Dolby Digital 5.1 Help

[Underfunded]

I have SageTV 6 running on XPPro with a Chaintech AV-710 sound card hooked up to my Pioneer Receiver through a toslink cable.

The windows sound works fine and I even hear sound in Sage, however when watching DVD's it will not switch to Dolby Digital, it stays in prologic mode.

What is the best method, or any method, to get this setup to work as dolby digital when watching dvd's?

Thank you,
Ian.

[stanger89]

What decoders are you using? Are they configured for S/PDIF passthrough?

[Underfunded]

I have the NVidia Purevideo Platinum decoder and it is set for S/PDIF passthrough. The audio is working fine, just not giving me Dolby Digital DTS. I can use any decoder that you recommend though.

[stanger89]

So you've got Connected To: "A Receiver" and "Via an S/PDIF cable" selected?

Do you have the nVidia decoder selected in Sage?

FWIW, that's what I use and it works great.

[SHS]

Besure sagetv is in standby mode, try using GraphEdit or Radlight Filter Manager find the NVIDIA Audio Decoder under DirectShow load the Property Page.

[Underfunded]

OK. I just checked some settings. I have the video using Purevideo, the audio is set to the Via Envy24 (soundcard). I did check the Purevideo settings and they are set like you showed in the pictures. I did not see an option to choose purevideo specificly for audio within sage.

[stanger89]

You skipped a few settings there, in Sage, there are four configuration items for playback (well actually eight).

Video Decoder (which you say is PureVideo)
Video Renderer (you don't list, but won't affect the audio anyway)
Audio Decoder (you don't specify, this should be nVidia)
Audio Renderer (you've got the soundcard selected).

That's 4, 8 comes from those settings are duplicated for video and DVD separately.

[Underfunded]

Sorry for the delay, I got tied up with work for a couple days. OK. Here is where I am at:
Ignoring the Video side (because that is coming from a traditional CATV coaxile and won't be DD anyways), here are the DVD section settings:
Video Decoder: Default (but I verified that the default is the Purevideo)
Video Renderer: VMR9 (not sure but I think this is a good setting)
Audio Decoder: Nvidia Audio Decoder (however, I do not get a bitrate reading through the purevideo audio settings when audio is playing like I do through the video settings when video is playing, so I am not sure if this is the purevideo decoder, or if it is the nvidia audio decoder associated with my Nvidia DualTV tuner card. The only choices I have under this option are Default, MPEG Audio Decoder, NVIDIA Audio Decoder, SageTV MPEG Audio Decoder. So i think i have the correct setting)
Audio Renderer: I haveset this to default now to test, but can choose a few different choices, none of which are purevideo related.

What suggestions do you have?

Would screenshots help?

Thank you again.
Ian.

Originally Posted by stanger89

You skipped a few settings there, in Sage, there are four configuration items for playback (well actually eight).

Video Decoder (which you say is PureVideo)
Video Renderer (you don't list, but won't affect the audio anyway)
Audio Decoder (you don't specify, this should be nVidia)
Audio Renderer (you've got the soundcard selected).

That's 4, 8 comes from those settings are duplicated for video and DVD separately.

[stanger89]

Sounds about right. You're playing DVDs not VOBs right? Because I think vobs will use the MPEG settings.

Have you tried other Audio Renderers (specifically Directshow or Waveout)? There have been some reports that that fixes passthrough.

[taltman]

I recently had a similar problem. I solved it by doing the following:

1) Updated Audio driver to the latest version - had to find realtek AC97 reference driver which fixed some Dolby Digital toslink problems when playing back dvd's in sage. My shuttle driver was dated back to 2004, the realtek driver was last updated in 2006.

2) removed, rebooted and reinstalled latest Purevideo driver/codecs

3) Tested a dvd with another DVD software package (DD works over toslink!)

4) Changed Sage Audio Decoder to Nvidia, and tried directshow, and sound card for Audio Renderer.

Try #3 and see if it works. If so then you know your sage config needs changing. If #3 does not work then something else might be at fault.

/Tal

[emok]

I didn't see this mentioned yet, but it might be worth asking:

Is your DVD source set to output in 5.1? There are some DVDs that default to 2.1.

Your settings do sound correct.

[emok]

BTW, I had sound issues before as well.

I'm not an expert, but I was able to resolve them after much jiggering by:

1. uninstalling AC3Filter (was installed by the sage installer)
2. manually unregistering the intervideo audio codec that was randomly installed on my machine by the STB firewire driver installation.

The troubleshooting tool I used was windows media player. I'd use it to play a DVD and check the audio properties page to determine which codec it would use. (probably not the best way to do it). I finally got it to bring up the nvidia audio page properly and since then it has worked for me.

I know, Sage lets you choose the audio codec, but that didn't seem to work for me.

[Underfunded]

I would like to thank you all for your help.
After installing WinDVD I was able to get DD to work through that program. Once I verified that I could indeed get it to work I changed some settings in my soundcard properties and was able to get DD to work through SageDVD.

Thank you all again for your help.
Ian.