View Full Version : AC3/DTS Woes...
clintshaneh
2008-09-26, 21:26
I've got no ac3/dts passthrough in atlantis beta in any files i play (with digital enabled). They play for a few seconds without sound then freeze the movie. Everything functions as normal (menus etc) while the movie remains frozen.
I found a link to an older release... rev13589 and tried it and passthrough works fine on that one.
Log from atlantis:http://pastebin.com/m51d76cb1
clintshaneh
2008-09-26, 21:34
thats rev13859 i mean.
treefour
2008-09-27, 01:52
Same problem can be found here http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37783 and how it was fixed........
clintshaneh
2008-09-27, 05:07
Yea, I read that post and a few others. I'm running xp sp3 and have no hdmi ports. Videos play fine if i use analog but I'd much prefer to use 5.1.
I've tried removing/uninstalling the drivers, reverting to older drivers, updating to newer drivers, and a full OS reinstall and the problem remains with the newer versions of XBMC, but as i said the ancient revision I found has the spdif passthrough working perfectly.
Being that I can load up rev13589 and everything works perfect and then launch the atlantis beta and its broke again, I don't think its something wrong with my system/drivers. I'd have to think it's something that has changed in XBMC.
clintshaneh
2008-09-27, 05:10
BTW, I have tried alpha4 as well with the same result.
Anyone have links to the previous builds? I'll keep trying them until i can pinpoint which build broke the passthrough for my system. (sound is AD1980/Soundmax Cadenza).
clintshaneh
2008-09-29, 16:23
Well, I've now tried:
Not working:
Rev15653plus-lowcpu_patch
Atlantis Beta 1
Atlantis Alpha 4
Atlantis Alpha 3
Rev 14676
Working:
Rev 14125
Rev 13859
So something must have changed between rev14125 and rev14676 that broke 5.1 passthrough with my setup. Any devs that can shed some light on this?
Where can one get Rev 14125, I want to try it on my current system where XBMC throughput isn't working. (It's working in directshow-players with ac3filter).
Also ive found in other applications that if the soundcard is not selected as main output, throughput will not work.
TheJaff2
2008-09-30, 13:49
Hmm yeah this sounds exactly like what Im experiencing and started a thread about this morning: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=38138
clintshaneh
2008-09-30, 17:26
I found links to old revisions using forum search and google. Try that.
Hmm...I've had no problems using dts. Works fine for me.
travisbell
2008-10-04, 15:30
When I enabled AC3/DTS passthrough I get the same behavior with the latest versions of XBMC. When I get home I will try and post a debug log.
TheJaff2
2008-10-07, 11:24
Any word on this being fixed in Beta 2? The problem in a nutshell is that digital audio passthrough is not working for some (alot? of) people in XBMC even though it is working in Windows in general (in my case with PowerDVD for example).
With those two builds, does digital passthrough work in Vista, or is it XP only? I ask, because on XP, I could use AC3Filter to pass through. Since I upgraded to Vista, AC3Filter is no longer able to pass through SPDIF.
IncrediClint
2008-10-07, 16:28
Yes it does work in vista as well.
Odd, I just took a crappy $50 pcchips motherboard that had no SPDIF built in, but did have an internal header for spdif... ripped a optical spdif out of an old DVD player and wired it to the header to use the spdif passthrough.
Installed xp, xbmc, fired it up and enabled digital and I get full 5.1 passthrough in xbmc no problem.
Odd that spdif passthrough works in xbmc for this crappy mobo but not on my better systems.
So ... passthrough works with:
xp MCE sp3, VIA HD audio vt1708a chipset
NOT with:
xp mce sp3, soundmax cadenza AD1980 or
vista ultimate sp1, realtek HD audio
strange behavior methinks.
Any word on this being fixed in Beta 2? The problem in a nutshell is that digital audio passthrough is not working for some (alot? of) people in XBMC even though it is working in Windows in general (in my case with PowerDVD for example).
Again, as written in other threads already. I don't own such an equipment to do further testing. Together with the fact that atm I'm the only developer for windows specific things I don't see a great chance that this will be solved until Atlantis.
Any help from a windows dev is highly appreciated.
TheJaff2
2008-10-07, 23:00
Nope, no go for beta 2 either.
WiSo, I'll be willing to test stuff for you with my setup, send you log output or whatever..
(Have I understood it correctly that XBMC is completely stand-alone when it comes to A/V codecs? So it doesnt matter whatever codec packs or whatever I have installed on my systems (ffdshow for example) with their respective configurations etc? As long as digital out is enabled for my soundcard as well as in XBMC it should just work, right?)
EDIT: Hmm, just to clarify: the only cable I have from my soundcard is a coax spdif and this works for stereo sources in XBMC, but this kind of passthrough is the work of the sound driver I assume? AC3 5.1 / DTS sources is the problem...
treefour
2008-10-08, 14:26
Just thought I would chime in and say that I get AC3\DTS pass through with vista. I had a bit of trouble with it at first, it seemed to be conflicting with the HDMI driver. Once I disabled the HDMI driver, it worked (still does after upgrading to beta 2) like a charm.
IBeIzPepe
2008-10-20, 01:15
Just thought I would chime in and say that I get AC3\DTS pass through with vista. I had a bit of trouble with it at first, it seemed to be conflicting with the HDMI driver. Once I disabled the HDMI driver, it worked (still does after upgrading to beta 2) like a charm.
Hey treefour. You saved the day, great suggestion! I had the same issue, meaning I hooked up the SPDIF cable from my onboard RealTek HD audio and selected Digital pass through in XBMC the result was no audio for movies and the movie stopped playing after a few seconds.
I read your reply and disabled the HDMI audio source in the "Sound" section of the Control Panel in Vista and wham! That worked. I now had perfect DD audio through the receiver.
Unfortunately along with this I also got jittery video playback. Specifically, the video (an XViD file in this case) would play for 3-4 seconds then "jump", then play, then jump. The weird thing is that I let it play for about 5 minutes and the jitter disappeared! I know that software, no matter how great it is (like XBMC) doesn't just fix itself, so it would be great to see what is causing/solving this jitter. It shouldn't have anything to do with selecting Digital vs. Analog audio, I know this, but the jitter problem only showed up after I selected Digital.
KateZoid
2008-10-26, 01:13
Hi,
I have a Trust 514dx with optical output, which I have used with Mediaportal in XP and Vista for AC3/DTS output to my receiver. I installed XBMC and much prefer its style and interface - but as above the digital out does not work for me - video playback halts after a few seconds, with no sound at all. Disable digital out, and everythings fine, if analog and only 2-channel!
I decided to do a reinstall of the OS, and did a dual boot Vista/XP. Vista with the same soundcard etc - the digital out works fine. Its interesting ofcourse that Vista supports digital out audio directly which may be an obvious factor.
I would use Vista as a base for XBMC were it not for another problem in Vista - for some reason my Phillips HD screen does not like 1080p from the PC (ATI 2600HD) so I use 1080i, but when firing up XBMC it changes to 1080p, with a slightly reduced image size within the frame. I can select any screen res from the XBMC settings, but no "i" type mode works, they're all "p" in reality.
Rock / Hard place lol
I have a AC3 only decoder. Using ac3filter and selecting only AC3 capable receiver will transcode the dts to AC3. Is there any way to achieve the same thing in XBMC?
Disabling HDMI worked here too.
Thanks Lads!
bonapartyparty
2008-10-27, 23:12
Disabling HDMI did the trick for me as well!
Now I can sell my Xbox... make room... get a life..
(Do I even have HDMI? I don't think so)
treefour
2008-10-28, 05:16
Unfortunately along with this I also got jittery video playback. Specifically, the video (an XViD file in this case) would play for 3-4 seconds then "jump", then play, then jump. The weird thing is that I let it play for about 5 minutes and the jitter disappeared! I know that software, no matter how great it is (like XBMC) doesn't just fix itself, so it would be great to see what is causing/solving this jitter. It shouldn't have anything to do with selecting Digital vs. Analog audio, I know this, but the jitter problem only showed up after I selected Digital.
Glad to hear you got the audio sorted, as for the jittery playback, if you are using beta2 try adding the new ffmpeg libraries found here http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=38726&page=4 it fixed the stuttering for me.
Hope this helps
Cheers
I'm using Atlantis 8.10 in Windows XP SP3 and i can't get it to work, i can't get 5.1 sound through digital output. I'm reading here about AC3Codec and i can see that it's installed into system/players/paplayer do i need to do anything else that i'm missing?
regards,
How do you disable the HDMI driver?
How do you disable the HDMI driver?
I didn't find anything like that, so I just disabled everything but the s/pdif I wanted to use in playback devices. (right click on the sound icon on the start bar.)
Worked like a treat =)
Hi Darre (are you the same Darre from MediaPortal forums??), anyway, are you talking about setting up using Windows Vista, isn't it? I can't find any simmilar option using Windows XP, so i can't get 5.1 sound to work as expected.
kind regards,