Channel mapping in SageTVPlayer

[drpixel]

I've discovered an issue on my home theater setup where I have a 5.1 surround sound system running. When I try to playback my .mp4 files that have been encoded by Nero 7, the channels are mapped incorrectly. My center channel sound comes out of the left front speaker, and other speakers seem shifted around as well. I've seen several sites claim that this is a problem with mplayer (FAAD library specifically).

There is a workaround where you can re-map the channels to their correct positions and this works quite well. I've added a tag like so:

extra_mplayer_args=-channels 6 -af channels=6:5:0:4:2:0:4:2:1:1:3:3

This swaps the channels to their correct position for MP4 files, however because this is a global setting, it's messing up the already correct settings for my other file types. The right rear channel gets the center channel audio, etc. Does anyone know if there is a way to specify these options per file type, or by file extension? It would solve my problems if there was such a mechanism.

[drpixel]

I found a fix for mplayer that solves this issue. It's posted in an mplayer list discussion here: http://lists.zerezo.com/mplayer-dev-eng/msg06885.html

I've downloaded and installed the mplayer source and compiled this on my own box after patching and it does indeed fix the issue. The center channel is now mapped correctly and also the 2 channel downmixed sound is louder because the proper channels are being used. I've attached the patched files to this post so hopefully it will be easier for your developers to include should they choose to do so (or they can apply the patch from the list posting like I did)

I tried to replace SageTVPlayer.exe with the new mplayer.exe by renaming it and it doesn't seem to play. I'm guessing you guys have added something to your version of mplayer, or you are passing in some switches that are not compatible with this version of mplayer.

For those interested, MPEG4 playback looks much better in mplayer than by using the regular directshow player. I'm sure a properly tuned and tweaked FFDShow with postprocessing looks better, but for the average, or newbie user, mplayer has a lot of bang for the buck so to speak.

I'm hopeful you guys can get this patched and choose to make it available soon! I'm looking forward to watching movies out in the living room without having to setup a ton of filters!