My understanding is that there are potential problems with frame rates, and certain audio and video codecs still for it to be perfect. I have to admit i didn’t completely understand them, but hoping they are now solved.
Can anyone share any wisdom?
Thanks
Not sure where you get your “understanding” but there are a ton of variables and Infuse handles the vast majority without skipping a beat.
There will always be possible issues since people have different preferences in how they rip their discs but as long as you follow the specifications addressed in Infuse when ripping you should be as good as from the disk.
Two things I would always advise anyone considering Infuse:
Extent to which either of these is an issue depends of course on individual circumstances.
Thanks so much for this.
What is the issue with audio and why is it not playing it with that codec?
What is field interlaced content and what happens?
Infuse does not fully support object-based lossless audio like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Audio will be sent as 7.1 without the Atmos. Otherwise HD audio streams are supported. This is because Apple TV does not support bitstream audio.
I am in the UK so for me interlaced content in my library is primarily 50i.
If the source is something like a modern drama production, then the 50i stream reflects an underlying 25p source and each frame is split into 2 fields, but crucially both fields are from the same moment in time. All the player has to do is weave the fields together and either output at 25p (some Kodi devices can do this via whitelist settings) or at double framerate 50p. Infuse is fine with such content.
The other flavour of 50i is where every field comes from a different moment in time. Standard for live sports, but also a massive amount of TV archive content was captured this way (eg studio video before film effect conversion filters became available for post production). Loads of situation comedies but also dramas as well where interiors were shot on video. Playback of such content requires reconstruction of the original 50Hz motion, i.e. to account for all the fields having been captured at different points in time. None of the deinterlacing filters available with Infuse do this properly, you just get a horrible 25Hz mess in terms of the temporal resolution. As far as I know this is an Infuse issue, not a tvOS issue. All Kodi devices I’ve tried reproduce good 50Hz motion, though some have better filtering than others. If you need to play this type of content then at present Infuse does not give good results. An example here would be the mis-authored Red Dwarf bluray discs, where the publisher screwed up the 50i. Infuse makes all native 50i look like those botched discs (Red Dwarf fans will be very familiar with this publishing problem, fortunately replacement discs were released eventually).