Loving It but a couple of problems - Sound and Remote (1 Viewer)

[Joe90]

Hi

Having been a GeeXboX fan for a few years, that arrival of more and more x264/mkv/HD movies on the scene prompted me to look eslewhere. Ignoring Windows Media Center, which I abhore with a hatred only reserved for my best enemies, firstly I tried mpc-hc, which plays everything but not brilliant for frontend with remote. Then I revisited Mediaportal which I had struggled with in the past. What a revelation ! Providing me with everything I need and so simple to setup. I ran a test setup on my W7 box, then completed and installed on my HTPC using XP Pro.

Had to fiddle about with codecs a bit to get mkv's playing properly but found that the DivX 264 codec did the trick.

Now to my teething problems

Sound (5.1 not 2.1?)

Unlike most I just use stereo sound, through the TV speakers from my HTPC. A simple analog jack lead from PC to TV. This works fine for most videos, but I have a couple which clearly have 5.1 surround sound. Attempting to play these back results in pewrfect video and sound is in sync, but I am only getting the other 3.1 of sound and nothing in the center (Voices in particular). Had a go at changing codecs, no change, and have checked that the MPC codec settings are set for stereo, everywhere. On my W7 box I get normal stereo sound, with seeminly the same settings as on my HTPC. Tried the videos with mpc-hc and stereo sound is fine, so it must be a setting inside MP (on Xp Pro) causing the problem. Had a search on the forum to no avail. Any ideas?


Remote:

Have an ATI Remote Wonder which once selected in Configuration worked OK-ish, but i grabbed the ATi Driver from ATi. This seeminlgy improved functionality all round, but now the "cursor" buttons action two steps or a double click. Is it best to diasable the ATi driver and get back to the X10net.dll?

Thanks for a great media center

 

[Joe90]

Well,

Sorted out the remote, went back to snapstream, and did some learning / mapping and now all works well. Still to find a way to start up mediaportal with the remote if it is closed down (but XP still running)

As no quick solution to my AC3 problem was forthcoming, I simply re-encoded the audio to mp3 using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input_filename.mpg -f avi -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame -ar 44100 -ab 128k -ac 2 file_output.avi

(yeah, I run linux )

If it helps, here are the properly for the file (from mediainfo):

General
Complete name : /media/DATA/recordings/POM.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 1.36 GiB
Duration : 2h 10mn
Overall bit rate : 1 495 Kbps
Writing application : MEncoder SVN-r29978-4.4.1
Writing library : MPlayer

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 1h 36mn
Bit rate : 1 403 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 352 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.260
Stream size : 971 MiB (70%)
Writing library : XviD 1.2.1 (UTC 2008-12-04)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 2h 10mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 418 MiB (30%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 501 ms (12.01 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms