LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[e-t172]

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

I have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to Windows Audio. Probably because I suffered through TMT3's evolution of decoding. And have seen numerous problems with PDVD's channel mapping over the years, as well. Is that a Windows Audio problem? Not entirely, but, it certainly didn't help matters. For me I want it simple...decode audio, send decoded audio *AS IS* to the receiver. I trust my Pio. I don't trust Windows.

It's true that the audio engine in XP had serious problems. However they rewrote the whole thing since Vista. It does all processing in 32-bit float, with a sampling rate of your choosing. It won't resample if it doesn't need to, and when it does, I've never heard anyone complain about its quality. It does proper dithering when converting to integer (according to the Microsoft blogs from the people who actually developed the thing). And I've yet to see proof that the new audio engine was/is responsible for any channel mapping or downmixing issues. In fact, I'm not aware of any issue, past or present, with the Vista audio engine, except maybe from gamers who don't like the fact Microsoft ditched all hardware processing capabilities (which we don't care about).

I'm not sure why TMT's audio processing, or your receiver's, would be more "trustable" than the Windows Audio engine.

[Budtz]

How do I get the ArcSoft DTS decoder. Can i get that separatly or do i get it by installing their player: TotalMedia Theatre 5?
And will LAV audio support DTS-HD on its own someday?

[jmone]

If you want to use the Arcsoft decoder you should buy TMT5. There is a TMT5 trail that you could download that would include the file for testing etc. LAV Audio will not be able to nativly decode DTS-HD till it is supported by the ffmpeg project and given the spec has not ever been relased publically it may be some time.

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by e-t172

It's true that the audio engine in XP had serious problems. However they rewrote the whole thing since Vista. It does all processing in 32-bit float, with a sampling rate of your choosing. It won't resample if it doesn't need to, and when it does, I've never heard anyone complain about its quality. It does proper dithering when converting to integer (according to the Microsoft blogs from the people who actually developed the thing). And I've yet to see proof that the new audio engine was/is responsible for any channel mapping or downmixing issues. In fact, I'm not aware of any issue, past or present, with the Vista audio engine, except maybe from gamers who don't like the fact Microsoft ditched all hardware processing capabilities (which we don't care about).

I'm not sure why TMT's audio processing, or your receiver's, would be more "trustable" than the Windows Audio engine.

Again, my distrust of these things is from past experience. Where the problem lies, I don't care. What I know is that if I simply decode and send that directly to the receiver without manipulation, I get perfect sound. Equivalent to bitstreaming...all channels mapped correctly, no resampling, etc. LAV Audio gives me this experience when I use a renderer that can use exclusive mode to bypass Windows Audio. It's probably true that Windows Audio itself is fine, but, that the drivers from AMD and nVidia have caused a lot of the problems I've dealt with in the past. Also buggy decoders which we beat on ArcSoft to fix. So the situation today is FAR different from when I first got into this game. I just prefer the audio to be as untouched as possible. Even if it does perfect resampling and channel mapping, why? If I don't need that to be done, why do it? For those that DO need downmixing, maybe doing it in Windows Audio is a good solution. I do it through ffdshow audio processor on my laptop. Nonetheless, LAV Audio gives me EXACTLY what I want from a decoder. Unmolested decoded audio. That's it.

[Andy o]

Originally Posted by e-t172

And I've yet to see proof that the new audio engine was/is responsible for any channel mapping or downmixing issues.

With all the 7.1 audio devices I've tried (Ati 4000, 5000, Nvidia Gtx460 and 9200mGS, Intel G35, 3 C-Media chipsets, various onboard), when your player sends 5.1 audio and the Windows mixer is set to 7.1, Windows sends the surrounds to the back surrounds, and keeps the sides silent, when it should do the opposite, according to Dolby literature, and pretty much every HDMI receiver out there.

[Mark_A_W]

Originally Posted by Andy o

With all the 7.1 audio devices I've tried (Ati 4000, 5000, Nvidia Gtx460 and 9200mGS, Intel G35, 3 C-Media chipsets, various onboard), when your player sends 5.1 audio and the Windows mixer is set to 7.1, Windows sends the surrounds to the back surrounds, and keeps the sides silent, when it should do the opposite, according to Dolby literature, and pretty much every HDMI receiver out there.

Does this with my Xonar too. IMO Windows gets this wrong. Consistently wrong, but wrong all the same.

Luckily, some helpful bugger put me onto the hidden DPLIIx in the soundcard drivers

[andyvt]

Originally Posted by Andy o

With all the 7.1 audio devices I've tried (Ati 4000, 5000, Nvidia Gtx460 and 9200mGS, Intel G35, 3 C-Media chipsets, various onboard), when your player sends 5.1 audio and the Windows mixer is set to 7.1, Windows sends the surrounds to the back surrounds, and keeps the sides silent, when it should do the opposite, according to Dolby literature, and pretty much every HDMI receiver out there.

Check your NVIDIA card again w/ 270.61.

[Andy o]

It's not the 7.1 surround channel swap that plagued Nvidia HDMI devices at least twice (they actually shipped broke, fixed it, broke it again, and fixed it again, last time I checked). It's a different issue that happens with 5.1 output by the player into Windows set at 7.1. When playing 7.1 content, all channels are OK.

Actually, because of the channel swap bug, with those broken Nvidia drivers you'd not get the effect of this bug on 5.1, but with 7.1 obviously the surround sies/backs would be swapped.

[betaking]

Hi is this a lav filters bug? lav filtsers mpeg and mpegts can not connect coreaac ffdshow(lpcm) and ffdshow aac (libfaad2) ffdshow ac3(liba52)! use ffdshow ac3(libavcodec) ffdshow aac(libavcodec) and use ac3filter (LPCM)no problem! and use other ts filter no problem too!

[DrNein]

Originally Posted by joeydrunk

Off topic but what is the purpose if the portable data file?

Portable creates the configuration files under the XBMC folder rather than Users. So it is just a preference and affects where to place the playercorefactory.xml edited for MPC-HC:

wiki.xbmc.org

To customize playback behaviour, users need to create an extra playercorefactory.xml file inside their "\UserData\" folder.

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by VipZ

Is there any negative aspect to run the debug builds most of the time?

Its a bit slower, otherwise should pretty much be the same.
The logfile shouldn't grow excessively, as like i said its cleared every launch. After watching a few hours of a movie, it might still be quite large, however.

[Carpo]

Originally Posted by DrNein

MPC-HC + madVR + LAV + ArcSoft or CyberLink + XBMC =
to gabest, madshi, nevcairiel, and other developers.

Indeed, now i have it all working in xbmc (windows media center sucks!!!), i am reconsidering my move to a linux/mythtv setup

Just have to see how the current windows setup handles eac3

[andyvt]

Originally Posted by Andy o

It's not the 7.1 surround channel swap that plagued Nvidia HDMI devices at least twice (they actually shipped broke, fixed it, broke it again, and fixed it again, last time I checked). It's a different issue that happens with 5.1 output by the player into Windows set at 7.1. When playing 7.1 content, all channels are OK.

Actually, because of the channel swap bug, with those broken Nvidia drivers you'd not get the effect of this bug on 5.1, but with 7.1 obviously the surround sies/backs would be swapped.

the current driver doesn't push l/r surrounds to the l/r rear surrounds when playing 5.1 on a 7.1 system

[Carpo]

After more tests i can play dts-hd files as it defaults back to core dts, but no such luck with truehd, unless I've not set it right, suppose it will save me having to re-encode all those blurays with eac3/truehd (until i can afford a new receiver)

Still at least using lav i have been able to remove ffdshow

[SamuriHL]

Decode TrueHD to PCM.

[Carpo]

How would i do that with Lav, looking at it now, but i must be missing something

[nevcairiel]

Just don't enable Bitstreaming for TrueHD, and it'll be decoded.

[Carpo]

tried that and it still squeaks at me, wonder if its because im trying to play the .truehd file directly, will mux it and see

edit: yes muxing it works, just have to change receiver to DD PLII Movie otherwise it just shows stero, suppose its bearable till i can afford a HD receiver

Now i just have to decide if i want to redo them all and at what crf

[SamuriHL]

If it shows stereo that's what your Windows Audio is set to output. Try setting Windows Audio to 5.1.

[Carpo]

Using dfault windows drivers on windows 7 as asus hasnt updated them for my board, and i dont have any spare slots to put the audigy card i had back in here Looks like windows is only going to let me have 2 channels or spdif, will see if i can hunt down some drivers for another board with are supposed to be compatible and see what happens with them