madFlac - new DirectShow FLAC source filter + decoder

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Ok, I've just tried v1.8... I'm afraid all the files are still different to the originals

For this test, I assume it wouldn't make a difference if I'm still using WAVE_FORMAT_PCM first would it? The files are plain old CD-DA anyway.

[73ChargerFan]

Below are the results of testing madFlac 1.8 on my XP MCE 2005 system,
using a stereo song, length 3:48, encoded by libFLAC 1.2.0 20070715,
& Vorbis tags.

My goal is to get full FLAC support in WMP11 and MCE 2005. I hope
these results can help in some way.


MPC Home Cinema 1.1.0.0:
"runtime" shown on filter properties page correctly

foobar2000 v0.9.5:
Song properties/Properties tab/Duration shows 3:47.600 (10037160 samples)
Sample Rate 44100 Hz, Bitrate 857 kbps
I guess duration is calculated as #samples/44100

dBpoweramp v12.4 by Spoon:
Explorer file properties /Audio Properties tab
shows "Length" as 3:47 & "Bit Rate" as 1,411 kpbs

Explorer detail columns:
"Duration" & "Bit Rate" are blank
"Length" is 3:47 (new column by dBpoweramp)
"Bit Rate" is 1,411 kpbs (CD) (second column named this, by dBpoweramp)

Windows Media Player 11.0.5721.5230, using WMPTagSupportExtender plugin
"Length" is blank
"Bit Rate" is shown as 0
"Release Year" is blank ("Year" & "Release Year" tags are both present)

[madshi]

Originally Posted by 73ChargerFan

Windows Media Player 11.0.5721.5230, using WMPTagSupportExtender plugin
"Length" is blank
"Bit Rate" is shown as 0
"Release Year" is blank ("Year" & "Release Year" tags are both present)

Well, I don't really know where WMP is getting the information from, unfortunately. So I don't know why some information is shown missing by WMP...

[cbemoore]

Originally Posted by madshi

Well, I don't really know where WMP is getting the information from, unfortunately. So I don't know why some information is shown missing by WMP...

WMP gets the information from WMP Tag Support Extender (an open source project to add a number of different file types to WMP). So it looks like that's where the problem lies.

The source code for WMPTSE is available here - does anyone fancy digging around in the code?

Chris

[73ChargerFan]

cbemoore, the author of WMPTSE has said that WMP gets the length from the codec, not from tags, but I really don't know. Thanks for posting a link to the code.

[cbemoore]

Originally Posted by 73ChargerFan

cbemoore, the author of WMPTSE has said that WMP gets the length from the codec, not from tags, but I really don't know. Thanks for posting a link to the code.

Well I've been looking around in the WMPTSE code for the last hour, and I can't see anything obvious. But the code does include the FLAC libraries (in object form, not source code) and the FLAC libraries are over 2 years old!

So I guess a first step could be to recompile WMPTSE with the latest FLAC libraries. Unfortunately I haven't got the development environment on my PC or I'd give it a go myself.

[cbemoore]

I've done some more reading, and the zero length FLAC file issue is a known problem. See this thread started by the WMTSE author:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.p...orum_id=504707

Evidently its a Vista MCE bug, so I wouldn't expect a solution soon!

[monohouse]

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[madshi]

Originally Posted by monohouse

how does it handle 6-channel audio ? does it have a matrix ? or does it just output the first 2 channels if the output is stereo ? there are no options in the decoder

The decoder outputs 6 channels. Downmixing to 2 channels it not supported. I think there are other filters you can connect after madFlac which can do downmixing to 2 channels, e.g. probably ffdShow can do that.

[monohouse]

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[clsid]

Enable "raw audio" in ffdshow and it automatically place itself between the madFLAC filter and the audio renderer.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by monohouse

I heard some rumors that ffdshow's flac decoder only supports 16-bit

It's not a rumour, it's a fact, I believe.

Originally Posted by monohouse

according to what I know about audio engineering, "surround" in all it's forms, is based upon the same principles of "pro logic", ac3 was made to change that a little, the question is to what extent that is being used ?

AC3 and DTS tracks are usually 5.1. That means they really contain 6 separate "discrete" channels. "pro logic" is the poor man's approach to surround.

[monohouse]

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[madshi]

Originally Posted by monohouse

yes, but to what extent do they use it as such ?

Not sure what you mean. You can check every AC3 and DTS track with one of the many tools available for such purpose. E.g. delaycut or eac3to. They will tell you whether the AC3/DTS track has 2.0 channels or 5.1 channels. Most (newer) DVDs have 5.1. Almost all Blu-Ray and HD DVDs have.

Originally Posted by monohouse

while I am at it, do you know if a ASIO/kernel streaming output for MPC exists ?

Reclock is the only one, AFAIK.

[Inventive Software]

I heard some rumors that ffdshow's flac decoder only supports 16-bit

This is due to libavcodec, which hasn't implemented true 24-bit support across all audio formats. When that happens, ffdshow will thus support 24-bit audio properly.

[monohouse]

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[madshi]

If you don't like multichannel audio then that's fine. I agree somewhat when talking about conventional music. But I and most other people do like surround VERY much for movies. It's a whole different atmosphere sitting in the middle of the action (surround) compared to sitting in front of the action (stereo). Of course the movie studios know that many people still have a stereo setup, only. So crucial dialog etc will always be available in the stereo channels. But that doesn't mean that the other channels are worthless. Quite in contrast. The movies are made primarily for the cinema and every good cinema has surround sound. So the movie audiotracks were made mainly with surround sound in mind. If you don't have surround sound you're missing half of "the picture". Of course that's not fully true for all movies. But many movies (especially not too old action movies) do have a lot of action going on in the surround channels.

[monohouse]

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[monohouse]

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[cghebert]

Hi,

Coming over from the eac3to thread as per Madshi's suggestion.

Below is my original post. Behavior seems the same whether I use MadFLAC or the CoreFLAC decoder. Later tonight I can post the filter details (like the post above) if that would help.


Quote:
Originally Posted by cghebert


First time poster but I have been following the thread on and off for a while. I recently got one of the new geforce 8200 motherboards that can send multichannel LPCM over HDMI and have been trying to get it setup properly. I am currently running it in XP SP3. I was able to create a 6 channel FLAC file no problem using eac3, and it plays fine in MPC with madflac. However, for some reason my receiver thinks it is getting a 7.1 channel file, instead of a 5.1 channel file, and the surround right and left channels come out of the surround back right and surround back left channels (I have a 7.1 system), while the surround left and right speakers are silent. All the other speakers (including sub), seem to work fine, except for stuttering, which is most certainly a driver issue, since it happens for all audio tracks.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether this is a another driver issue (quite possibly), or an issue related to how eac3 encodes the tracks. Maybe it is encoding the side surrounds as the back surrounds? This seems unlikely and I can't seem to find any reason why eac3 would, but hopefully someone can chime in and shed some light on the situation.


Madshi: Hmmmm... This may be a bug in madFlac or in the driver. Don't know for sure. It's definitely not a bug in eac3to. Can you please post a report in the madFlac thread?