The Official Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H RS780 mATX Thread - Page 148

Any particular reason you ran the movie through DVDFab first instead of just using MakeMKV direct from the disc? MakeMKV will strip encryption.

I have a lifetime copy ... but just that one module. It was part of the process I used to create the MKV, so I thought I should mention it.

You seem to know a lot about this. Thinking about my next XBMC end-point-client build ...

Do you have a list of the different ATI cards and what level/channels of HDMI sound each support over HDMI?

Thinking 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, and I suppose even 7xxx now.

Or, do all 4xxx cards and higher basically just already support 7.1 HD (DD-HD, DTS-HD) bitstreamed audio, so there is no need for a list?

I ran across this while looking for information on pass-thru, and found this list of video cards and what they support as far as PCM or bitstreaming.

http://www.missingremote.com/guide/b...mats-your-htpc

Nice find.

So the 4xxx cards (like a 4550) is iffy. Looks like the minimum is 5xxx.

This page also fits with the other thread (and explains why what I did fixed it for me). In XBMC ... instead of using the "System Default" audio device ... I had to select "WASAPI" specific.

Actually as the article states, the Radeon HD 4xxx series are perfectly capable of passing through 7.1 LPCM audio which is compatible with the any audio receivers (that are capable of 7.1 output). The benefit to the 5xxx series or newer is that they can bitstream 7.1 audio also. That's only a benefit if you have a HD receiver capable of receiving processing 7.1 bitstream audio data.

If you peruse the AVS forums, you will see that there is an ongoing debate on whether bitstreaming or processing LPCM has any real difference in audio quality as they both are decoding lossless uncompressed audio. Essentially, you are either having your HD receiver do it (bitstreaming) or your computer, through your audio chipset do it (LPCM). I've tested both (because I have an Onkyo high quality HD receiver) and I honestly don't hear much of a difference. Of course, I don't claim to be as much an audiophile as some on the boards do.

Of course, this probably a moot point as alot of the low end 5xxx cards are only a few dollars more than the 4xxx cards, so there is really no reason to purchase a 4xxx card when the 5xxx are comparable in costs. If you like a quiet HTPC, there are plenty of 55xx and 56xx cards that don't require any fans and only use passive cooling.

After messing with the settings on my PC and not finding a suitable way to get Dolby Digital out of 7MC Live TV AND get LPCM surround for my MKVs, (I could get one or the other depending on what settings I changed) I think I'm just going to break down and replace the 4550 with a 5xxx or 6xxx card. The prices aren't that bad, and I can always use the 4550 for a future build in another PC (it's a low height card).

It's amazing how computers are so insanely difficult to get them to do what you want when other consumer electronics devices are just plug and play.

I couldn't imagine giving up bitstreamed-to-amp audio ... just so I can use an HDMI cable. It's too easy to run sound separate over SPDIF.

It might be because it sounds like 7MC doesn't have separate sound config for Live-TV and File-Play ... like most HTPC software does.

Did you try what I said in the other thread ... or did you not want to limit PCM to 2-channel just to get bitstream for everything else?

I did configure the HDMI driver to be desktop speakers, and that is what got Dolby Digital to work in 7MC for Live TV. But MKVs will only play back as 2 channel.

If i switch the driver back to 5.1, I am able to get DTS or Dolby Digital on MKVs, but Live TV crashes.

It's extremely frustrating. I do have a DVI-HDMI cable and a spare optical cable, so I may try falling back to SP/DIF, but it was nice having only one connection.

Shark007 codec pack is also a source of my frustration.

I have exactly the same issue as you, also have the Shark007 code pack installed, I wonder if that is part of the problem? Really irks me when I have to switch to 2 channel sound to watch the football game. Please let me know if you get this figured out.

I looked at the link you provided and saw the converter box. The box is really just to convert HDMI digital video signal to analog signal (YPbPr / VGA ). I cannot pass 5.1 LPCM audio you are getting from the ATI video card that you are or intend to use. You cannot pass uncompressed 5.1 LPCM over SPDIF. It is not a limitation of the mobo or chipset, but it is a limitation on the SPDIF specification. Neither the TOSLINK or Coaxial cable that SPDIF uses has the bandwidth to push uncompressed 5.1 LPCM. Any 5.1 (or multichannel) you're getting from the converter box can only be Dobly or DTS multichannel at most.

Just didn't want you to purchase that box with the impression that it would give you ucompressed 5.1 LPCM audio.

What box it that?

In this thread, we have only been talking about the abilities of this Gigabyte board.

I just bought this 5450 card. It was $40, so I figure its worth a shot. If it doesn't work, I guess I don't get to drink any beer this week. Hopefully it will let me bitstream audio and I won't lose any performance over my 4550.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127557

Oh that's funny. It looks like the AVS board is automatically creating a hypertext link to the word "SPDIF." If you view your original post, the word "SPDIF" at the end of the sentence is linked to a eBay auction of a converter box. I thought you had purposefully linked to indicate that you were interested in using the box.

I just noticed that the board has also created links "SPDIF" in my follow on posts.

I hate when it does that.

After installing this card and STILL having problems, I just started ticking checkboxes in Shark all willy-nilly. No matter what I did, videos would not launch with FFDShow at all. I was about to run the analyzer to see if I had a codec issue, but what finally ended up working for me was going to the SWAP tab and checking all the boxes to use FFDShow exclusively. Presto, everything started working in all of my apps! 7MC, WMP, MPC all would play every encoding I could throw at it.

My receiver now lights up with DTS-MA or True-HD depending on what the original file was encoded as, and Live TV works without issue on Dolby Digital as well. Also, after installing this card, the "supported formats" tab of the audio playback device in control panel finally shows all the HD formats. Previously it would only say DTS and Dolby Digital. So the card was definitely necessary to bitstream.

I also fixed the "fuzzyness" i was having in Windows 7. In my Onkyo 609, the video was being futzed with before being sent to my projector, which made all of the fonts look jaggy and blurry. The solution was changing the picture mode to through instead of cinema. This sends the video unaltered directly from my PC to the projector. I'll post this fix in the Onkyo thread in case anyone else has this issue (after a week of googling, it appears plenty of people do have this issue).

After four years of running this motherboard on XP I finally upgraded to Windows 7. I started by upgrading the BIOS from F4 to F11 via the @bios utility.

Now, whenever I restart the computer I hear a couple really loud clicking sounds from the hard drive before shutdown, and another couple after it reboots.

I tried using various versions of the AMD SATA driver, but it would always hang at POST on SMART errors. Updating the driver to the standard Windows 1.0 AHCI driver solves that problem.

However, the hard drive clicking still persists. Would rolling back the BIOS to F4 (when this didn't happen) solve this problem, or is there something else I can try?

It sounds like the drive might be failing. It might have just been a coincidence.

I'm running BIOS F8 with Win-XP32 and now-days Win7-64.

Here are some old notes:
Loaded F8 BIOS 8-25-2010
Flashed BIOS to F8. Set Sata 4/5 mode to IDE.
Not using any SATA optical drives, but this setting removes the eSata drive
from BIOS SMART detect, and by the time the Win-XP is loaded the HDD is fully spun up and working.

Couple of questions: Did the clicking noise occur after you flashed the BIOS but was still using XP? Or did only happen after the BIOS flash and using Win7? Also does the clicking happen only during POST or does it occur while it's operating in the OS? Did you a clean install when you upgraded to Win7 or did you upgrade over the existing WinXP?

There is no need to use any AMD SATA drivers in Win7 as the built in drivers will work just fine with drives using AHCI. I've been using the F11 and the F12B BIOS versions since 2010 and have had no problems with the hard drives in AHCI mode. Used to have WinXP like you and then switched to Win7 32-bit without a problem. As tesla1856 said, it may just be a coincidence with a hard drive problem. In which case, flashing back to the F4 BIOS will not do any good, but I suppose that is the first troubleshooting step you should try.

If you still have problems, post back with some answers to the questions I posed earlier.