Problem with Monogram AAC Decoder on HD TV playback? (1 Viewer)

[finrudd341]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.0 RC1 (Final)
MediaPortal Skin: Black Glass Nova
Windows Version: Windows XP Pro SP3
CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor
HDD: 3 x Wester Digital WD10EACS 1000Gb (RAID 1) & 1 x Wester Digital WD1600Js 160GB boot drive
Memory: 2 x 2GB Kingston (cheap stuff) DDR2
Motherboard: Asustek P5E-V HDMI L775 Motherboard
Video Card: Intel G35 Express Chipset
Video Card Driver: 6.14.10.5016
Sound Card: Realtek onboard
Sound Card AC3: via HDMI from motherboard
Sound Card Driver: 6.14.10.5016
1. TV Card:
1. TV Card Type:
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: SAF v4 pack
MPEG2 Audio Codec: SAF v4 pack
h.264 Video Codec: SAF v4 pack
Satelite/CableTV Provider: NET TV (Brazil)
HTPC Case: Zalman HD160-XT PLUS Case Silver
Cooling: Zalman CNPS8500 LED CPU Fan
Power Supply: ZM600-HP Heatpipe Cooled 600W Modular PSU
Remote: Logitech Harmony 525
TV: Sharp Aquos 42"
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI to AV Receiver - to HDMI on LCD

I seem to be struggling with Audio on HDTV if I use the Monogram AAC Decoder.

If I am playing SD television, it all goes through the FFDshow filter, and works fine. but if I then change to an HD channel, I get a brief burst (less than a second) of audio, and then nothing. Looking at Graphedit, I get the results below, which seems to imply the problem is with Monogram AAC Decoder?

My audio is all going through the HDMI output into a Marantz AV receiver, and then on into the TV via HDMI. Could this be the problem? I have read somewhere that HD Audio cannot be transmitted via HDMI or something along those lines.

I am not clear if this is then a codec/software issue or hardware, so any thoughts much appreciated!

I am going to try putting HDMI input directly into TV and using a coaxial digital cable between HTPC and AV Receiver to see if that works better.

The only thing that makes me think this might not be the case is that I have the same issue on my client machine. On the client machine (a Shuttle XPC) the HDMI is straight into the Samsung monitor, and the audio is a very simple analogue out into the LINE IN input of a basic amplifier. This kind of blows my idea out of the water about it being problems with audio being sent over HDMI, and points towards it being a problem either with what audio stream the Brazilian FTA channels are broadcasted with, or a problem with Monogram AAC managing them properly.

I have attached some pictures, showing the tuning details for both SD and HD TV, and the audio details, which I think are confirming that it's AAC (?).

 

[hoborg]

Hi.
Use SAF 5 and add FFDShow audio decoder to MePo postprocessing:

 

[finrudd341]

Many thanks Hoberg - I have done the upgrade to SAF 5, with the settings as you say, but I think while I was looking for my problem, I have messed up the settings on the ISDB-T card totally, as now, whenever I go onto a channel mapped to that card (rather than the DVC-C one) I get a MediaPortal Not Responding and have to CTRL-ALT+DEL. Hopefully once I get the card back to working properly, SAF5 will fix the audio issues on the HD channels.

The interesting thing is that GraphEdit still sees the Audio output from what I can see?

Anyway - I will physically remove the ISDB card, try and remove all the drivers from it, and then start again.

 

[DucaSP]

Go to the htforum and go to the HTPC section, there you will find "Clube do Mediaportal" and in there you will find a modified monogram DLL that can cope with LATM AAC audio that has explicit SBR signaling like our broadcasts support. Torrinhas (the author of this mod) is trying to contact Monogram author to check if he can implement the fix in future releases of Monogram, but, unfortunately he got no reply up to now.

P.s.: there is other possibility, that is a modified tsreader.ax that allows you to connect other AAC codecs like Elecard or libfaddwrapper (those can cope with our AAC audio too), but this involves more work than just updating Monogram dll...

 

[SiLenTYL]

I was about to post my own issue with AAC MONOGRAM codec but u beat me to it!

However i have a slightly different issue. As far as i know...the ACC MONOGRAM has nothing to do with blu-ray material or their playback but if i change the AAC setting from the default ( MONOGRAM ) to anything else..then some of my files dont work. I accidentally changed the codec for AAC from "MONOGRAM AAC.." to something else...it broke! It was broken in WMP also!

I have reencoded some blu-ray backups to 1080p mkv files encoded with h264/x264/dts-hdma/dts/5.1/subtitles. There are 2 in particular that dont work..but the other 30 or so play perfectly. I couldnt figure it out untill i changed the AAC back to MONOGRAM....this was driving me mad for a long time till i gave up and did a complete reinstall of MP a few months back.


Its not really an issue now just an annoyance as this codec setting should have nothing at all to do with my mkv files..should they?

 

[finrudd341]

Go to the htforum and go to the HTPC section, there you will find "Clube do Mediaportal" and in there you will find a modified monogram DLL that can cope with LATM AAC audio that has explicit SBR signaling like our broadcasts support. Torrinhas (the author of this mod) is trying to contact Monogram author to check if he can implement the fix in future releases of Monogram, but, unfortunately he got no reply up to now.

P.s.: there is other possibility, that is a modified tsreader.ax that allows you to connect other AAC codecs like Elecard or libfaddwrapper (those can cope with our AAC audio too), but this involves more work than just updating Monogram dll...

Muito Obrigado DucaSP - I have been following some of Hinotori's posts over there, but had not spotted that part. I updated the .ax file, but it hasn't changed anything. I still get the initial burst of audio, and then nothing on the HD Channels. The audio seems to work on most channels when it is mp2 (libavcodec) as an input, but when it is Stereo PCM (uncompressed) as input, it doesn't work, and I am not sure if this is the root of the problem, or if it is signal strength that is somehow causing the audio to fail on HD channels.

I don't know how Digital TV works - my guess is that you either can get it, or you cannot (with degrees of video or audio corruption in between) but I would not imagine that audio would be dropped?

I am putting a dedicated aerial up this weekend (on my balcony), with one cable feed to it, so I can see if a) the signal improves and therefore b) if I need to mount the aerial on the roof of the building.

Thanks anyway - that HTForum website is pretty good, and is improving my Portuguese!

 

[DucaSP]

Please note that only using the modified tsreader.ax won't do any good, this modified tsreader.ax changes the way that tsreader.ax connects to the LATM-AAC decoder so it connects with libfaddwrapper and Elecard codecs, you will need one of those two AAC codecs and change your codecs configuration in MediaPortal configuration for the TV section to use one of those two codecs... Do you have a back-up of the original tsreader.ax? If so, I recommend you go the easyest way, first restore the original tsreader.ax, then download the modified monogram filter:

mmaacd.zip

Back-up the original mmaacd.ax in %PROGRAMFILES%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal

Copy the modified mmaacd.ax to %PROGRAMFILES%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal

Make sure that you are using the original tsreader.ax and that in Media Portal Configuration, Codecs, in the TV Codecs configuration, Monogram is selected as the filter to use for LATM AAC.

If you don't have the original tsreader.ax or still want to use the modified one instead of the modified monogram codec, grab libfaadwrapper (it is free):

dvb_filters.zip - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

Move all 4 files to %PROGRAMFILES%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal

Go to %PROGRAMFILES%\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal using Windows Explorer, then run instalar.cmd as an Administrator (right click it and choose "Run As Administrator").

Then, go to MediaPortal configuration, codecs, TV codecs, LATM AAC codec, choose libfaad2wrapper. Note that if you use libfaad2wrapper with the original tsreader.ax, it won't work at all, you will get an error that it is not posible to build the graph, that is because tsreader.ax was originally designed to connect in a way to LATM AAC codecs that works only with Monogram... Since Monogram is distributed along with MP, it is kind of difficult to change officially the way that tsreader.ax behaves (because the modified one won't work with monogram, but works with libfaad2wrapper, elecard, divx, etc...).

Either way is fine, but I recomend using the modified monogram way, it is the easiest way and it is always easier to just copy the modified monogram back to media portal folder whenever you update it, with tsreader.ax, whenever you update MP, you will need to grab the latest tsreader.ax modified as this file usually is updated along with mediaportal and previous versions are not guaranteed to work and will not have fixes of the latest version.

P.s.: Hinotori is my alias in HTForum, I'm not the author of the mod, SergioFortier was the original author of the modified tsreader.ax approach and I'm just keeping it and building it for the latest MP builds. Torrinha is the original author of the modified monogram codec approach. We are just hopping that at some point, Monogram official developer get back into updating monogram and pick-up Torrinha fix, as this will surely make it possible to have MediaPortal working with our broadcast audio out of the box, no changes needed.

 

[finrudd341]

Thanks for the detailed reply - this morning before I came to work, I only managed to change to the modified Monogram file, and I did take a backup of the old one. Sadly, it didn't work. I am not 100% sure still if my problem is signal strength or codecs, but I should be able to eliminate the signal strength question this weekend.

I purchased almost the same ISDB-TB PCI card that you reviewed, except might is from C3 Technologies - it does the job so far, except on these HD channels. I will post back on progress at the weekend, and once I have fixed the signal strength issue, I might have to try the modified tsreader approach.

Thanks!

 

[DucaSP]

I was about to post my own issue with AAC MONOGRAM codec but u beat me to it!

However i have a slightly different issue. As far as i know...the ACC MONOGRAM has nothing to do with blu-ray material or their playback but if i change the AAC setting from the default ( MONOGRAM ) to anything else..then some of my files dont work. I accidentally changed the codec for AAC from "MONOGRAM AAC.." to something else...it broke! It was broken in WMP also!

I have reencoded some blu-ray backups to 1080p mkv files encoded with h264/x264/dts-hdma/dts/5.1/subtitles. There are 2 in particular that dont work..but the other 30 or so play perfectly. I couldnt figure it out untill i changed the AAC back to MONOGRAM....this was driving me mad for a long time till i gave up and did a complete reinstall of MP a few months back.


Its not really an issue now just an annoyance as this codec setting should have nothing at all to do with my mkv files..should they?

Hi Silent,

Since it is a MKV file, it should not have any effect at all... TSREADER.AX / Monogram is basically only for TV Codecs that control Live TV and reading .TS files, not MKV files, which will work with the codecs you set for Video and not for TV, and as far as I know, you can choose any AAC codec in Videos section and MP should work fine, the restriction is only for Live TV / .TS files as Paranoid explained here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/.../ffdshow-codecs-do-not-show-not-option-81497/

 

[finrudd341]

OK, it occurred to me that I might be missing some settings in Post Processing under the TV section. I am using SPDIF from HTPC to AV Receiver, and I was advised to enable the fddshow Audio Decoder under VIDEOS Post Processing, so it got me thinking about the post processing section under TV too.

It seems that ffdshow is not used for the HD Channels audio, so perhaps I do not need the ffdshow Audio Decoder, but clearly Monogram IS used, as I have seen on my GraphEdit results, and because it is the only codec I am allowed to select under LATM AAC audio decoder. So it got me thinking and looking, and I see there are a couple of options under Post Processing for Monogram, but that red writing USE AT YOUR OWN RISK really works well on me, and I have avoided any playing.

Does anyone have any experience of this, and am I likely to find the cure here?

DucaSP - if you read this: I always get a split-second burst of audio when I change to an HD channel before it fails - is this the same behaviour that you would expect from using the non-modified Monogram AAC Decoder? The fact I get audio for this split-second, and then nothing strikes me as odd, as I would have expected either Audio working or Audio NOT working, rather than this?