MediaPortal Audio Renderer (2 Viewers)

[pilehave]

Dropped frames itself is not enough to tell the whole thruth of the video playback quality when it comes to smoothness. Video renderer can present some frames on wrong v-syncs and that will lead into juddering. So when reverting mback to DirectShow default audio renderer please check more than just the dropped frames when considering keeping it

In my opinion the upmixing is really useless feature (it came as a bonus after implementing downmixing). If movie contains only stereo track then it is best to listen as it is since it will produce the audio like it was mixed in the studio when making the movie. Upmixing creates just fake sound scape

Most of our tv-channels broadcast in stereo. I think it sounds odd when the dialog from news broadcast ands so comes from left/right, and prefer to have it from my center-speaker instead. Most movies with a digital soundtrack has dialogue in the center-speaker, so I guess I got used to that.

OT for sure, but if your sound setup works and is placed as it should then the voice should appear to come from a center speaker even with stereo playback.

http://buschmeier.org/bh/study/soundperception/

Back to topic, after a long term test now i can say mpar still works flawless for me.

If I could sit in a recliner in sweet hotspot, then yes. Thing is, we have a big sofa and chairs and kids running all over the place

 

[wouter1971]

Hi tourettes, with release of the new mpaudiorenderer v2 i switched back to also using it for TV playback with MS Video decoders.
Since v2 the TV audio/video sync problems are gone. Great!
Still testing....to be continued.

 

[doveman]

Can you confirm whether there's a way for MPAR to achieve either/both of these (ideally being able to switch between the two), which I'm doing with ffdshow and ARC at the moment?

a) mix-down/upmix all content to stereo, then duplicate this stereo over two outputs (to TV and stereo amp) so that if the content deserves it, the amp can be switched on and the TV muted.

b) mix-down 5.1/7.1 to quad, with the TV receiving only the centre channel (duplicated to both speakers) and the stereo amp receiving the rest

It'd be useful to know as if it's not possible and not likely to be anytime soon, I can just stop considering MPAR for this particular system I'm building (or supposed to be when I don't get distracted!) and stick with ffdshow and ARC.

 

[tourettes]

a) mix-down/upmix all content to stereo,

Possible. Just set the speaker config to stereo and all happens automatically.

then duplicate this stereo over two outputs (to TV and stereo amp) so that if the content deserves it, the amp can be switched on and the TV muted.

Quite impossible - or a least from quality point of view. Unless you would use some external HW that would split the four channels to 2x stereo streams. Consumer audio cards wont support multiple outputs to be active at the same time so you would have to use mutliple cards and they will run with different HW clocks wich will lead into two audio streams that drift slowly apart and have constantly phase shifting error which would slightly transform into a delay

Would be possible if I would have just too much idle hand on my hands, some pro-level audio card with enough audio outputs. But I lack both

b) mix-down 5.1/7.1 to quad, with the TV receiving only the centre channel (duplicated to both speakers) and the stereo amp receiving the rest

Pretty much same as the previous.

For those two use cases only viable solution is to write some 3rd party .bat / application that will change the registry settings - then you can switch between the two outputs, but they cannot be active at the same time.

 

[doveman]

Possible. Just set the speaker config to stereo and all happens automatically.

Thanks, that's good to know.

Quite impossible - or a least from quality point of view. Unless you would use some external HW that would split the four channels to 2x stereo streams. Consumer audio cards wont support multiple outputs to be active at the same time so you would have to use mutliple cards and they will run with different HW clocks wich will lead into two audio streams that drift slowly apart and have constantly phase shifting error which would slightly transform into a delay

For those two use cases only viable solution is to write some 3rd party .bat / application that will change the registry settings - then you can switch between the two outputs, but they cannot be active at the same time.

I think you're mistaken about this, as I already can do it with onboard realtek sound, using ffdshow to direct the sound to two output pairs (L&R and Centre and Subwoofer, could use L&R rear as well for three pairs) simultaneously. ARC is the third party application that I can use to load different registry settings to swap between "Stereo to two outputs" and "5.1 mixed down to three channels" but that's not needed just to have Stereo sent to both outputs.

I did originally plan to make an external mixer/switch box before I realised I could do pretty much what I needed with ffdshow/ARC. Of course, using such a box might be an option with MPAR, if MPAR could be set to output 5.1 when the material is 5.1 and stereo when the material is stereo/mono, as I could then use the box to mixdown the 5.1 to three channels or expand stereo to two outputs, but I'd rather keep avoid that and keep it switchable with the remote.

 

[edterbak]

Hi tourettes,

I installed V2 and I noticed some hickups. Attention: I use the Xonar card. sorry eventmode 0; HW clock 1; Exclusive 1

During playback of a file (an entire BRRIP movie!) I had only 1 dropped frame visible in the shift+1 render stats. So very good job here!!
But I did however also notice sound 'hickups'. There were only 5-8 or so through the whole movie.
Also I noticed a judder in the video a number of times as well. (few, 5-10) But these do not show up on the renderer stats.
The movie I played is a brrip x264+AC3 audio.

How can I help with logs? should I log the entire movie? What would you like to know.

 

[red5goahead]

Hi tourettes,

I installed V2 and I noticed some hickups. Attention: I use the Xonar card. sorry eventmode 0; HW clock 1; Exclusive 1

During playback of a file (an entire BRRIP movie!) I had only 1 dropped frame visible in the shift+1 render stats. So very good job here!!
But I did however also notice sound 'hickups'. There were only 5-8 or so through the whole movie.
Also I noticed a judder in the video a number of times as well. (few, 5-10) But these do not show up on the renderer stats.
The movie I played is a brrip x264+AC3 audio.

How can I help with logs? should I log the entire movie? What would you like to know.

Tourettes , Please note that edterbak have a 24P tv compliant so he don't use the time strecthing feature.

My problem with Xonar card that I log to you occurs when a 24P footage running on a Pal refresh monitor.

Another question:

I don't understand why you add a speaker setup in this version. I can't explain because the setup should be already handled by operating system through audio card driver.

 

[tourettes]

I installed V2 and I noticed some hickups. Attention: I use the Xonar card. sorry eventmode 0; HW clock 1; Exclusive 1

Xonar - the own beast as always

During playback of a file (an entire BRRIP movie!) I had only 1 dropped frame visible in the shift+1 render stats. So very good job here!!
But I did however also notice sound 'hickups'. There were only 5-8 or so through the whole movie.
Also I noticed a judder in the video a number of times as well. (few, 5-10) But these do not show up on the renderer stats.

How can I help with logs? should I log the entire movie? What would you like to know.

Enable sample times logging and play as long as there is some audible glitch in the audio stream. Then zip the audio renderer log. It might give some clues what is happening (althou it is more likely that it wont give any clues).

 

[tourettes]

Tourettes , Please note that edterbak have a 24P tv compliant so he don't use the time strecthing feature.

My problem with Xonar card that I log to you occurs when a 24P footage running on a Pal refresh monitor.

Timestretch code is completely audio HW independant. So it shouldn't have anything to do with the issue you are experiencing. I just wonder why in edterbak's case the renderer is able to negotiate a suitable format with the Xonar if it is not in your case. Or maybe in edterbak's case the default directshow audio renderer is actually getting used (it could happen if the initial audio format is failing to negotiate as well with the drivers). It would be good to make sure with graphedit that the MPAR is getting used for edterbak.

I don't understand why you add a speaker setup in this version. I can't explain because the setup should be already handled by operating system through audio card driver.

For example to allow up mixing or to allow people to use separate spekaer config in different applications.

 

[tourettes]

I think you're mistaken about this, as I already can do it with onboard realtek sound, using ffdshow to direct the sound to two output pairs (L&R and Centre and Subwoofer, could use L&R rear as well for three pairs) simultaneously. ARC is the third party application that I can use to load different registry settings to swap between "Stereo to two outputs" and "5.1 mixed down to three channels" but that's not needed just to have Stereo sent to both outputs.

Ah, so you dont need to have the both outputs active at the same time. That would work in similar way MPAR - just change the registry settings before starting the playback with similar way as you are now changing.

I did originally plan to make an external mixer/switch box before I realised I could do pretty much what I needed with ffdshow/ARC. Of course, using such a box might be an option with MPAR, if MPAR could be set to output 5.1 when the material is 5.1 and stereo when the material is stereo/mono, as I could then use the box to mixdown the 5.1 to three channels or expand stereo to two outputs, but I'd rather keep avoid that and keep it switchable with the remote.

MPAR will output stereo as stereo if no force mixing option is selected.