[CrashMonkey]

Just confirmed, the option IS there withe Nero 8 version, 3.3.4.

Thanks.

not really sure what the hell nero is up to these days, they've removed or broken a ton of stuff with this new release.

[jlc]

Hi there,

I've been a long time user of XBMC on the original Xbox platform (best app ever written for that machine!). I'm currently running Plex 0.7.5 on my Mac Mini, and XBMC 8.10 on my Apple TV.

It's getting harder to find replacement parts for the old Xbox, so I'm looking for the next media center platform. I'd like it to be a modded Apple TV but my testing so far is less than perfect.

I have quite a few multi-channel FLAC albums I enjoy and would need support for it on AppleTV. As well as .DTS files and DTS encapsulated .WAV files.

Here are the results of multi-channel testing:
- Format: FLAC, 6 channels, 24bit samples, 48kHz (sample FLAC)
+ Platform:XBMC on AppleTV
+ Result:Time index does not advance, no sound (reciever gets nothing)
- Format: FLAC, 6 channels, 24bit samples, 48kHz (sample FLAC)
+ Platform:plex on MacMini
+ Result:Time index advances slowly, no sound (reciever gets nothing)

- Format: FLAC, 6 channels, 24bit samples, 96kHz
+ Platform:XBMC on AppleTV
+ Result:Time index does not advance, no sound (reciever gets nothing)
- Format: FLAC, 6 channels, 24bit samples, 96kHz
+ Platform:plex on MacMini
+ Result:Time index advances very slowly, no sound (reciever gets nothing)

- Format: .DTS
+ Platform:XBMC on AppleTV
+ Resultlays great (reciever gets DTS stream)
- Format: .DTS
+ Platform:plex on MacMini
+ Resultlays great (reciever gets DTS stream)

- Format: DTS encapsulated in .WAV file
+ Platform:XBMC on AppleTV
+ Result:2 channels of static
- Format: FLAC, 24bit, 48kHz
+ Platform:plex on MacMini
+ Result:2 channels of static

In short, I think the Mac OS X / Apple TV ports of XBMC/Plex are no longer doing on-the-fly Dolby Digital AC3 transcoding of multi-channel PCM streams to create the 5.1 sound.

This feature is missing from the Mac OS X / Apple TV versions, can it be brought to it please? I know it's not ideal, but it gets us by. It was a well used feature of the Xbox platform XBMC.

Thanks

[jmarshall]

A patch would be welcome. There's noone currently working on it.

[pyrates]

IGNORE PREVIOUS POST

Issue appears to be here:

ALSADirectSound.cpp:

// TODO - add an option to only downmix if user want's us
if(iChannels == 6)
deviceuse = "xbmc_51to2:'" + EscapeDevice(deviceuse) + "'";

Seems as if a52encode requires that the number of channels IN matches the number it is configured with in asound.conf. If the source has 6 channels, XBMC automatically converts them to 2 channels. Since a52encode expects 6 channels, and only gets 2, it cries. This is the bug.

A quick fix (for me) was getting keeping the source input in 6 channels when we are using a52encode. However, this only fixes the issue when the source already matches the number of channels a52encode is expecting. If the source is stereo, or the source is 7 channels, this fix wont work.

The REAL solution would be to add code so that if device is a52encode, XBMC converts all sound to the expected number of channels (from asound.conf) and then passes it through. My code-fu isn't quite up to the task, but this may be a worthwhile task at some point.

I would say it isn't high priority though... Fixing the issue raised a secondary issue. It turns out a52encode is very slow, and playing 1080p content and encoding 6 PCM channels in real-time was far more then my puny 5600+ could handle. Until we have a hardware solution for a52encode (like DTS Connect! and Dolby Live!) or we can unload decoding to the GPU and free up CPU, this doesn't seem like a good solution.

I may be talking to myself, but I wanted to make sure this was all noted in the event someone runs into any of these issues in the future.

What source code changes did you make to do this?

[nessus]

and patch with one possible solution:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/4859

How can test this patch ?

Sorry for the dumb (?) question but if is not so much trouble, can someone guide me with this ?


Thanks

[spiff]

basically you can't.

the implementation is too shoddy for us to want it. you can however test the new one here; http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6499

if you do not know how to apply a patch, you probably do not know how to build either. that is obviously a prerequisite

[nessus]

Thanks a lot for your answer. You are right here.
I don't know how to apply a patch or to build. If someone has the time to do it for me, i will be grateful.

Thanks

[bluey]

I patched the sources but how do i enable it in xbmc?

[bluey]

I've tested the patch and seems to be fairly stable. But here so far those things, that don't work right:

Vorbis 5.1 seems to work. Only 2 Channels of 5.1 AAC files get transcoded to AC3
There seems to be some wrong channel mapping
Furthermore should the Plugin only be activated when digital audio is activated but I guess its a cosmetic thing.

[pyrates]

Tried the ac3 patch. I was able to apply it cleanly on the latest svn revision. However no videos had any sound unless they already had ac3 or dts. What happened was that it would play for a few seconds and then the video would freeze. In fact the whole xbmc process froze and I had to reboot to get it back.

So I undid the patch, recompiled and then everything was working as it was before I applied this patch.

[nessus]

Thanks a lot all of you guys for sharing the test results for this patch.

It's a pity that is not stable enough or is not working at all. Ιs something that would be very useful, since many HD movies are encoded with AAC codec.

Thanks again.

[gnif]

I am working on this patch to resolve the issues you are encountering, I hope to have this stable and part of XBMC in the near future, so dont throw in the towel just yet.

[gnif]

Patch updated, see ticket for more info

[nessus]

gnif you are the man !!!
Thank you very mach for you efforts on this issue.
I am completely DUMB in this patch thing and how to update XBMC with this Patch. Should put the patch file somewhere in some XBMC folder ?.. or i need a new compiled build form XBMC ?...which again i am in BLIND.

Any help would be welcome.
Thanks again for your efforts.

[pyrates]

gnif you are the man !!!
Thank you very mach for you efforts on this issue.
I am completely DUMB in this patch thing and how to update XBMC with this Patch. Should put the patch file somewhere in some XBMC folder ?.. or i need a new compiled build form XBMC ?...which again i am in BLIND.

Any help would be welcome.
Thanks again for your efforts.

I would suggest you first learn how to build xbmc from source before doing anything like this.