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View Full Version : Playing Dolby Digital Plus (aka E-AC3) Audio

lavalamp
11th October 2008, 13:45
Hello to everyone, I hope someone out there can put me out of my misery.

For a few days now I've been hunting around trying to find a way to play E-AC3 audio. From what I can tell, I have three codecs installed that should be able to play it:
* libavcodec
* dtsac3source
* built in codec of Nero 7 Showtime 3.10.1.0 with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Video plugin

The utility eac3to can successfully decode E-AC3 audio using the Showtime decoder, and encode it as anything I like, FLAC, WAV, AC3, DTS, whatever. But I would just like to be able to play the actual E-AC3 audio with transcoding it losslessly to FLAC (which would result in huge file sizes) or lossily to AC3 or DTS (which would reduce the quality of the audio).

Nero Showtime (which can natively play E-AC3) does not seem to like playing MKV files. All other players can handle the video, but as soon as I mux in the E-AC3 audio, they change their mind. It's as if I opened the file and immediately paused it.

I have the Combined Community Codec Pack 2008-9-21 installed which uses FFDshow, and I think it's confusing E-AC3 audio for standard AC3, and obviously failing. There is no setting on the audio configuration page to select a filter for E-AC3 audio, and the only options I can select for AC3 are liba52, disabled and S/PDIF.

So basically, my question after all this is, how I can play E-AC3 audio without transcoding it to another format (either beforehand or on-the-fly)?
shon3i
11th October 2008, 18:41
I use Sonic Audio decoder in cooperation with ffdshow Audio decoder, used to downmix and volume. But in ffdshow you must disable support for AC3 because as you said ffdshow confuse AC3 and E-AC3, and you must enable Uncompressed to All Supported
madshi
11th October 2008, 21:57
IIRC the Sonic audio decoder always applies DRC. I'd recommend using the latest ffdshow beta instead. Or maybe you can get the new Nero 9 DirectShow filters to work. I've been told they're no longer limited to Showtime, anymore. You have to manually register them, though (regsvr32).
ACrowley
12th October 2008, 08:14
IIRC the Sonic audio decoder always applies DRC. I'd recommend using the latest ffdshow beta instead. Or maybe you can get the new Nero 9 DirectShow filters to work. I've been told they're no longer limited to Showtime, anymore. You have to manually register them, though (regsvr32).

Nero 9 Decoder applies DRC/Dialonorm too.
Its possible to set DRC insode Showtimeplayer...but not outside showtime in any dshow player...same Problem as with Nero7 Decoder

ffdshow eac3 decoding works great...i suggest to use it
shon3i
12th October 2008, 10:34
Which buld of ffdshow to download, to have E-AC3 support?
madshi
12th October 2008, 10:41
Check out the ffdshow tryouts thread. The E-AC3 support is not in the official tryouts trunk yet. It's still in a separate branch until it's totally tested and stable. Download links can be found in the tryouts thread.
lavalamp
12th October 2008, 12:23
OK, I've tried a few things and these are my results.

Disabling AC3 decoding and then trying to play E-AC3 audio results in the players getting stuck at the start of the file. So I think FFDshow wasn't mixing up AC3 and E-AC3, it's just that the players couldn't find a codec.

I downloaded a trial of Nero 9 Essentials, and in that Showtime does play MKV files, however it does not play the E-AC3 audio. If I open the .eac3 audio file in it though, it plays that fine. Weird.

I tried registering all the relevant audio filters that came with the latest version of Showtime, but the players still said no.

However, then I looked through the FFDshow Tryouts thread and found this (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1193409&postcount=4437). Setting both AC3 and E-AC3 to libavcodec works and I can play the audio just fine! (Except that the audio in Showtime still doesn't work, but I prefer Winamp anyway.)

Thank-you to everybody who replied, it's great that there's such a strong community here. Extreme mega ultra thanks to madshi, eac3to is absolutely brilliant, as is MadFLAC. And of course, thanks to all of the FFDshow developers for such an excellent open source codec package.
azad
16th October 2008, 11:37
@lavalamp
You have to use the latest build to get the correct channel order. Wrong channel order for eac3 audio has been fixed with this version:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1196897#post1196897
lavalamp
16th October 2008, 20:45
Excellent, thanks for the heads up.

I'll keep an eye on that thread so that I can stay up to date.
leeperry
29th October 2008, 05:28
IIRC the Sonic audio decoder always applies DRC.
true, it's very obvious if you compare it to AC3filter.