Selecting audio stream on dvb-t (1 Viewer)

[wawa79]

Hello,
On french dvb-t TV, audio streams codes returned by Mediaportal are 'UNK', 'QAA' and 'QAD'. None of these codes exist in the language preferences for TV.
By default, MP selects the first stream (UNK) which is reported as eac3. But it sometimes only contains 2.0 stereo. I would prefer MP to systematically select the QAA stream which is always 5.1 eac3.

I checked 'Prefer ac3 sound' and 'Prefer audiotype over language' but this does not help considering that all 3 streams are reported as eac3...

Any advice on how to set that up?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello wawa79

Yes, you should be able to do this by manually editing the MediaPortal.xml file.

1. Open MP configuration.
2. Click "user config files" in the top left corner.
3. Close MP configuration.
4. Open the MediaPortal.xml file that should be in the user config files folder in any text editor (notepad, wordpad etc.).
5. Find the section "tvservice", which will look something like this:

<section name="tvservice">
<entry name="hostname">********</entry>
<entry name="preferac3">yes</entry>
<entry name="preferAudioTypeOverLang">yes</entry>
<entry name="audiodualmono">no</entry>
<entry name="preferredaudiolanguages">*****</entry>
</section>

6. In the "preferredaudiolanguages" element, you can add any 3 letter codes that you like. Separate them with ";". So for example, to do what you want I think you would have:

<section name="tvservice">
...
<entry name="preferredaudiolanguages">qaa;</entry>
...
</section>

***Note: this value will probably be lost each time you visit the TV client audio settings section in MP configuration.

Please let us know if that works for you.

mm

 

[wawa79]

I made the following change as advised: <entry name="preferredaudiolanguages">qaa;fra;fre;</entry>
Now, TV client selects the qaa stream by default. But it does not solve my problem: in fact, all dvt-t channels stream 5.1 eac3 on 'UNK' except one channel that streams 5.1 on 'QAA'. Solution would be to be able to define preferred audio stream for each channel, which is not possible as far as know.
REAL solution would be all TV channel to use same homogeneous streams organization...

 

[mm1352000]

I made the following change as advised: <entry name="preferredaudiolanguages">qaa;fra;fre;</entry>
Now, TV client selects the qaa stream by default. But it does not solve my problem: in fact, all dvt-t channels stream 5.1 eac3 on 'UNK' except one channel that streams 5.1 on 'QAA'.

Does the "QAA" channel also have an "UNK" stream?
Keep in mind that the order that you specify for the languages is important - streams are chosen by language priority.

Solution would be to be able to define preferred audio stream for each channel, which is not possible as far as know.

I do vaguely recall hearing about a plugin that did this a long time ago, but can't find it now. It is probably not a solution that we would implement because it is an unnecessary level of configuration for most people. A better solution might be to create a "prefer 5.1 instead of 2.1/2.0" option.

REAL solution would be all TV channel to use same homogeneous streams organization...

Not sure what you mean by this - sorry.

 

[wawa79]

Does the "QAA" channel also have an "UNK" stream?
Keep in mind that the order that you specify for the languages is important - streams are chosen by language priority.

QAA is not a channel but an audio stream code. All french HD channels have 3 audio streams: UNK, QAA and QAD. I wonder why they do not use the code fra instead...

I do vaguely recall hearing about a plugin that did this a long time ago, but can't find it now. It is probably not a solution that we would implement because it is an unnecessary level of configuration for most people. A better solution might be to create a "prefer 5.1 instead of 2.1/2.0" option.

Sure: MP setup is already complicated enough not to add such a level of configuration! I'll continue switching manually.
Isn't existing "prefer ac3 sound" the same as the "prefer 5.1 instead of 2.1/2.0" you suggest? In my case, the problem is that all 3 audio streams are reported as 'ac3plus' even if they only contain 2.0 stereo.

REAL solution would be all TV channel to use same homogeneous streams organization...

Not sure what you mean by this - sorry.

I mean that all TV broadcasting company should take care to organize audio streams identically: these issues should not have to be handled by the dvb-t decoder!