[greenbutton]

Win7 SP1
Kodi 14.1
K-lite V11 codecs installed (though I understand Kodi doesn't use these?)
PC is Intel NUC D34010WYK1 Intel 4th Gen Core i3-4010U/Intel HD Graphics 4400 - audio through mini HDMI 1.4a to Marantz receiver


In general Kodi works well for me, but I have a couple of problems I could use help with:

1) the big one: video files with AAC won't play audio.
I've used Handbrake to compress some DVDs to MP4s with H264 video and AAC audio. With Kodi, I get no audio at all. If I play the same file in WMP or other player, the stereo audio plays fine. I've checked the FAQ and forums for ideas... I've toggled all the audio settings I can find to eliminate passthrough or stereo upmixing... but nothing will play the AAC audio. Is it *possible* to play video tracks with AAC audio?

Logfile: http://goo.gl/AhfDy9
(in the log ... I launched kodi, played a video with AAC, then toggled the passthrough and stereo upmix switches)


2) Related: if I have a file with AC3 *and* AAC audio ... if AAC audio is the first audio track... I get nothing just as (1) above. Of course, I can manually switch the audio to the second track and then it works fine. Is there a way (short of re-encoding) that will make this pick the "higher quality" track as a preference? I want my wife to be able to "just click the movie" and get the working/better track.

3) Question: What is this symbol? for the longest time, I've had a red "NO (ghostbuster symbol) speaker with audio waves" showing up in the upper right corner of the screen. It LOOKS like an error icon .. but I can't figure out what it means.


Thanks for any help!

[steelman1991]

Try pressing F8 - could be you've inadvertently pressed the mute button. May also explain the lack of audio from AAC sources.

[jjd-uk]

The symbol is a mute icon that is why you get no sound, hit + key to unmute then make sure volume is all the way up to 100%.

Kodi's volume control works only on audio we decode, AAC one such audio format along with mp3, flac, APE and many others.

Passthrough is where is decoding is performed on another device such as TV or AVR, AC3 is an example of a format we can passthrough, since we don't decode we can do nothing to the volume.

This explains why the mute is applied to AAC but not to AC3.

As for your other issue, it is most likely in the ripping process the AAC track has been set as the Default audio track, this is done by a flag in the header of the media file, so we are simply respecting how the audio is flagged. Respecting the flags in the media files is the proper operating behaviour as defined by the various specs. To see if this is the case use MediaInfo to check some of your files.

For Helix your only option is to either switch audio tracks to the AC3 one as you are doing, or remove the Default audio flag from the media files. To remove the flag should be possible without doing a full re-encode as only the header needs adjustment, however I don't know if Handbrake is able to do this.

In the development nightlies for the next release we've decided to add a option to ignore the Default audio flag, so then it's user choice whether it should be respected.

[jjd-uk]

Spent a long time typing that out on my phone so now see steelman has replied to the meantime, yes F8 is the mute/unmute toggle however I suggest using the + volume control to make sure volume is then 100%.

[greenbutton]

You guys got it! Thank you! I feel like a dufus. Maybe if the red-ghostbuster thing had the word "mute" next to it, I would have figured it out.

Also... on the selection of audio tracks...
- BROADLY what I'm trying to do is see whether I can figure out a 720p MP4 file that BOTH (a) will play on the ipad and (b) will be a "very good" movie watching experience on the HTPC. I'm guessing that the ipad WON'T support an MP4 container which includes a 5-channel DTS or AC3 track.. but if anyone is expert in this already, would love to hear.

- Question: when I go into the options as a movie is playing and toggle the audio -- I assume (because the settings show an item for "do this for all movies") that it's ONLY FOR THAT TRACK. Is that true? So I could, in theory, "train" Kodi to know which tracks I want to get the 5.1 audio?

- good to hear that the current nightly build is adding a feature like this. My feedback would be to do something like "always prefer 5-channel tracks over stereo tracks".

thanks again!

[storeman]

I have a similar issue in that I get loads of content with AAC encoded audio but no sound.
pressing the + key shows that the volume is at 100% without the mute icon in the top right.
If I press f8 the mute icon appears so it's not because the volume is set low or that the sound is muted.

If I download the content instead of streaming it and play through windows media player I get the audio fine so it's also not because I don't have the correct codec on my system

Windows 7 X64
Intel Core I7-3770 CPU @ 3.4 GHz
16GB Ram with 15.7GB useable