Observer Wrote:Hi

I'm a little new at this; but have been trying to follow the threads but still am having trouble with my ATV/Broadcom Crystal HD

The first run the screen just goes black but the audio comes though. I'm expecting a TrueHD/DTS pass though to my receiver via optical cable, but from the logs there is something weird going on. Its seem to be trying the AC3 stream but reports "No suitable AC3 output format found".

The second run, the sound come though but the XBMC menu screens flicker for a bit and then get the black screen.

DMESG
MediaInfo
First Run XBMC.LOG
Second Run XBMC.LOG - With Debug turned on

Crystal HD version - BCM970015
XBMC 10.1 - Nightly Build - ff701de. Also tried with the 10.0 release with same problems.
Crystal HD Driver build r174. Also tried with the r165 release with same problems, and thought that r174 supported the BCM970015.
ATV - Version 1 - running 3.0.2





I rebooted the ATV after installing XBMC and the drivers.

Any and all help greatly appreciated, as I really want to make this my go forward median solution, and want to thanks everyone for the potential this solution offers.

davilla Wrote:man split

icedtrip Wrote:If you want, you can use tsMuxer to mux the MKV into an m2ts file. You won't lose quality, but you will lose subtitles if they're important to you. Then try playing back the m2ts files.

icedtrip Wrote:I extracted a sample of the VC-1 inside MKV issue. I ran the sample through the test by itself. Below are links to the Media Info, XBMC Log (with debugging enabled), and the sample file itself.

Media Info:
http://pastebin.com/QvfK5gEV

XBMC Log (Debugging turned on):
http://pastebin.com/yk3gkNrM

~50MB Sample (~1min length):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2810404/Blood.Diamond.Clip.mkv.zip

Setup:
Mac Mini 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 2GB RAM
CrystalHD - BCM970012
CrystalHD Driver - r174
XBMC 10.1


@Observer, I believe this is the same issue you are having. I have the same problems with a rip of The Matrix.

1. I'm running on an AppleTV "Mac OS X (8.8.2 i386)"
   
2. I'm running "Built on Mar 6 2011 (Git:ff701de)", a few days older
   
3. I'm running CrystalHD - BCM970015
   

Quote:CrystalHD: device open failed , returning(0x6)

davilla Wrote:man split

Observer Wrote:@icedtrip I can't seem to get tsMuxer (tsMuxerGUI) to open the Matrix rip. It comes up with a bunch of errors saying "Can't detect stream type. File name:"

icedtrip Wrote:Interesting...

I'll check was version of tsMuxer I have, etc when I get home later tonight. I will also try and run my rip of The Matrix through it and see what happens. My rip is from the HD-DVD version, but was done using MakeMKV.

Also, just for fun, I'll try running your clip through tsMuxer and if successful, post the m2ts file. Otherwise, if mine is successful, I'll pull out a 100MB clip of The Matrix, post both the MKV and m2ts files to see if your are able to play either. My guess will be MKV=no, m2ts=yes if our issues are the same.

Depending on how I decide to celebrate St Paddy's day I should be able to post these tonight

icedtrip Wrote:@Observer

I played your clip and got just the same black screen and audio. I am using tsMuxeR GUI 1.9.9 Snow Leopard Build with tsMuxeR 1.10.6 (by VoxMac). I was able to use my rip of The Matrix to produce an m2ts file. I also ran your clip and it produced an m2ts file, but with an error. The clip still plays, so I believe the error was due to the MKV file reporting the original length of the movie rather than the length of the clip (an issue with using 'split'?? not sure).

However, like I mentioned before, below are links to the same 1 minute clip in both MKV and m2ts containers I made from my rip. The MKV has the issue I have described and provided logs for, the m2ts file plays just fine. Both files are 130-140MB. I have also included the m2ts file produced using your clip.

MKV - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2810404/The.Matrix.Clip.mkv.zip

m2ts - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2810404/The.Matrix.Clip.m2ts.zip

Observer Clip m2ts - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2810404/ObserverMatrixClip.m2ts.zip

1. Rescaling?
   
   Why is this happening, the CrystalHD is supposed to support 1900x1080 right? My Apple TV is set up as 1080p HD resolution. But all logs have the following:
   
   

   Quote:... DEBUG: CrystalHD: Format Change Detected. Flags: 0x00030000
   ... DEBUG: ----------------------------------
   ... DEBUG: TimeStamp: 0
   ... DEBUG: Picture Number: 0
   ... DEBUG: Width: 1280
   ... DEBUG: Height: 720
   ... DEBUG: Chroma: 0x001
   ... DEBUG: Pulldown: 9
   ... DEBUG: Flags: 0x00000000
   ... DEBUG: Frame Rate/Res: 0
   ... DEBUG: Aspect Ratio: 1
   ... DEBUG: Color Primaries: 0
   ... DEBUG: MetaData: 0
   ... DEBUG: Session Number: 0
   ... DEBUG: TimeStamp: 0
   ... DEBUG: Custom Aspect: 0
   ... DEBUG: Frames to Drop: 0
   ... DEBUG: H264 Valid Fields: 0x00000000

   
   
2. MKV Container Support?
   
   I expect other users of XBMC are to some degree techy/geeky but what we really want to be able to do is rip our Movies with the tools available MakeMKV on OSX and make the file available to the Apple TV (via NAS) and be done. I personally don't want to have to do "extra" processing on the file to get it to work. Its unfortunate that there is the dependency on the capabilities of another tool as the means to get content to the player, and that is somewhat limiting on some platforms, but it's the path of least resistance to more adoption. Is this a more general XBMC issue or something specific to the CrystalHD integration ?
   
   
   
3. Audio Selection?
   
   It seem that, if I am interpreting the logs correctly, there is also a challenge in being able to pass through the AC3 track directly with out re-muxing it:
   

   Quote:... DEBUG: CoreAudioRenderer::InitializeEncoded: Unable to identify suitable output format.
   ... DEBUG: CoreAudioRenderer::Initialize: No suitable AC3 output format found. Attempting DD-Wav.

   Again is this more of an XBMC issue? but I'd expect that player to just pass the audio stream directly to the spdif output untouched, with no remapping required. Audio Track selection has been discussed to some degree here. Without a more complex remote control I don't know how to select a different audio track on the AppleTV as I can't get that pop-up menu at the top of the picture to appear as I can when running on a regular mac.
   

davilla Wrote:BMC70015 will outputs 720p under atv(osx) because you can't display any higher and so it's waste of CPU resources to move around a 1080p when you can only display a 720p.

INFO: GUI format 1280x720 1280x720 @ 60.00 - Full Screen

It does not matter what frontrow says or is setup for. ATV1(osx) under XBMC is 720p display max. This has been discussed many times in the past.

davilla Wrote:

The Dark Knight vc1 running at 1080p on an AppleTV*

Quote:Question: Will the Apple TV playback 1080p videos encoded with the H.264 codec (like Blu-ray rips)?

Answer: Yes, the latest version of XBMC (version 10 'Dharma') allows Apple TV to play HD H.264 encoded videos however the original Apple TV hardware is only capable of decoding 720p videos. To watch 1080 HD videos the Broadcom Crystal HD card must be installed into Apple TV along with the corresponding driver.

davilla Wrote:No, not misleading at all, that's running atv(linux) and there one CAN do 1080p display.

1. Is my best bet to configure a "spare" disk and just swap it out with the one in the AppleTV ?
   
2. Do I detect that there is no SPDIF support for digital audio output, and I'd need a separate hardware device to pull out the audio from the HDMI ? If I need to do anything specific to get this to work, and pointers greatly appreciated.
   

davilla Wrote:So far, I see a common factor being VC1 and E-AC-3, perhaps time to try some h264 ?