[matthane]

Hi everyone, new Kodi user here.

I recently descended into the rabbit hole of home theaters, 4K Blu-rays, Dolby Vision, and passthrough audio. I quickly learned that my AV receiver and TV don't always play nice, and I found myself making adjustments to audio offsets on a per codec basis. For example, my AVR requires an audio offset of -175ms with Dolby TrueHD content, while only -100ms for DTSHD MA content. Given that by default, Kodi controls audio offsets on a per video (or all video) basis, I found it annoying to constantly have to change the offset based on the movie or TV show I was watching.

Enter Audio Offset Manager...

Audio Offset Manager is a utility addon for Kodi (v20.0+) designed to enhance your viewing experience by providing dynamic audio delay adjustments tailored to the content you're watching. This addon intelligently adjusts the audio offset based on the detected HDR type, audio format, and even FPS value according to user-configured settings.



Features

• Dynamic Audio Offset Application: Automatically sets audio delay based on the HDR type, audio format, and FPS value of the current video, applying user-defined offsets to ensure consistent audio-visual sync without needing repeated manual adjustments.
  
• Active Monitoring Mode: Monitors when users manually adjust audio delay via Kodi's OSD settings, stores those adjustments, and applies them for future playback of similar content. This feature is particularly useful for initial AV calibration, allowing users to fine-tune audio sync and have those settings automatically applied to similar content in the future.
  
• Custom Seek-Backs: Offers user-configurable "seek-back" functionality to rewind a few seconds in specific playback situations to keep audio synchronized, such as:
  • When playback starts or resumes
    
  • When the audio stream changes during playback
    
  • When the audio offset is adjusted
    
  • When the player is unpaused
    
    

This addon streamlines your viewing experience by automating the process of audio delay adjustment, ensuring that once you've configured the appropriate offsets, they are dynamically applied for each type of content.

Supported Formats
Audio Formats

• Dolby TrueHD*
  
• Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3)*
  
• Dolby Digital (AC-3)
  
• DTS-HD MA*
  
• DTS-HD HRA*
  
• DTS (DCA)
  
• Other/PCM
  

*These formats can also contain spatial audio encoding such as Dolby Atmos or DTS:X on top of the base audio format

Video Formats

• Dolby Vision
  
• HDR10
  
• HDR10+ (platform/build specific)
  
• HLG
  
• SDR
  

FPS Types

• 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94, 60
  
  

Installation and Usage

• Download the addon from the Kodi repository in the "Service" category or install it manually from zip file.
  
• Enable the addon in Kodi's addon settings.
  
• Open and briefly play any video to fully initialize and enable all addon settings.
  
• Configure your desired audio offsets for different HDR types, audio formats, and FPS types in the addon settings.
  • Enabling FPS based offsets allows different offsets to be applied and saved based on the FPS of the source video, in addition to the HDR type and audio format, allowing for more fine-tuned control.
    
• If you want to perform initial AV calibration, enable the active monitoring mode in the addon settings. This will allow the addon to learn and store your manual audio offset adjustments for future use.
  
• The addon will run as a background service, automatically applying your configured offsets during playback.
  
  

Compatibility
This addon is designed for Kodi v20.0 and above. It may not function correctly with earlier versions of Kodi.

Contributing and Reporting Issues
Contributions to improve Audio Offset Manager are welcome. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.

Download Audio Offset Manager v1.4.0

[Usabert]

Made an account specifically to thank you.
I went down the rabid hole myself. So happy to see this addon, it will improve the quality of my watching a lot. Will play with it later today.
A good addition to this would be A/V sync clips with specific audio and video codecs. Have been looking for that for some time.

[matthane]

Made an account specifically to thank you.
I went down the rabid hole myself. So happy to see this addon, it will improve the quality of my watching a lot. Will play with it later today.
A good addition to this would be A/V sync clips with specific audio and video codecs. Have been looking for that for some time.

Thank you! In regards to A/V sync clips, the best ones I have found are from the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark (2023) disc. They have the test clips in different HDR and audio codecs. And then I use an iOS app called Catchin' Sync to precisely dial in the exact amount of latency needed for each codec.

[Usabert]

Is there an option to skip the onboarding? I like the idea, but my library is via Emby and to select it, i would need to add servers or copy over videos, which i would prefer not to.

[matthane]

Is there an option to skip the onboarding? I like the idea, but my library is via Emby and to select it, i would need to add servers or copy over videos, which i would prefer not to.

Ah, thanks for the feedback. I can add an override switch. The point of onboarding is to detect if your platform supports the HDR detection methods used to detect HDR10+ and some other HLG content, and if not then it will fallback to generic Kodi method which AFAIK doesn't support HDR10+. The worst thing that would happen would be if you skip onboarding and are on a platform that can't detect HDR10+, then you would still see those settings in the addon but they wouldn't do anything

[matthane]

Due to issues with Kodi caching the settings, it was easier for me to include a small video test file and complete onboarding that way instead of adding an override button. Now, you can simply click to play the test file, or back out and play your own video to finish initialization. New in version 1.2.0.

[Usabert]

Ok, good idea. I'll give it a try tomorrow. I loaded up a sample and the add on seems to be doing everything nicely (1.1.2). It's a life safer, because once you start looking at unsynced lips, the whole show you can't stop looking

[Usabert]

With the active monitoring, do I interpret correctly:
- I am watching a video with HDR10 & Truehd audio --> I adjust -100ms on the audio ==> does this setting get copied to the settings of the addon?

When playing blueray menu's (eg spears & munsil) --> if you use custom seek bars, you can arrive in a loop, since it keeps jumping back in time.

[matthane]

Yes, if you have Active Monitoring enabled, then it will log whatever changes you make to the offset during playback to the settings. So they will stay in sync.

I've actually noticed that the S&M sync videos have strange issues recently... it's unrelated to the addon though. I uninstalled my addon and I still have issues with those videos where I can't even pause and resume them, it gets stuck in a loop. So I think you must be experiencing the same thing. Are you using CoreELEC or the custom CPM build? That's what I'm using, and I think it might be related to some recent versions of that.

[Usabert]

Yes, ative monitoring works as expected, I must have done something wrong the first time.

For me the menu never appeared until i stopped using custom seekbars. But even after it appeared, it was very laggy. Would be nice if someone would make these videos (in a legal way) for the different formats & codecs. Maybe in the future, I will learn to do it myself.
Thank you again for the nice addon

[matthane]

Ok, I'm glad it's working alright for you! I should say that DVD or bluray menu playback is known to have issues in general across Kodi. It's not perfect, so unfortunately it's possible that my addon might conflict somehow with it. I don't use menus myself since on my device they have issues.

I agree with you about getting more AV test videos created that are free to use. The main issue is that Dolby encoding costs a LOT of money. It's relatively cheap to generate Dolby Vision metadata from Davinci Resolve Studio, but if you want to encode the audio formats like Dolby TrueHD, it costs a lot of money and is hard to get access to. I think that's the main reason we don't see free-to-use test videos in every possible format.

[Ozyman]

First, thank you so much for this solution - audio sync has been a nightmare PITA for me, and I'm hoping this solves issues for once and for all!

I had two questions if you don't mind?

1. Do you know when you might get this up in the offical repo, or have an unofficial repo online to make it easier to install and update?

2. Does anyone have any recommendations for downloadable audio/video syncing clips, so I could (in theory) run through each format one at a time, set the sync delay correctly, and be effectively "done"?

[matthane]

I've submitted the addon to the official repo for Kodi Nexus (v20.0) and above a few weeks ago, so I think it should be added soon if approved, or require some modifications if not. Either way, I'm hoping that it will be on the repo for easy download soon.

In terms of AV sync files, it's quite difficult to get files encoded in all formats. The Spears & Munsil UHD Benchmark 2023 disc has the most extensive collection of sync clips, but it's a commercial product that requires purchasing so it's not easily available. But, I think it's the only set of AV sync files I've seen that include Atmos/TrueHD and DTS:X at the same time. That being said, it also depends on which platform of Kodi that you are using. For me, I'm on CoreELEC and we are having some audio sync issues in general that make it hard to even get consistent AV sync across playback, so I think part of the audio offset problem in my case is related to that.

[Ozyman]

Awesome news on submitting to the repo - honestly, I almost think this should just be a core part of Kodi! Thank you again for the solution!

Also, very interested in learning more about the CoreElec audio consistency issue you mention - are there any threads or discussion on it? I'm also using CE on an Ugoos AM6B+ (due to Kodi and CoreElec forum recommendations), and have been trying to calibrate audio delay in a variety of ways. I bought the CatchinSync iOS app after seeing you mention it, as well as the Spears & Munsil UHD Benchmark 2023. The test videos on those discs are great, but even with CatchinSync I find that I can run the same test multiple times and find a reported variance. Really frustrating as I feel like I have almost 100 ms of "slack" either way that I can't resolve.

[matthane]

Thanks, I'm glad it's useful to you!

Ah yes, that sounds like my experience recently. I adjust the offset, but then after any sort of file seeking the offset has totally changed. There is a thread on the CoreELEC forums about the issue where it's being worked on here. Based on the latest replies, I suspect that it will be resolved soon in upcoming nightlies. It didn't seem to be as erratic in the past, so I think it relates to some recent changes.