Hi. This is my first post, so be gentle. 
I did some research here and on Google trying to see if anyone else was experiencing this particular problem. Didn't find anything specific, so my problem might be unique.
I noticed something odd I thought was initially a speaker problem, until I tried something.
Movie: X-Men First Class (on hard disk)
When I play it as a DVD file through XBMC, it has an occasional short, but consistent audio glitch at certain points of the film, which sounds like a Transformer movie audio special effect. I don't have surround sound, but I tried the different settings in the System --> Audio menu. It didn't matter which setting I used, no change to the glitch.
One thing I noticed is that I wasn't getting this effect anywhere -- except with DVD files. In fact, I could play the same DVD files directly through VideoLan without the glitch. So...
I decided to make an MKV version of the film, and it worked right. Then I used Nero Recode (7) to make an H.264 Cinema version, using the 5.1 option (just in case I decide to upgrade speakers later.) Both versions play normally in XBMC. But not the source DVD files they're based on.
I presume this is a decoder problem, as I have all the audio sound card special effects turned off, the drivers are current, and yes, I'm fully aware that XMBC decodes on its own, and needs no outside CODECs to work. Does XMBC convert 5.1 audio into a PCM stream, and if so, how does it pass that to the sound card? Something is slightly different between the methods used here and that of VideoLan.
As a side-note, I absolutely adore this program. It is making it possible for me to keep all my movies and music (I have to do a lot of work to the music files to make them useful across the board - have a crap-load of OTR files that definitely need ID3s set) in one place, and instantly accessible. My many thanks to the programmers and users alike for making it the best (in my opinion) media center on the market. I haven't used all of the ones on the market, but why keep looking when you find what you like? I will start promoting the program through my Facebook contacts.
- Danny
I did some research here and on Google trying to see if anyone else was experiencing this particular problem. Didn't find anything specific, so my problem might be unique.
I noticed something odd I thought was initially a speaker problem, until I tried something.
Movie: X-Men First Class (on hard disk)
When I play it as a DVD file through XBMC, it has an occasional short, but consistent audio glitch at certain points of the film, which sounds like a Transformer movie audio special effect. I don't have surround sound, but I tried the different settings in the System --> Audio menu. It didn't matter which setting I used, no change to the glitch.
One thing I noticed is that I wasn't getting this effect anywhere -- except with DVD files. In fact, I could play the same DVD files directly through VideoLan without the glitch. So...
I decided to make an MKV version of the film, and it worked right. Then I used Nero Recode (7) to make an H.264 Cinema version, using the 5.1 option (just in case I decide to upgrade speakers later.) Both versions play normally in XBMC. But not the source DVD files they're based on.
I presume this is a decoder problem, as I have all the audio sound card special effects turned off, the drivers are current, and yes, I'm fully aware that XMBC decodes on its own, and needs no outside CODECs to work. Does XMBC convert 5.1 audio into a PCM stream, and if so, how does it pass that to the sound card? Something is slightly different between the methods used here and that of VideoLan.
As a side-note, I absolutely adore this program. It is making it possible for me to keep all my movies and music (I have to do a lot of work to the music files to make them useful across the board - have a crap-load of OTR files that definitely need ID3s set) in one place, and instantly accessible. My many thanks to the programmers and users alike for making it the best (in my opinion) media center on the market. I haven't used all of the ones on the market, but why keep looking when you find what you like? I will start promoting the program through my Facebook contacts.
- Danny
