Help with multi channel AC3 playback

[kauffmbe]

I have a few ac3 divx's and have tried to play them back with software decoding in Zoom Player through my C-Media 6 channel card. Unfortunalely the multi channel outputs on the intervideo audio decoder that I got from the ac3 pack on this site are greyed out. Additionally I tried the cinemaster DS audio and power dvd 4 xp filters in graphedit and the channel selector menus or buttons were also greyed out. However if I play the avi in power DVD itself, then I can enable the 4 or 6 channel modes and they do work successfully. My question is why can I not set multi channel audio from the various filter property settings themselves? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. This also occurrs when trying do SW playback multichannel AC3 from DVDs in Zoom as well!

[BlackSun]

Read the guides

[kauffmbe]

I have read ALL of the guides for this- thanks for the oh so helpful answer! And your supposed ac3 friendly software STILL could only do two channel decoding.

Anyway, I did manage to get it to work by using a different winDVD audio filter from a friends CD which was the multi channel version. None of the ac3 packs or audiofilter packs available on this site allow multichannel output. This still doesn't explain why none of the channel or processing options from power DVD can be done from the filters only. I'm assuming they must make use of some dll within the program, but it would be nice if this could be done from ZP.

[señor pantalones]

kauffmbe...

you seem to be having similar problems to me. i'm trying to get multichannel output from my ac3/avi's but i've had very little sucsess. i'm using sb live with a 4.1 speaker system (in other words i don't have hardware to decode ac3)... supposedly that shouldn't be a problem since the filters from power dvd 4 should output ac3 to 4 channels - but it hasn't for me... not with the filters that i got from doom9 either. i'm doing this under win2k and starting to wonder if that has anything to do with it...

i'll try with windvd tonight and see if that doesn't fix my problems...

[kauffmbe]

Make sure you get the multi-channel version of winDVD 3.0. The filters have the same name so you can't tell until you register and use it if it is the right one. I am using XP, so I really don't know if it will work in win2k, but theoretically it should be the same. I have been playing with this a little more and it does work fine now. I am getting all 5 discrete channels. I don't have a sub, so I can't comment on the LFE channel. Good luck!

[señor pantalones]

i installed the windvd multichannel version, and lo and behold i am starting to get some encouraging results... not in windvd though - using bsplayer with the intervideo filters... what really surprised me, though, was that i got the closest thing to 4 channel sound with the s/pdif option, and the center speaker mixed in with the two front...

i thought that without an external decoder my speakers wouldn't know what to do with the signal... i'm wondering if my sb live 5.1 card is helping out with things. i didn't think it did any decoding, that it only passed the signal through ... and if it is processing, what is happening with the lfe (?) signal... is that getting mixed too, or is it being handled by the subwoofer?

anyhow - i seem to be heading in the right direction now...

thanks for the windvd tip.