ffdshow tryout project : HD audio discussion

[bgibson8708]

ok I could really use some help. I'm trying to play We Are Marshall (dolby TrueHD). I get it to say Input: Dolby TrueHD (bitstream) and output: HDMI (1402). However it won't connect to my receiver. I have a Sony DH800. No lights come on, no noises made. This only happens when I uncheck Dolby Digital as an option, if I dont it plays that. I think when I mess around with it, I can get it to say LPCM on my receiver and it is 5.1 which leads me to believe it is TrueHD and its just not saying it, but im not sure.

Could someone please help me. btw, I'm using the latest build of FFdshow with the settings recomended a few pages ago. The only thing is MPC renderer isnt an option for me for output. I've tried all the different renderers though. I've even registered the MPC renderer and chose Null and it usually uses MPC renderer. But still won't connect to receiver.

And yes, all other audio works fine going into my receiver over HDMI.

THanks

[SamuriHL]

Um, what hardware are you trying to do this on? That makes a very big difference in how to help. :)

[bgibson8708]

Um, what hardware are you trying to do this on? That makes a very big difference in how to help. :)

I list all the fine details I can but leave out one of the most important lol. Im using a 5770.

[Andy o]

I'll be testing my 4670, btw. Posting logs as the first task...

[SamuriHL]

I list all the fine details I can but leave out one of the most important lol. Im using a 5770.

Do you have PDVD9? And what OS is this? 32 or 64 bit? I know, so many questions, but, it matters. I'm wondering if you're having an EDID issue with the receiver. The 9.12 driver should be out tomorrow (I hope) but I've read we need a hotfix to go with it that'll fix the EDID issue. You can go on AVSForum and search for Tulli's EDID override if you wish. I'm not sure if that's the problem, however. It's just one idea. Also have you tried the new realtek HDMI driver?

[rica]

It works for THD and DTSHD on both PDVD9 and ffdshow 54.

Working Renderers with ffdshow:

Default Directsound Device,
Default Waveout Device,
MPC Audio Renderer,
Realtek HDMI Output.



Tests have been made on 7/64 with 5770.

But none of those renderers works on Vista with ffdshow via Realtek. PDVD9 works on the other hand. (THD, DTSHD)

[SamuriHL]

Tests have been made on 7/64 with 5770.

But none of those renderers works on Vista via Realtek with ffdshow. PDVD9 works on the other hand. (THD, DTSHD)

Can you use the dump tool and log it for albain? Maybe he can figure out why PDVD9 works and maybe fix up ffdshow to handle the realtek driver in that case. It's worth a shot anyway, no?

[rica]

I never have had any log from PDVD since it crashes at the beginning (before streaming starts) even i use PDVD Cinema mode.

[SamuriHL]

Damn. That sucks. :( That might have been useful.

[rica]

I still wonder how seb can do this?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1352619#post1352619

My test results:

Vista= negative
Seven= negative.

[SamuriHL]

Maybe. It would be nice to get it working on as many configurations as possible. I'm still amazed and impressed how far albain has come so far. Just incredible.

[rica]

I'm still amazed and impressed how far albain has come so far. Just incredible.

Impossible has beeen succeeded by albain:
"blind SW development"; crazy :)

[SamuriHL]

Impossible has beeen succeeded by albain:
"blind SW development"; crazy :)

That's quite a skill. :)

[rica]

"skill" word is insufficent to me :)

[whurlston]

I still wonder how seb can do this?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1352619#post1352619

My test results:

Vista= negative
Seven= negative.

Same here. PDVD crashes for me every time.

[bgibson8708]

Do you have PDVD9? And what OS is this? 32 or 64 bit? I know, so many questions, but, it matters. I'm wondering if you're having an EDID issue with the receiver. The 9.12 driver should be out tomorrow (I hope) but I've read we need a hotfix to go with it that'll fix the EDID issue. You can go on AVSForum and search for Tulli's EDID override if you wish. I'm not sure if that's the problem, however. It's just one idea. Also have you tried the new realtek HDMI driver?

I don't have PDVD9, i did before I upgraded to Windows 7 64x. I had the new build of PDVD that was suppose to support bitstream on ATI 5xxx but it didnt work for me. I am using the latest realtek driver. I will try to see if it is an EDID problem. Thanks for the suggestion. I will let you know if that helps.
Thanks again, you and albain have done an amazing job on this project.

[SamuriHL]

If the PDVD9 build didn't work, it's likely an EDID issue. That should be easily fixed. I hope it helps!

[nightfly]

A little update from a Xonar user...

THD continues to be the only problematic format. DTS-HD with Beta 54 has worked flawlessly; no fast forward/reverse issue, always good sound levels; quickly "syncs" with my Denon 988.

I can get every THD title to play if I start from the beginning and/or restart MPC-HC. I have to pause the playback to ensure I won't drop audio when moving forward or backward during playback. Sometimes audio levels seem really low. I can post logs if anyone cares to look.

I sometimes (20%) have similar issues with DD as with THD as far as requiring a restart to get playback to work ok with audio. No issues fwd/rev. DTS plays back like DTS-HD, flawlessly.

LPCM is decoded and plays back @ 16bit - always. I have to set the Win 7 32 bit playback device to "Asus Speakers" to have it work normally.

Using Arcsoft TMT3 audio renderer; DXVA video filters; MPC MPEG Splitter.

Upgraded my Xonar to fw 1.11 and driver .1775 and it made no difference in any of my tests for audio. However, it did make a huge difference in managing the hdmi state/edid/sync - very smooth now.

[rngDeadEye]

How about this idea (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1350135&postcount=126)?

BTW to play M2TS files with the 7MC internal player, A Quick Guide to Playing M2TS in WMP12/7MC (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16951614#post16951614) is a must read. :)

I've followed all the guides I can find to play .m2ts files in 7MC no no avail. The registry keys in that link can't be updated on my system because they are either in use or locked down somehow. Shame really as I got MediaBrowser working properly last night and it's quite nice.

I ran regedit as admin but no joy.

Can I ask a question?

If you get GraphStudio to render a file properly by messing with the filters, can you force this filter configuration on the rest of the system?

[THX-UltraII]

I ve been away for two weeks on this topic. What is the status of bitstreaming support for the 4xxx-series?

[mark0077]

Hi, I have been following thread, great stuff. So a quick question, I am using XONAR HDAV Deluxe 1.3 with analog speakers. Can I use bitstreaming, to allow my Xonar to decode DTS-MA and TrueHD, because as I understand, mpc-hc can't do either at 100% possible quality at the moment?

Or is this work limited to those with a purely digital setup.

[Andy o]

Bitstreaming anything only applies to a digital connection (SPDIF or HDMI usually). The Xonar doesn't do the decoding, either. And full quality TrueHD decoding has been possible with ffdshow for some time now.

[Andy o]

I ve been away for two weeks on this topic. What is the status of bitstreaming support for the 4xxx-series?

It's getting interesting, actually. Out of the blue came the new 2.39 Realtek drivers which to our surprise showed TrueHD, DTS-HD and DD+ as supported formats with the 4000 series. Bitstreaming doesn't work though.

I myself will be posting logs later. I didn't have time to set everything up yesterday.

[kkozma]

The guys on avs seem confident that bitstreaming doesn't work with the 4XXX cards because windows incorrectly reports that it doesn't support hdcp. So for those testing this, are you using anydvd to remove the hdcp requirement?

[SamuriHL]

They'd have to be. There's no way to play anything that hasn't been decrypted. There's no such thing as "removing HDCP'.

[Andy o]

The 5000 series also "don't support HDCP" with the Realtek driver, but they bitstream anyway, without AnyDVD.

[kkozma]

I guess remove wasn't the right word but you know what I meant. :p

That's why I'm still ticked that the realtek driver is junk for XP because XP correctly reports hdcp support for the 4k cards. Evidently the problem I have is common.

[SamuriHL]

I did know what you meant, yes, but, I made that distinction for those that aren't clear on it. Because there's this perception out there still that HDCP is some "thing" to be removed. I'm constantly fighting that perception on the SlySoft forum.

As for the issue, yea, Andy's right. The 5xxx cards also "don't support HDCP" yet work fine for bitstreaming with AnyDVD disabled. (ewww, who'd DO that?? :D) Something else with the 4xxx cards must be going on. Whurlston's logs look fine so the driver is accepting the bitstream data types, but then things go wrong. Not sure if that can be fixed or not. I guess we'll have to see what albain says about it.

I need to go look and see if 9.12 got released yet.

[nightfly]

Bitstreaming anything only applies to a digital connection (SPDIF or HDMI usually). The Xonar doesn't do the decoding, either. And full quality TrueHD decoding has been possible with ffdshow for some time now.



Nope. You can set Windows PB devices to "speakers" and still bitstream HD formats on the Xonar- you just won't be able to bitstream DD/DTS. This isn't a ffdshow limitation - it's the same way with the TMT3 player.

[SamuriHL]

Nope. You can set Windows PB devices to "speakers" and still bitstream HD formats on the Xonar- you just won't be able to bitstream DD/DTS. This isn't a ffdshow limitation - it's the same way with the TMT3 player.

SIGH. You can NOT bitstream over analog. Period. Anything sent analog MUST be decoded first. That is not bitstreaming. That's what Andy was saying. Setting the Xonar to "speakers" is not the same as using analog output.

[whurlston]

The guys on avs seem confident that bitstreaming doesn't work with the 4XXX cards because windows incorrectly reports that it doesn't support hdcp. So for those testing this, are you using anydvd to remove the hdcp requirement?

Yeah, Andy is right. The 5xxx also reports "HDCP: not supported" so that isn't the issue. Oh, and the guys at AVS: same guys here. ;) I'm the only one with a different handle (vladd on AVS).

[Browncoat]

Windows report "HDCP not supported" for my Auzen too. But in nvidia drivers i see my AVR model and note "HDCP supported". So you shoudn't care about what windows reports.

[tetsuo55]

Here is the result of my 4770 trying to play test_7.1_dts-hd_hr.m2ts

http://www.pastebin.org/66090

[SamuriHL]

Here is the result of my 4770 trying to play test_7.1_dts-hd_hr.m2ts

http://www.pastebin.org/66090

Another log that looks good in theory. The driver accepted it, looks like it was bitstreaming properly, etc. But you get static/no audio?

[Andy o]

Nope. You can set Windows PB devices to "speakers" and still bitstream HD formats on the Xonar- you just won't be able to bitstream DD/DTS. This isn't a ffdshow limitation - it's the same way with the TMT3 player.

Besides what Samuri clarified above, when I tried the Xonar (I'm pretty sure it still is that way), the actual HDMI device was hidden from Windows, and the "Speakers" device routed the LPCM stream either to the actual HDMI device (still digital connection through and through) or to the analog device, at which point you are no longer bitstreaming anything.

[tetsuo55]

Another log that looks good in theory. The driver accepted it, looks like it was bitstreaming properly, etc. But you get static/no audio?yeah only bips and bleeps

[SamuriHL]

yeah only bips and bleeps

That sucks. I hope someone has some ideas on this. There's no reason it shouldn't work now that the driver is accepting the media types.

[albain]

Hi,

I don't know why the driver would accept HD types on a radeon 4xxx, maybe they removed the checks that's all but it does not mean that bitstream can work

We have the proof that the PAP is not required (neither HDCP for video) to make it work on the radeon 5xxx because all the streams we send are without protection.

Where did you see that HD bitstream could work ?
I don't see why they would have released a driver *just for us* because no commercial players would play unprotected HD content

[SamuriHL]

The new realtek driver that was just released is different than the ATI driver. And this new driver, if you look at the logs posted by the 4xxx people, seem to accept the HD audio types and SEEM to be bitstreaming. I.E. the logs look identical to a proper bitstreaming on a 5xxx card. Thoughts?

[madshi]

There's no reason it shouldn't work now that the driver is accepting the media types.
Yes, there is a reason: The hardware doesn't support it. Well, we don't know for sure, but that has been my guess (and I've been saying so) all the time.

@albain, could you please check out this post, you seem to have missed it:

http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1353100&postcount=413

[SamuriHL]

Yes, there is a reason: The hardware doesn't support it. Well, we don't know for sure, but that has been my guess (and I've been saying so) all the time.


I know and you may be right. I just think it's worth the effort to look at, no? Now that the driver at least accepts it...it's a change in the status quo. You are probably right that it may never workm but, we should try to find out for sure.

[madshi]

I know and you may be right. I just think it's worth the effort to look at, no? Now that the driver at least accepts it...it's a change in the status quo. You are probably right that it may never workm but, we should try to find out for sure.
If there is hope we should go for it. But what can we do if none of the commercial apps can successfully bitstream with 4xxx and if the driver seems to accept our bitstream just fine? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the ffdshow bitstream. I think if the 4xxx hardware unexpectedly is able to bitstream HD audio after all, our only hope is that a future driver will make it work. I don't think there's anything that needs to be (or could be) changed in ffdshow right now. After all it works with 5xxx. It would be extremely weird, if the driver would need a different bitstream format for 4xxx hardware compared to 5xxx hardware! So I think we should just keep trying all new drivers. Maybe a future driver will suddenly work. Or not.

Of course the situation would be different if one of the commercial apps were able to bitstream with 4xxx. In that case we could find out how they do it and replicate their behaviour.

[SamuriHL]

If there is hope we should go for it. But what can we do if none of the commercial apps can successfully bitstream with 4xxx and if the driver seems to accept our bitstream just fine? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the ffdshow bitstream. I think if the 4xxx hardware unexpectedly is able to bitstream HD audio after all, our only hope is that a future driver will make it work. I don't think there's anything that needs to be (or could be) changed in ffdshow right now. After all it works with 5xxx. It would be extremely weird, if the driver would need a different bitstream format for 4xxx hardware compared to 5xxx hardware! So I think we should just keep trying all new drivers. Maybe a future driver will suddenly work. Or not.

Of course the situation would be different if one of the commercial apps were able to bitstream with 4xxx. In that case we could find out how they do it and replicate their behaviour.

Point well taken. sigh. I was trying to fight for the 4xxx people. Hey, lazy 4xxx people, get a damn 5xxx card! :p LOL :D

[tetsuo55]

according to the specs i could find all the ati cards are using the same chip.
Different revisions of that chip, but they all supported all formats from day 1.

The limitations are imposed by the hdmi encoder.

i found this in the 4xx0 specs:
"maximum supported audio stream bandwidth is 6.144 Mbps"

That means there is a hard limit there, anything lower should work.

[SamuriHL]

according to the specs i could find all the ati cards are using the same chip.
Different revisions of that chip, but they all supported all formats from day 1.

The limitations are imposed by the hdmi encoder.

i found this in the 4xx0 specs:
"maximum supported audio stream bandwidth is 6.144 Mbps"

That means there is a hard limit there, anything lower should work.

That information has been shown to be nonsense. You can do much higher LPCM tracks than that on 4xxx cards, for example.

[whurlston]

If there is hope we should go for it. But what can we do if none of the commercial apps can successfully bitstream with 4xxx and if the driver seems to accept our bitstream just fine? There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the ffdshow bitstream. I think if the 4xxx hardware unexpectedly is able to bitstream HD audio after all, our only hope is that a future driver will make it work. I don't think there's anything that needs to be (or could be) changed in ffdshow right now. After all it works with 5xxx. It would be extremely weird, if the driver would need a different bitstream format for 4xxx hardware compared to 5xxx hardware! So I think we should just keep trying all new drivers. Maybe a future driver will suddenly work. Or not.

Of course the situation would be different if one of the commercial apps were able to bitstream with 4xxx. In that case we could find out how they do it and replicate their behaviour.We were actually able to get the AVR to recognise TrueHD from the beta 9 build with the 4xxx series but at the time the stream was not being built properly: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1332800#post1332800

I don't have albain's original MPC renderer build anymore so I haven't been able to recreate the results to find out the media structure that was used. Maybe mrcorbo sill has it?

Edit: Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm chasing ghosts here.

[SamuriHL]

Cat 9.12 is out now.

EDIT: HDMI driver is still the same as 9.11. No change for that. Going back to realtek.

[albain]

Yes, there is a reason: The hardware doesn't support it. Well, we don't know for sure, but that has been my guess (and I've been saying so) all the time.

@albain, could you please check out this post, you seem to have missed it:

http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1353100&postcount=413

Yes I missed it

I don't really know about the clock : the existing code I grabbed was a directsound renderer based on MS samples.

I will check on this

Are you experiencing loss of sync ?

[albain]

We were actually able to get the AVR to recognise TrueHD from the beta 9 build with the 4xxx series but at the time the stream was not being built properly: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1332800#post1332800

I don't have albain's original MPC renderer build anymore so I haven't been able to recreate the results to find out the media structure that was used. Maybe mrcorbo sill has it?

Edit: Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm chasing ghosts here.

The MPC renderer didn't change much since the beginning (well it depends from when) : I adapted the buffers size on the stream type, and implemented dynamic change of format. I don't have the original builds of it but someone committed for me the first working code of the MPC renderer in MPC subversion

[nlnl]

albain
And where we can download new MPC audio renderer?