Ffdshow audio + ac3 filter settings for 5.1 spdif (1 Viewer)

[edterbak]

Here is something I don§t understand when looking at your system tab screenshot of AC3 Filter. On tab 'System' of the AC3filter configuration, you say "We don't want ac3filter to load when ffdshow audio is active, therefore SPDIF is unticked".
This implies that if you want to use SPDIF over AC3Filter, you have to untick SPDIF at 'Use AC3Filter for' in AC3filter config. Thats a bit contradictory...

I only can reply to the spdif part.
ffdshow also has DTS/AC3 passthrough option. IF a media file has DTS/AC3, it will be passed through by ffdshow. No need for AC3Filter to double that action. For everything else AC3Filter is used as post processing after ffdshow is done with it....

 

[kiwijunglist]

Here is something I don§t understand when looking at your system tab screenshot of AC3 Filter. On tab 'System' of the AC3filter configuration, you say "We don't want ac3filter to load when ffdshow audio is active, therefore SPDIF is unticked".
This implies that if you want to use SPDIF over AC3Filter, you have to untick SPDIF at 'Use AC3Filter for' in AC3filter config. Thats a bit contradictory...
You also have LPCM in both AC3filter config (ticked on 'System' tab)and ffdshow config enabled(libmad codec), why is that?
I generally don't understand the first part of the 'System' tab of AC#filter config anyway. Why can you tick both AC3/DTS AND SPDIF? AC3 and DTS have to USE SPDIF right? Why can it here both be chosen?
And what kind of audio is 'DVD'?
Hope someone can explain this to me better because I'm a bit lost here

The unticked SPDIF in ac3filter is SPDIF input.

eg. multichannel aac -> ffdshow -> ac3(spdif)

if spdif input was enabled the ac3filter would go after the ffdshow filter.

so basically dts -> ac3filter, ac3 -> ac3filter, spdif -//-> ac3filter.

with regards to LPCM, yes you have a point there, it seems a bit wierd. i should probably disable LPCM for ac3filter input if it is being done by ffdshow... HOWEVER, the settings work well for me as is, so i wont change that.

EDIT:

So in summary... re:AC3Filter System tab
the most important ones to have ticked are ac3 and dts, the others you can experiment with
spdif should be unticked unless you want everything going through ac3filter (ie double decoding)

 

[kkendall]

Ok, after installing SAF again and reading your tips, suggestions and explanations I'm almost there!
All of my mkv files I have tested worked perfectly (Cyberlink h264 + AC3filter), also with a clean graph in graphstudio (with only Cyberlink h264 codec and AC3filter codec showing, so no double decoding).
All my SDTV channels I tested worked, with good video and audio (with Cyberlink MPEG2 and ffdshow).
All my HDTV channels I tested worked, with good video and audio (with Cyberlink h264 and ac3filter).
All streams (quicktime and flv) I tested in Online Videos worked. (not looked at graph yet)
All movietrailers (quicktime?) I tested in MyTrailers plugin worked. (not looked at graph yet)
All mkv HDTV rips (Lost) worked. (not looked at graph yet)
I havent tested dvd's, mounted dvd's or extracted dvd's thats next on the list.
I also haven't tested divx or xvid files... but I don't use them much anymore to be honest. All of my downloads are FullHD's these days.

The only thing that I have at the moment is that all SD channels now also output DD streams to my receiver. And I know not all channels have DD in them, so somewhere it gets converted so that it is SPDIF-ed to my receiver...

Anyway, thanks alot again for your great help!

 

[hoborg]

Im just working on AC3 filter SAF integration, it seems to be preaty easy on first look.
I noticed you have disabled MP3 in FFDShow - bud AC3 filter is capable of MP3 decoding? i am not sure abou that...

 

[kiwijunglist]

@hoborg: yeah i dont think ac3filter can decode mp3 looking at that charts, it ends up using another decoder. u are right.

All of my mkv files I have tested worked perfectly (Cyberlink h264 + AC3filter), also with a clean graph in graphstudio

--> I find the MPC Video Dec, is better than cyberlink for mkv files. I havn't tried recently with pdvd9, but i find that there are some mkv files that pdvd codec wont play.

The only thing that I have at the moment is that all SD channels now also output DD streams to my receiver. And I know not all channels have DD in them, so somewhere it gets converted so that it is SPDIF-ed to my receiver...

--> Did you disable the mixer in ffdshow, something is obviously upmixing.

@hoborg: a user stated they had a different version of ffdshow to me, i thought ffdshow tryouts beta 6 was the best/stable/newest version?

 

[kkendall]

I've tested some more and I can say that also DVD playback, mounted dvd's and dvd folders (video_TS) play perfectly with clean graphs here at my end. So here at my end all is almost working great now!

I still have some issues with Online Video's though.
flv and quicktime play great! But the audio and video of TED is a bit stuttery (I don't know if this is caused by the splitter, the audio codec or the video codec) and YouTube doesn't want to play at all. I don't know what the format is of these streams (how can I see that?), but they seem to give me problems.
Apart of the thing that all SD TV gets upmixed (ffdshow acc. to graphstudio) to DD 2.0 (haven't looked into that yet, not really important), that's the only trouble I still have.
Any suggestions?

hoborg
I really like the standard (untweaked so to say) video quality of the Cyberlink decoders, that's why I prefer these. It has been said that other more tweakable codecs, like ffdshow vid.dec. (haven't really used MPC dec. much) eventually can achieve better quality, but only if you really know what to tweak and really know your stuff. You can also easily screw it up if you don't really know all the ins and outs of decoding.

If I run into problems with the cyberlink dec., I will start looking for alternatives, but for now, the Cyberlink 9 dec. seem to work great here for all my mkv's

 

[hoborg]

SAF 4.00beta 14 introducing AC3 filter integration

 

[kiwijunglist]

i also prefer xvid codec to ffdshow xvid codec.... with ffdshow i get banding of colour, i guess it must be converting the color space from 16-235 to 0-255 or vice versa.

 

[kkendall]

If I use ffdshow for AAC streams, like TED (with 2 AAC audiochannels) in Online Videos plugin, I get a bit of stuttering audio. Do you get the same? Selecting monogram aac decoder solved this for me.
What kind of files have multichannel aac? I never came across that...

 

[kiwijunglist]

some of the newer rips, basically you can get a 720p rip with about 1.5gb with 5.1 aac sound.