2013-09-13, 14:12
I've been having a big problem with wildly varying volumes between TV/Videos and Music, using the RPi's analog output. It's rather quiet to start with anyway, so I was using <ac3downmixgain>18.0</ac3downmixgain> which boosted the output when watching TV to roughly the same as my other equipment, so that I didn't have to turn the TV's volume up a lot when using the RPi and then remember to turn it down again when using something else.
However, this setting affects everything, TV/Videos, Music, etc and when playing Music it was much too loud and distorted/overloaded the output, requiring turning the RPi volume down to about -30db, which requires about 60 remote keypresses as the volume keys don't repeat (and another 60 to turn it back up again to watch TV/videos).
popcornmix has now kindly added a DRC feature to the OpenElec Rbej Gotham build I'm using, which is great for what it is and now I'm setting amplification to 30db, which results in TV/Videos/Movies all being at an acceptable volume. However, this basic compressor obviously has the side-effect of killing the dynamic range of the material, which some people might not be bothered about but others will want to hear their movies and music with the dynamic range intact and as it's meant to be heard.
So my request is for three things:
1. Separate global volume settings for TV, Stereo Videos (including Streaming), Movies (i.e. generally higher quality multi-channel) and Music. This will allow the user to roughly balance out the volume between these different sources so that they don't have to make large adjustments to the RPi volume when switching between sources.
2. Separate global DRC settings for TV, Stereo Videos (including Streaming), Movies and Music, which can also be toggled on/off easily from the OSD/pop-up menu. This would allow users to enable DRC for lower quality sources where the user is less likely to be concerned about ruining the dynamic range, such as TV, where there also tends to be large increases in volume when the adverts come on (despite the broadcasters all denying it, everyone hears it) which the DRC would control, Stereo Videos which tend to be downloaded episodes often with less than ideal audio or streaming videos, again with low quality audio, multi-channel Movies, where the audio quality is high and the user may wish to keep the dynamic range intact but still be able to easily switch on DRC for night-time viewing and Music, where the situation is the same as with multi-channel Movies.
3. A plugin-level setting which the author could set to attenuate the volume when streaming videos through that plugin. This is because some sources, such as BBC iPlayer, are much louder than TV and so the user has to turn the RPi volume down a lot to avoid distortion/overload which is a pain, particularly as the volume keys don't auto-repeat, so if there was a setting that allowed the author to specify "play videos from this plugin with -20db attenuation" that would eliminate the problem. There could also be a plugin-level setting that specifies "Always use DRC with this plugin" for plugins that use sources with wildly varying volume. However, if this third request is considered particularly difficult to implement, enabling the user to set DRC globally for Stereo Videos (which would include most streaming videos) as per request 2 above would achieve much the same result and as streaming video generally doesn't have great quality or is already highly compressed, many users might choose the leave DRC enabled most of the time for this category.
OK, so maybe covering streaming might be a problem (I've only used iPlayer and Youtube as every other plugin I've tried has either not worked at all or been ridiculously complicated to try and get anything to play so I don't know how many of those 1000 streaming sources are actually usable or used much, on the RPi at least, maybe they work better on the PC).
I wasn't suggesting that you cover them yourself anyway, more that there should be a setting that the plugin authors can set in the plugin that adjusts the volume to suit the source. That wouldn't help with sites with videos with wildly varying levels of course but as I said, we can't expect to make everything perfect, although thinking about it those sites could have a setting in the plugin that says "Always use DRC/normalisation" to keep the levels under control.
Anyway, forgetting about streaming, which tends to have poor quality audio anyway, it would be nice to at least get the Movies/Videos/TV and Music sections all around the same volume, with optional DRC/normalisation which can be set separately for those two groups, or even additionally giving TV it's own setting, as people might want it on that to control the advert volume but not on Movies.
I don't presume to speak for him but I get the impression popcornmix is open to implementing these ideas if they're incorporated into XBMC http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1498533
However, this setting affects everything, TV/Videos, Music, etc and when playing Music it was much too loud and distorted/overloaded the output, requiring turning the RPi volume down to about -30db, which requires about 60 remote keypresses as the volume keys don't repeat (and another 60 to turn it back up again to watch TV/videos).
popcornmix has now kindly added a DRC feature to the OpenElec Rbej Gotham build I'm using, which is great for what it is and now I'm setting amplification to 30db, which results in TV/Videos/Movies all being at an acceptable volume. However, this basic compressor obviously has the side-effect of killing the dynamic range of the material, which some people might not be bothered about but others will want to hear their movies and music with the dynamic range intact and as it's meant to be heard.
So my request is for three things:
1. Separate global volume settings for TV, Stereo Videos (including Streaming), Movies (i.e. generally higher quality multi-channel) and Music. This will allow the user to roughly balance out the volume between these different sources so that they don't have to make large adjustments to the RPi volume when switching between sources.
2. Separate global DRC settings for TV, Stereo Videos (including Streaming), Movies and Music, which can also be toggled on/off easily from the OSD/pop-up menu. This would allow users to enable DRC for lower quality sources where the user is less likely to be concerned about ruining the dynamic range, such as TV, where there also tends to be large increases in volume when the adverts come on (despite the broadcasters all denying it, everyone hears it) which the DRC would control, Stereo Videos which tend to be downloaded episodes often with less than ideal audio or streaming videos, again with low quality audio, multi-channel Movies, where the audio quality is high and the user may wish to keep the dynamic range intact but still be able to easily switch on DRC for night-time viewing and Music, where the situation is the same as with multi-channel Movies.
3. A plugin-level setting which the author could set to attenuate the volume when streaming videos through that plugin. This is because some sources, such as BBC iPlayer, are much louder than TV and so the user has to turn the RPi volume down a lot to avoid distortion/overload which is a pain, particularly as the volume keys don't auto-repeat, so if there was a setting that allowed the author to specify "play videos from this plugin with -20db attenuation" that would eliminate the problem. There could also be a plugin-level setting that specifies "Always use DRC with this plugin" for plugins that use sources with wildly varying volume. However, if this third request is considered particularly difficult to implement, enabling the user to set DRC globally for Stereo Videos (which would include most streaming videos) as per request 2 above would achieve much the same result and as streaming video generally doesn't have great quality or is already highly compressed, many users might choose the leave DRC enabled most of the time for this category.
OK, so maybe covering streaming might be a problem (I've only used iPlayer and Youtube as every other plugin I've tried has either not worked at all or been ridiculously complicated to try and get anything to play so I don't know how many of those 1000 streaming sources are actually usable or used much, on the RPi at least, maybe they work better on the PC).
I wasn't suggesting that you cover them yourself anyway, more that there should be a setting that the plugin authors can set in the plugin that adjusts the volume to suit the source. That wouldn't help with sites with videos with wildly varying levels of course but as I said, we can't expect to make everything perfect, although thinking about it those sites could have a setting in the plugin that says "Always use DRC/normalisation" to keep the levels under control.
Anyway, forgetting about streaming, which tends to have poor quality audio anyway, it would be nice to at least get the Movies/Videos/TV and Music sections all around the same volume, with optional DRC/normalisation which can be set separately for those two groups, or even additionally giving TV it's own setting, as people might want it on that to control the advert volume but not on Movies.
I don't presume to speak for him but I get the impression popcornmix is open to implementing these ideas if they're incorporated into XBMC http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1498533
