No audio support for HEIC format?
Hi,
I have imported HEIC files from iOS into Immich. With web app, selecting on of them display a static image at first (OK). When clicking on the "Play Motion Photo" button, video stream is played - but there is no audio with it.
- Immich 1.139.3
- Vanilla transcoding settings
- Browsers: Firefox ESR / Chromium
- OS: Debian 12/13
-
libavcodec61 and heif-gdk-pixbuf installed, also ffmpeg
- Other played video files like .mov or mp4 in Immich web app have no audio issues on said system
- In contrast mobile (iOS, Android app and web version) works.
- macOS desktop audio does work in Safari, but not work in Firefox
This is a HEIC multimedia codec issue especially for desktop systems, it seems?
My question is: What multimedia codecs am I missing or what do I need to do in order to also have audio played with HEIC files (Debian/Firefox)?
Thanks very much for any clues.12 Replies
:wave: Hey @metzi00,
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If this ticket can be closed you can use the /close command, and re-open it later if needed.More details:
-
podman compose logs -f doesn't show anything (related), while playing video file.
- container status is fine per podman ps -a.
- External library is used
- Immich upload from iOS currently is not utilized yet
- W/o reverse proxy usage does not change anything.
- docker-compose.yml: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/download/v1.139.3/docker-compose.ymlThere is no such thing as "HEIC" audio, it is a container format and has both an audio and a video codec.
If your audio codec is set to not transcode and your browser/computer does not support it, you won't hear anything. 🙂
So start off with your transcode settings, specifically audio @metzi00
https://my.immich.app/admin/system-settings?isOpen=video-transcoding+transcoding-policy
Makes sense 🙂 sorry, being not too deep into mac ecosystem incl. HEIC.
Attached are transcoding settings.
Not sure about audio codec "PCM (16 bit").
Not re-transcoding PCM might be the culprit here for a Debian system.
ffprobe shows pcm_s16le as audio stream format for the .heic's corresponding .mov file.
And PCM (as well as HEVC) apparentely does not have built-in support with Debian. The motion video is still shown in the web app, as Immich transcodes HEVC per default.
So I guess the solution is either to
- try GStreamer plugins for PCM audio support (client side)
- re-transcode PCM, unchecking that option (server side)
By chance: Is there an Immich UI option or job to re-trigger transcoding of a single file, to test things out?
"Refresh metadata" in "..." of selected image did not work for me.Videos, except for the live photos ones, have a "Refresh encoded video" option at th bottom @metzi00
pcm is a pretty widely accepted standard though, so I would try to see if there's a codec for that first 🤔
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/librust-symphonia-codec-pcm-dev
apparently firefox only supports pcm in webrtc, not in a video container like mp4 or mov
damn it firefox
Thanks for the info about "Refresh encoded video"!
Puhh, I've 80gb of
(direct opening of
encoded_video atm. Is there an Immich CLI tool, that can be limited by file extension .mov or similar? Otherwise I probably need to bite the bullet.
With "pcm is a pretty widely accepted standard" I don't disagree, but it seems it is not widely supported as raw audio stream by Debian/Firefox (also what serveral AI tools tell). On test machine Fedora didn't play audio either. There might be a limitation of Firefox on top, which doesn't make use of all OS codecs - e.g. on macOS same issue appears for this browser, whereas Safari is happy to play everything. But Chromium also had its issues, this doesn't make understanding easier 😁
A quick test with
showed, it's PCM audio limitation for sure. aac_file.mov can be be played in Firefox with Immich web app(direct opening of
.mov still doesn't work, as OS doesn't support video codec hevc)
With HEIC being a popular Apple format and Linux being supported and on rise, does it make sense to disable "PCM (16 bit)" option as default, so it gets re-coded?there’s no cli tool for that. it is possible to make the db “forget” about those mov transcodes with a sql command though if you’re willing to fiddle with that.
Hm ... hard decision 😛
I don't feel comfortable enough to interfere with Immich's fast pace development. I guess, just re-transcoding everything then
up to you!
the assumption with allowing pcm by default was that it was supported across browsers. maybe it’s better to uncheck it by default
Jep, I also think this would be a good idea