[LINUX/MAC/WINDOWS] AAC/FLAC/WMV 5.1 pass-through to SP/DIF out: transcode to AC3 5.1
#16
I'm seconding this proposal. Very smart and wife friendly feature: as stereo output is directly plugged to the tv in my case: she has nothing to deal with the receiver, most of the time Smile
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#17
Hello,

I was searching the forums and could not find an answer to this.

I have got a H.264 movie which is 700MB in size. The video track is 560MB and the audio track is 140MB. The audio track is 5.1 AAC at 160kb/s. The quality of the movie is incredible. It looks like DVD quality. Now I found that ac3filter http://ac3filter.net with this installed you can take 5.1 AAC and encode it in real time to Dolby Digital 5.1 through to your receiver. AC3filter is also good if I want to watch movies that are in DTS, as they can be encoded in real time to Dolby Digital 5.1 as well. This helps as my surround sound receiver can only do Dolby Digital and PCM.

Now I wonder if XBMC supports this? If not can it be implemented into the next build?

I would really like to hear your views on this

Much appreciated

Many thanks in advance
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#18
slippy Wrote:Hello,

I was searching the forums and could not find an answer to this.

I have got a H.264 movie which is 700MB in size. The video track is 560MB and the audio track is 140MB. The audio track is 5.1 AAC at 160kb/s. The quality of the movie is incredible. It looks like DVD quality. Now I found that ac3filter http://ac3filter.net with this installed you can take 5.1 AAC and encode it in real time to Dolby Digital 5.1 through to your receiver. AC3filter is also good if I want to watch movies that are in DTS, as they can be encoded in real time to Dolby Digital 5.1 as well. This helps as my surround sound receiver can only do Dolby Digital and PCM.

Now I wonder if XBMC supports this? If not can it be implemented into the next build?

I would really like to hear your views on this

Much appreciated

Many thanks in advance

I asked the same thing but I do not think so. I suggested using the AC3Filter code base.

I am not quite sure though what the channel mapping is with six channel AAC.

Anyhow, I definitely second that request.
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#19
Let's hope the team at XBMC will develop this!

What I really like about this is that it's like having all the features of a DVD but without the size of 4.5GB dvd's. I mean 700MB with 5.1 sound and the really cool xbmc bookmark feature it's like using the chapter menu from a DVD. Then you have streaming apple trailers which is like watching trailers before the movie starts on a DVD. Then finally on a 500GB drive you can have 650 movies. All with cover art. That is just awesome.

Come on xbmc please implement this?
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#20
I asked the question of realtime transcoding DTS to AC3 and got a reply saying its on their todo list!!!
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#21
I hope its high on thier to do list. To get this working would be awesome!!!!!! I can't wait for it.
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#22
spotfek Wrote:I asked the question of realtime transcoding DTS to AC3 and got a reply saying its on their todo list!!!

Who did you ask? Did you email?

How long ago did you ask?
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#23
im not sure if its been fixed/implemented already, but when i play a video with AAC 5.1, if i select audio menu from context menu, it shows 5.1

not sure if this means menu is telling me source details, or output details??

regards,
Dam0
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#24
Dam0 Wrote:im not sure if its been fixed/implemented already, but when i play a video with AAC 5.1, if i select audio menu from context menu, it shows 5.1

not sure if this means menu is telling me source details, or output details??

regards,
Dam0

Thanks for this info

Can I ask which skin you are using?

Are you using a 5.1 surround sound setup? It should show up on the LED bar of your sound system as DD 5.1! Of course only if they have implemented AAC 5.1 to DD 5.1!
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#25
slippy Wrote:Who did you ask? Did you email?

How long ago did you ask?

I asked a coupole weeks ago, search would reveal all ;-) http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=39663
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#26
Slippy,

skin is PMIII, and yes i use SPDIF.

however, i think playback is still stereo cause sounds like sub and surrounds are silent.

i ended up using mkvextract to demux, then loaded the *.AAC into nero soundtrax and exported it as ac3. then remux using mkvmerge, and now i have working mkv with ac3.

luckily for me i only had 3 x mkv's with AAC, so was no big deal for me. hope this helps

regards,
Dam0
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#27
Dam0 Wrote:Slippy,

skin is PMIII, and yes i use SPDIF.

however, i think playback is still stereo cause sounds like sub and surrounds are silent.

i ended up using mkvextract to demux, then loaded the *.AAC into nero soundtrax and exported it as ac3. then remux using mkvmerge, and now i have working mkv with ac3.

luckily for me i only had 3 x mkv's with AAC, so was no big deal for me. hope this helps

regards,
Dam0

Many thanks for your reply

I was wondering if you know if this is possible!

When your playing a movie in xbmc it obviously uses the different codecs for movie playback. But then I imagine that the audio track plays through the audio codecs out through the sound card on the PC. So my guess is why do we have to wait for the team at xbmc to implement DTS to DD 5.1 sound. As I wonder if you can just download ac3filter. Install it and then use a program to point the xbmc exe to the filter. Then it could automatically take any movie with aac 5.1 or DTS being played in xbmc and do real time decoding into dolby digital. I believe this should be possible right?

As no matter how the sound comes it always goes through the PC soundcard. So we would just have to write some simple code to make ac3filter work with the soundcard automatically. This ought to be possible right?

Or maybe I am getting my wires crossed!
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#28
AFAIK, xbmc uses custom codecs, so even if your pc runs ac3filter for AAC playback, thats gonna make no difference to playback during your xbmc sessions.

hope this answers your question.

Dam0
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#29
Thanks for your reply

But this doesn't answer my question

There should be a more simple way of xbmc running aac. Even though xbmc uses custom codecs, those codecs still use your soundcard for actually getting the sound to your speakers. So it should be possible to play around with the settings and get the aac sound to pass through your soundcard through the ac3 filter and to the speakers. I am not a programmer but I hope someone from the team here at xbmc could answer this?
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#30
XBMC does not use anything you have installed on your PC, other than hardware drivers and the OS stuff it needs.

This means no matter what "codecs" or "filters" you have installed, XBMC does not use them at all.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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[LINUX/MAC/WINDOWS] AAC/FLAC/WMV 5.1 pass-through to SP/DIF out: transcode to AC3 5.11