting a blu ray disc into your player, i’m glad i’m old lol

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

WOW, all this to avoid putting a blu ray disc into your player, i’m glad i’m old lol

I'm about to turn 62... But as I've been backing up and storing disc based media for years I'm used to the various processes now

 

[Albert Dagger]

WOW, all this to avoid putting a blu ray disc into your player, i’m glad i’m old lol

It has little to do with age; it’s mainly convenience and a backup option as well. I love being able to switch from one Atmos song to another, and from one album to another with one click. It also gives me peace of mind knowing that all my discs are backed up somewhere, and in my case they are also on the cloud, so they come with me wherever I go.

The only way to keep this organised is to rip CDs and Blu-ray Discs as soon as you buy them; it’s a bit of work but totally worth it.

 

[AYanguas]

It has little to do with age; it’s mainly convenience and a backup option as well. I love being able to switch from one Atmos song to another, and from one album to another with one click. It also gives me peace of mind knowing that all my discs are backed up somewhere, and in my case they are also on the cloud, so they come with me wherever I go.

The only way to keep this organised is to rip CDs and Blu-ray Discs as soon as you buy them; it’s a bit of work but totally worth it.

I do the same.

It is also part of the hobby