No AC3 Filter for MKV files

[technazz]

Anybody know why when I play a MVK file (with dd5.1) ac3filter doesnt work? I dont get my DD5.1 flag on my receiver with a MKV file. I do with a XVID/MPEG2 with DD5.1. Look at my sig for specs.

Thx

Technazz

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by technazz

Anybody know why when I play a MVK file (with dd5.1) ac3filter doesnt work? I dont get my DD5.1 flag on my receiver with a MKV file. I do with a XVID/MPEG2 with DD5.1. Look at my sig for specs.

Thx

Technazz

Have you disabled DTS passthrough within AC3 config settings?

[talbot3]

Are you sure you are not decoding with the internal sagetvplayer? Even if you have set mpeg 4 to use directshow, MKV containers are still decoded with the internal player. You can however set the internal player to output ac3 over spdif or you can set sagetv to always use directshow for playback in the property file.

change the following to use directshow decoding filters:
always_use_dshow_player=true

change these to make sage internal player output ac3 over spdif:
extra_mplayer_args=-afm hwac3
mplayer/audio_renderer=win32

[aperry]

So, I tried these settings, and while it seemed to even out the sound, I've lost the video for MKV files. The only way to get it back I've found is to change the always_use_dshow_player value to false, but then my sound gets soft again.

Any ideas?

[Shield]

Originally Posted by aperry

So, I tried these settings, and while it seemed to even out the sound, I've lost the video for MKV files. The only way to get it back I've found is to change the always_use_dshow_player value to false, but then my sound gets soft again.

Any ideas?

Use the coreavc decoder if you have it.

[technazz]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Have you disabled DTS passthrough within AC3 config settings?

Yes I do.

Originally Posted by talbot3t

Are you sure you are not decoding with the internal sagetvplayer? Even if you have set mpeg 4 to use directshow, MKV containers are still decoded with the internal player. You can however set the internal player to output ac3 over spdif or you can set sagetv to always use directshow for playback in the property file.

I have MPEG4 set to Directshow. I can see video fine as I'm using AVC 1.6 decoders. That setting seems confusing, I would assume use direct show would mean use directshow? No?

Originally Posted by talbot3t

change the following to use directshow decoding filters:
always_use_dshow_player=true

change these to make sage internal player output ac3 over spdif:
extra_mplayer_args=-afm hwac3
mplayer/audio_renderer=win32

Ill give this a try tonight.

Thx

Technazz

[talbot3]

The mpeg4 setting is ignored for some containers such as MKV which is why you will need to set the always_use_dshow=true if you want to use directshow for playback. Can you play the MKV file with graphedit? Do you have a directshow decoder for mpeg4 avc such as coreavc, cyberlink, or ffdshow? Do you have a mkv splitter such as haali installed? Are the decoder merits correctly set up? If you do not see any video most likely you have a decoder filter issue. Try playing the files in a directshow player like graphedit and see what happens.

Did you try changing the mplayer settings? That should force sagetvplayer to output ac3 and dts over spdif. If you want mplayer to decode to 6 channels instead of passing the bitstream set:

extra_mplayer_args=-channels 6

If you are not interested in mplayer spdif passthru, you can leave the render set to directsound.

EDIT: Most of these comments are not meant for the OP, but for APERRY who jumped in with a question.

[aperry]

Thanks talbot3 for the help. I tried playing the video through graphedit and it worked fine, but gives no picture in SageTV. Haali is installed, most recent version. Graphedit showed ffdshow for the video portion, ac3 filter for the audio portion.

I did try changing the sound settings like originally specified above, and it did boost the sound, but the AC3 filter icon did not show in the task bar. The settings were these:

extra_mplayer_args=-afm hwac3
mplayer/audio_renderer=win32

[talbot3]

If there is no AC3 filter icon showing and the mplayer arguments changed something, then the files are being decoded with mplayer (sagetvplayer.exe). Are you using the overlay render? If you are make sure that the overlay color keying is enabled.

Have you tried setting:
always_use_dshowplayer=true

This will completely bypass mplayer and should give you the same playback as graphedit.

[aperry]

I do use the overlay renderer (vmr9 looks too "washed out" to me). I'll check the overlay color keying thing you mentioned.

And yes, I did try setting the always-use option to true (making sure to exit Sage completely first), that's when I lost the video. Maybe a reboot? Maybe not since I'm pretty sure I tried that already with no changes.

Truth be known, I'd be fine using the mplayer/sagetvplayer option if I could get the AC3 filter thing to show during mkv playback, so that I could boost the sound level. Or get it working using the non-mplayer option. Don't care, just want a nice picture and sound levels that don't make me have to turn it up so much that I get hiss out of my stereo, and risk blowing up my speakers with the loud sound when I forget to turn it back down before playing something else...

[talbot3]

I do not think there is anyway to attach the ac3filter to mplayer playback so you will never see the AC3 filter icon when using sagetvplayer.exe for playback. Your best bet is to try to get the directshow player to show the video. If graphedit can playback the video files, I do not know why sagetv's directshow player does not output video.

edit: Does the ffdshow icon appear next to the ac3filter when setting always_use_dshowplayer=true? Try using another mpeg4 avc decoder such as coreavc or cyberlink.

[lobosrul]

You must set "always_use_dshowplayer=true" on your sagetv-client config. You will need Haali media splitter, and an h.264 decoder (ffdshow or CoreAVC for example).

[aperry]

Well, I have no idea what happened. I changed the always_use_dshow_player to true in my sage.properties file again, saved it, and it's working now. Totally confused why it started working when I just repeated exactly what I did in the past.

Either way, I have the ffdShow icon showing up in addition to the AC3 Filter icon when I'm playing mkv's. Only the AC3 Filter one for AVI's.

[technazz]

I finally changed mine and MKV's play properly with AVC 1.6 and the AC3Filter. Now my sound is at the same level for my MKV;s

Thanks

Technazz

[vinny]

Is it "always_use_dshow_player"

or

"always_use_dshowplayer"

I'm trying to use ffdshow, ac3filter and hali with an mp4 video. I have set the mpeg4 renderer to be DirectShow, and tried both setting above, but it still appears to use mplayer, because I don't get any of the tray icons showing up. I have run the mp4 in graphedit with hali->ffdshow->ac3filter and it works fine. Anyone know why it it's still using mplayer?

[technazz]

Originally Posted by vinny

Is it "always_use_dshow_player"

or

"always_use_dshowplayer"

I'm trying to use ffdshow, ac3filter and hali with an mp4 video. I have set the mpeg4 renderer to be DirectShow, and tried both setting above, but it still appears to use mplayer, because I don't get any of the tray icons showing up. I have run the mp4 in graphedit with hali->ffdshow->ac3filter and it works fine. Anyone know why it it's still using mplayer?

always_use_dshow_player=true

[lcddream]

I have the same problem, the only difference is I still can't get sage to pass ac3 sound.

I have the following settings:

extra_mplayer_args=-afm hwac3
mplayer/audio_renderer=win32
always_use_dshowplayer=true

Outside of sage in zoomplayer for instance, the ac3 gets sent to ac3filter fine. In sage not even the ac3filter icon comes up.

In graph edit the rendered file shows the sound path as being file>ac3filter>directsound

any ideas? im tearing my hair out with this!

[talbot3]

Originally Posted by lcddream

I have the same problem, the only difference is I still can't get sage to pass ac3 sound.

I have the following settings:

extra_mplayer_args=-afm hwac3
mplayer/audio_renderer=win32
always_use_dshowplayer=true

Outside of sage in zoomplayer for instance, the ac3 gets sent to ac3filter fine. In sage not even the ac3filter icon comes up.

In graph edit the rendered file shows the sound path as being file>ac3filter>directsound

any ideas? im tearing my hair out with this!

If you have set the always_use_dshow_player=true then the first two settings for mplayer will have no effect. Those settings are specific to mplayer(sagetvplayer.exe). Since you are forcing directshow for all file types, the reason you are not passing AC3 is due to your directshow filter merits being set incorrectly. Check the playback in graphedit. Zoomplayer may be set to smartplayback that does not use the merit system for filter selection.

[lcddream]

Here are two different mkv files rendered in Graphedit. They have a different playback path for some reason. I don't know much about this stuff so any help is appreciated. I have the Radlight filter manager but I don't want to mess with it too much on my own. Let me know if you have any ideas please.

[HawgGuy]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

You must set "always_use_dshowplayer=true" on your sagetv-client config. You will need Haali media splitter, and an h.264 decoder (ffdshow or CoreAVC for example).

I thought that SageTV always use the Sage Splitter? When I playback in GraphEdit, the Haali icon shows up in the tray, but not when playing the same fine in SageTV.

Also, I thought there was a problem in getting SageTV to use CoreAVC's codec. Last time I tried (months ago) SageTV would always fall back to using the Cyberlink decoder for h.264 files after unsuccessfully trying to use the CoreAVC decoder. I went back and forth with Sage on this for a while, sent them logs etc to no avail.