[dteirney]

After many, many hours of trying to understand the XBMC build process and it's relationship with ffmpeg I've finally got HE-AAC audio working for content that has been recorded via MythTV for the very new digital terrestrial standard being used in New Zealand and other countries like Norway.

More details at http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=2...post250784

A huge thanks to Paul Kendall in New Zealand for supplying the LATM ACC patch that he's created for the MythTV client and for guidance in trying to figure out why the faad linking wasn't working in XBMC.

If anyone is interested in the patch, please PM me and I'll send an early release. I'll be posting instructions on my blog in the coming weeks.

Finally my Linux HTPC will take another step forward so we can watch HD DVB-T television here in NZ with the myth:// protocol integration.

What's the process for getting a patch included within XBMC proper?

[malloc]

1. create a diff (preferably based on the latest svn)
2. create a new patch ticket and upload to tracker (xbmc.org/trac)
3. post a link to your new ticket in the dev forum to get the attention of the devs.

thanks for the contribution!

[malloc]

additionally, if you'd like to create a mythtv how to in our wiki (assuming one does not exist), we'd love that!

[dteirney]

I think I might be in for some more work before XBMC works properly with HD DVB-T. The new HD DVB-T standard uses a funky interlacing method for 1080i digital terrestrial (I think it's called PAFF), which requires a fairly recent version of ffmpeg to work. HE-AAC audio appears to be working great, but video is still problematic for 1080i.

The working MythTV client has been updated to a pretty recent release of ffmpeg to cope with 1080i whereas the version of ffmpeg in XBMC is older than July this year. Could be much older, but it was moved to the linuxport branch in July and that was where the SVN trail ended for me.

r14187 | althekiller | 2008-07-18 12:19:44 +1200 (Fri, 18 Jul 2008) | 3 lines
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Is there anyone out there that would know what patches have been applied to ffmpeg and what revision of "real" ffmpeg is in XBMC? That would make upgrading to the latest version of ffmpeg much less daunting as SVN merge and diff can be used to figure out a bunch of stuff. I've already checked the raw diff between the SVN version of XBMC and "real" ffmpeg and there's a heap of changes.

Only some channels here use 1080i, most are 720p, so I might consider the update of ffmpeg as a separate project. Perhaps there are already plans for someone else to tackle the ffmpeg update

Happy to write up about Myth TV in the wiki somewhere. If someone can give some pointers to where would be appropriate I'll look at that over the coming month or so.

[malloc]

I believe AreaScout is doing the ffmpeg update. It's from July because we did a feature freeze for the Atlantis release, so even though we wanted to update, we were forbidden.

[dteirney]

Patch finally created and uploaded to http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5481

I haven't done any code modifications to the main file so the code may or may not strictly comply with XBMC coding standards.

If possible I'd prefer to keep the patch more or less the same as the MythTV frontend patch so if any changes need to be made they are easy to keep in sync.

[dteirney]

For anyone out there in New Zealand...

XBMC still needs to be updated with a later version of ffmpeg before you'll be able to watch the 1080i channels on Freeview|HD through XBMC. The 720p channels should be OK.

AreaScout has a branch that has an updated version of ffmpeg that has seemed to work well so far.

[mazda]

Does this patch work on XBMC-Windows?

[dteirney]

The built in ffmpeg AAC decoder doesn't yet support HE-AAC. Only libfaad supports HE-AAC audio.

The LATM code in XBMC assumes external libfaad support (enabled using ./configure --enable-external-libfaad). I don't know whether that works on Windows, but I would think it unlikely.

[rbcarnevale]

The built in ffmpeg AAC decoder doesn't yet support HE-AAC. Only libfaad supports HE-AAC audio.

The LATM code in XBMC assumes external libfaad support (enabled using ./configure --enable-external-libfaad). I don't know whether that works on Windows, but I would think it unlikely.

ffmpeg has support to HE-AAC v2 now, so Will it be avaliable

Any news

[dteirney]

It will be available when ffmpeg is next updated in XBMC. Will be sometime after the Dharma release.

[rbcarnevale]

It will be available when ffmpeg is next updated in XBMC. Will be sometime after the Dharma release.

It's no Good.

Anyway, thanks.

[rbcarnevale]

It will be available when ffmpeg is next updated in XBMC. Will be sometime after the Dharma release.

Is there any news about it Could it be included in next Version (Eden)

[dteirney]

Not sure when it will happen but ffmpeg is usually updated between major release. So, yes, probably will be updated for Eden.

[rbcarnevale]

Not sure when it will happen but ffmpeg is usually updated between major release. So, yes, probably will be updated for Eden.

Great news! I'll be waiting! Thanks a lot!