[pssturges]

Hi all,

This is really strange. I'm trying to get spdif passthrough working on my Zotac ION N330. I'm sending it to my crappy Panasonic Blu-ray home theatre system.

The first strange thing is that it works with 9.11 but not with recent SVN versions. The second, even stranger thing is that when I connect the same PC to my Tevion amp, both 9.11 and SVN work perfectly!

It seems the problem is not the amp, the OS or the Zotac hardware, because it works fine with 9.11. The problem is really not with the SVN because it works with my Tevion amp. It seems to be an incompatiblity between the SVN version of XBMC and my Panasonic sound system.

My underlying OS is Mythbuntu 9.10, oh and by the way Mythtv passthru work fine.

Here is my log showing an svn session where spdif didn't work. Doesn't show anything interesting to me.

I'm on svn 28256, but have tried many others with the same result.

Any ideas what could be happening here?

Cheers
Phil

Code:

phil@lvngrmhtpc:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 Digital]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Code:

phil@lvngrmhtpc:~$ aplay -L
default:CARD=NVidia
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0
    HDA NVidia, NVIDIA HDMI
    HDMI Audio Output
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

[pssturges]

Anyone? Any thoughts?

[pssturges]

This problem was temporarily solved when I tried switching back to svn builds after the recent SVN hiatus. The first few SVN versions worked fine.

Earlier this week I updated to r31718. At the same time there were many other updates including a kernel update. Since then I have again lost my spdif pass-thru.

Any Ideas why this may have problem may have re-appeared?

Thanks
Phil

[erhnam]

This one?

http://trac.xbmc.org/changeset/31704

and this one?

http://trac.xbmc.org/changeset/31762

If not I should file a bug and assign it to anssih

[pssturges]

Hmm interesting...I don't have much idea what they are trying to do, but it seems there is some activity lately regarding digital audio. So it may well be related to my current problem. Maybe it will be fixed soon also I'll try the next ppa svn.

Thanks
Phil

[pssturges]

Well, this still isn't working. I've done further testing and found that mplayer passes the ac3 successfully as follows:

Code:

phil@lvngrmhtpc:/storage/Media/videos$ mplayer -ao alsa,pulse, -ac hwac3,hwdts, "Lord Of The Rings, The- The Fellowship Of The Ring(2001).avi"
MPlayer SVN-r1.0~rc3+svn20090426-4.4.3 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team

Playing Lord Of The Rings, The- The Fellowship Of The Ring(2001).avi.
AVI file format detected.
[aviheader] Video stream found, -vid 0
[aviheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
AVI: ODML: Building ODML index (2 superindexchunks).
VIDEO:  [h264]  720x416  24bpp  29.970 fps  1238.5 kbps (151.2 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
Software: MEncoder SVN-r28754-4.3.3
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
[VO_TDFXFB] This driver only supports the 3Dfx Banshee, Voodoo3 and Voodoo 5.
[VO_3DFX] Unable to open /dev/3dfx.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: hwac3
Opening audio decoder: [hwac3] AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
hwac3: switched to AC3, 448000 bps, 48000 Hz
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, ac3, 448.0 kbit/29.17% (ratio: 56000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [hwac3] afm: hwac3 (AC3 through S/PDIF)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch ac3 (1 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 416 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 2.46:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x416 => 1024x416 Planar YV12
A:  86.0 V:  86.0 A-V:  0.000 ct:  0.040 2578/2578 47%  1%  0.2% 0 0
Exiting... (Quit)
phil@lvngrmhtpc:/storage/Media/videos$

I have tried vlc, and that works correctly also.
I'm now on mythbuntu 10.04 and have tried ubuntu 9.10 & 10.04 and also xbmc live. I always get them same result: xbmc 9.11 works, svn's don't.

It seems there was some "tinkering" with spdif functionality a few months ago. I guess it may be possible that this may be related to my issue.

So. In summary...

Mythtv pass-through works
Mplayer pass-through works
VLC pass-through works
XBMC 9.11 pass-through works
XBMC SVN pass-through DOES NOT work


I there anything else I can do to test this?

It seems that if all these other programs work correctly, then there is no reason why it should work for xbmc svn's. It seems there is something unique about how xbmc handles spdif.

I guess my next step would be to file a bug report?

Phil

[checkup]

i also have issues with spdif pass through and svn. It just doesn't work, it transfers the audio as 2 channel stereo.

my log says: ERROR: CDVDAudioCodecPassthroughFFmpeg::SetupMuxer - Failed to get the FFmpeg spdif muxer

*did* work with 32049
does not with the latest svn builds

[pssturges]

i also have issues with spdif pass through and svn. It just doesn't work, it transfers the audio as 2 channel stereo.

my log says: ERROR: CDVDAudioCodecPassthroughFFmpeg::SetupMuxer - Failed to get the FFmpeg spdif muxer

*did* work with 32049
does not with the latest svn builds

Hmm interesting. I guess what I'd like to do is try various svn versions after 32049, see if I can work out when things went wrong and what changes were made. Then perhaps it can be fixed. Is there a way to download and install specific older svn versions?

Thanks
Phil

[checkup]

Update:

starting with a clean .xbmc folder and using the latest from xbmc-svn-ppa, the problem is gone. Along with my advancedsettings.xml...

I will not digg any deeper, but maybe it had anything todo with dynamicrangecompression setting in advancedsettings.xml.

thanks anyway.

[pssturges]

Great work. Glad you got yours going. Unfortunately it doesn't fix mine. I have however figured out how to download and compile old svn's:

Code:

svn checkout -r <svn #> http://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/trunk

I have started testing, but it takes about 1 and 1/2 hours to download and compile each one. It's gonna take some time

I'm thinking it must have something to do with how xbmc sets up the spdif signal that causes my amp to not recognize it. Doing a search in Track for "spdif" shows several changes to how spdif is initialized. Just need to work out which one breaks it on my system.

Phil