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sfalexi · 2012-12-31, 01:25

Just started setting up my HTPC about three weeks ago and I'm LOVING XBMC! Thanks to all the developers who have made it happen and who have put their time and effort into this program! I've been learning about modifying it and I've had a great time customizing it.

To the quick question/thoughts....

I downloaded RC2 of Frodo and it's working out great. I know it can process/passthrough DTS-HD and DTS and I have all my settings set up correctly to get great audio. But my receiver CANNOT deccode DTS-HD or TrueHD audio. it CAN however process PCM and DTS.

I know right now if I have my movies ripped/encoded with DTS-HD, it will default to the DTS "core" track and send that since in the settings it says it can process DTS. I was wondering if I were to disable the DTS and leave essentially "only" the PCM in the settings, would my computer decode the DTS-HD stream and send PCM signals? My computer processor can decode DTS-HD. I'm wondering if essentially I can send lossless audio through PCM instead of always defaulting to the "core" DTS track.

I'm trying to avoid buying a new receiver!

Thank you all, thanks to the folks who worked to develop this and I am LOVING my HTPC! I should've done this YEARS ago!!!

Alexi

**Fry7** · (This post was last modified: 2012-12-31, 02:29 by Fry7.)

If I remember correctly...

- PCM = Pulse Code Modulation, used to convert analog signals into digital ones, 16bit/44.1 or 48kHz (?) resolution, lossy by nature
- DTS = Digital Theater Systems, already digital, I think 16bit/48kHz resolution, also lossy, but less then PCM
- DTS-HD = DTS High Definition, if losless then 24bit/96kHz resolution if multichannel, up to 192kHz if 2-channel

I wonder whether converting DTS-HD to PCM would really be a gamechanger, but who knows. For my part, I don't know if that works, one would eventually have to also kick out 2 channels from 7.1 to 5.1.
Maybe there are solutions for that, and maybe it really is worth the try, but I tend to guess it's not...

sfalexi · 2012-12-31, 04:04

I've read that some bluray players decode the TrueHD or DTS-MA and send it via PCM to the receiver (the PS3 being one notable one that you can setup to internally decode and send the uncompressed PCM signals to the receiver).

Right now when I pass things through via XBMC it shows "DTS" on my receiver (I have my xbmc set to a dts capable player) When I play the same mkv through Windows 7 (ala VLC player), VLC shows "lossless" as selected audio and my receiver shows "PCM" as the format being played (which leads me to believe that my computer is decoding the lossless into the PCM format and THEN sending it.) For the record, I can also manually select the DTS core from VLC and it also plays as PCM.

What I'm going to do for a test (hopefully it works) is take makemkv and copy a bluray to my harddrive making sure to only select the DTS-HD track and NOT the sub-track labeled "DTS". Hopefully this will leave off the DTS track. Then I'll verify that VLC only shows the lossless track available and not two tracks. Then I'll mess with the settings in xbmc to see if I can get it to play. If I can get it to play, I guess I'll then assume that my computer has decoded the lossless track through XBMC and passed it through to my receiver via PCM.

Alexi

**Hitcher** · 2012-12-31, 08:59

(2012-12-31, 01:25)sfalexi Wrote: I was wondering if I were to disable the DTS and leave essentially "only" the PCM in the settings, would my computer decode the DTS-HD stream and send PCM signals?

Try it?

**a11599** · 2012-12-31, 12:03

No. XBMC (ffmpeg) cannot decode DTS-HD.

**steelman1991** · (This post was last modified: 2012-12-31, 13:47 by steelman1991.)

(2012-12-31, 04:04)sfalexi Wrote: I've read that some bluray players decode the TrueHD or DTS-MA and send it via PCM to the receiver (the PS3 being one notable one that you can setup to internally decode and send the uncompressed PCM signals to the receiver).

Right now when I pass things through via XBMC it shows "DTS" on my receiver (I have my xbmc set to a dts capable player) When I play the same mkv through Windows 7 (ala VLC player), VLC shows "lossless" as selected audio and my receiver shows "PCM" as the format being played (which leads me to believe that my computer is decoding the lossless into the PCM format and THEN sending it.) For the record, I can also manually select the DTS core from VLC and it also plays as PCM.

What I'm going to do for a test (hopefully it works) is take makemkv and copy a bluray to my harddrive making sure to only select the DTS-HD track and NOT the sub-track labeled "DTS". Hopefully this will leave off the DTS track. Then I'll verify that VLC only shows the lossless track available and not two tracks. Then I'll mess with the settings in xbmc to see if I can get it to play. If I can get it to play, I guess I'll then assume that my computer has decoded the lossless track through XBMC and passed it through to my receiver via PCM.

Alexi

Use MakeMKV and decode your audio to FLAC - no need for a new receiver.

Leaving the DTS core track out of the rip will have no effect. XBMC will still read and stream the 'core' track. With the dts decoder from TMT, LAV filters can decode dts-hd tracks and pass as PCM, but xbmc natively doesn't use anything other than its own codecs.

You could consider using xbmc with an external player (mpc-hc for example).

Me? - Keep it simple - makemkv to flac and use xbmc

sfalexi · 2012-12-31, 16:25

(2012-12-31, 13:46)steelman1991 Wrote: Use MakeMKV and decode your audio to FLAC - no need for a new receiver.

Leaving the DTS core track out of the rip will have no effect. XBMC will still read and stream the 'core' track. With the dts decoder from TMT, LAV filters can decode dts-hd tracks and pass as PCM, but xbmc natively doesn't use anything other than its own codecs.

You could consider using xbmc with an external player (mpc-hc for example).

Me? - Keep it simple - makemkv to flac and use xbmc

I like that idea.

Quick question.....in Handbrake I will keep all the settings the same and then use FLAC for the audio encoding (instead of DTS-MA passthru which is what I was using). I'm assuming leave bitrate to "auto", but what should I choose for mixdown? Would I choose "none" or "5.1"? My gut says if I leave it at "none" it will see it as a DTS-HD and play the core again and I should then choose 5.1. But I've learned not to always trust my gut.

Alexi

**steelman1991** · 2012-12-31, 16:44

(2012-12-31, 16:25)sfalexi Wrote:
(2012-12-31, 13:46)steelman1991 Wrote: Use MakeMKV and decode your audio to FLAC - no need for a new receiver.

Leaving the DTS core track out of the rip will have no effect. XBMC will still read and stream the 'core' track. With the dts decoder from TMT, LAV filters can decode dts-hd tracks and pass as PCM, but xbmc natively doesn't use anything other than its own codecs.

You could consider using xbmc with an external player (mpc-hc for example).

Me? - Keep it simple - makemkv to flac and use xbmc
I like that idea.

Quick question.....in Handbrake I will keep all the settings the same and then use FLAC for the audio encoding (instead of DTS-MA passthru which is what I was using). I'm assuming leave bitrate to "auto", but what should I choose for mixdown? Would I choose "none" or "5.1"? My gut says if I leave it at "none" it will see it as a DTS-HD and play the core again and I should then choose 5.1. But I've learned not to always trust my gut.

Alexi

Sorry - no experience of Handbrake at all - unless there is a compelling reason I rip the movie, full-size. Try experimenting and see what happens - might be inclined to say that 'gut' would be to choose 'none' - but can't say with any certainty.

sfalexi · 2012-12-31, 20:38

OK. Turns out your FLAC idea is the only way it'll work as far as I know, and I had to do some extensive googling to get the decoder from TMT3, install/set the registry, and then use eac3to to extract, decode, and reencode the DTS-MA via FLAC. Also installed some FLAC codecs to ddshow or something like that so windows media player can play the FLAC lossless audio. Then used mkvmerge to merge the audio with my compressed video (compressing the video via handbrake). This results in a lossless audio track my computer can send to the receiver through xbmc/vlc/whatever players.

The LPCM idea didn't work for two reasons. I was able to have my computer decode everything and send it via PCM, but after some research and testing, I realized it was only sending the DTS-core, NOT the DTS-HD MA track. I encoded and tried different settings in handbrake, but every time I extracted the audio, each audio track for my 20 second test file was the exact same size. Whether I used handbrake to mixdown to 5.1, mixdown of "none", and the DTS-passthrough. Each was 4.8 mb which leads me to believe that handbrake will NOT encode DTS-HD MA, and instead selects the CORE and encodes that. When I passed through the DTS-HD MA, and then extracted that, it left me with an audio file of 11 mb showing that the difference between the core and HD tracks was about 6 mb of lost "stuff" (which seems about right from my reading that the core would be around half the size of the HD track).

After installing the decoders, eac3to, finding some tutorials on the correct command lines, I was able to extract the full HD soundtrack (which is now listed as 7.1 in my players as opposed to the 5.1 when I was inadvertantly extracting the core), and mix it with the compressed mkv I created VIA handbrake. All is well with the world now, I have HD audio.

Thanks for the tips and thoughts that got me rolling on the FLAC bandwagon. Now to switch over a few bluray encodes to my HD audio and then continue digitizing my library.

Alexi