[John K]

I've been playing around with the filters from PDVD in Zoom 2.1. They work well with the exception of the audio, which does not pass through DD or DTS just basic 2 channel stereo. The tab for the filter offers nothing. PowerDVD itself has no problem passing DD.

Ideas anyone? Blight, any thoughts? Frustrating because the results are actually very good and PROBABLY this combo will represent the best quality/functionality yet.


John


Radeon 7199

Win98SE

 

[JKohn]

I think this is the problem with a non-filter-specific front end. There may be lots of settings for these filters that Zoom Player just doesn't expose, and if the filter itself doens't provide a dialog for configuring them you're basically SOL.

 

[MKANET]

It's nothing new with PowerDVD 4. I have never been able to get set S/PDIF in the audio filter properties of PowerDVD.

 

[Branxx]

I have the same problem with PowerDVD XP and Zoom 2.1 under W2k. Similarly, I can't get S/PDIF using WinDVD audio filter as well.


Maybe the solution is to implement some specific code for popular filters, so that full capabilities can be exposed.

 

[Hugh Magoo]

what about getting the 6 channel decoding to work? Anyone able to do that?


What filter files are you registering/unregistering?

 

[macdaddy_]

Is it possible to use the audio filters from another installed player that does output DD or DTS? I thought that was the idea behind the custom filter dialogues...

 

[Blight]

Sadly, there is nothing to expose... Otherwise I'd expose it.


If the cyberlink filter doesn't save it settings somewhere, it's quite possible that it won't allow SP/DIF access.


I even did a quick scan of the PowerDVD 3.xx audio filter and found no mention at all of SP/DIF. I think cyberlink simply didn't care enough to implement the support into their filter. (the actual PowerDVD player doesn't use the filter).

 

[John K]

To answer various questions


I registered everything that PDVD had.

Yes, I'll be trying the filter from WinDVD DTS but I've always found WinDVD sound to be oddly bad. On first hearing PDVD4's sound is better than Cinemaster's.

Blight, thanks for looking at it. What a shame there's no workaround.


John

 

[Blight]

I also looked at the 4.0 filter.


I mean, it has several audio selections, but they are disabled, and of course, no SP/DIF.


Selecting SP/DIF in the program itself has no effect.


The video filter has color controls, but amuzingly enough, they are all disabled.


This is basically designs flaws on the part of Cyberlink. I don't think it's their priority to provide a great service via filters. I think they'd prefer if you'd use their GUI.


I've gone over the feature list for v4, and it's funny, they seemed to have "borrowed" some of the zoom player features.

 

[Hugh Magoo]

I was able to get the Video Adjustments to work with zoom player and the power dvd filters. Not sure what made that happen but, nevertheless I was surprised.I noticed that one neccessity to accessing the color controls is that you have to be using an overlay at the time.


I tried playing a DTS title, selecting DTS language and the strange part was that it sent a bad DTS stream out through the regular digital out. This is the digital out function that is used for stereo output, not AC3/DTS passthrough. My sound card's SPDIF mode is under a different setting. My receiver identified it as "DTS 3/2" at times, but mostly as "DTS 3/0", and there was no sound, except on the analog outs, the raw DTS sound. But it was something I haven't seen before. Not sure if there would be any possible way to make that work properly. There were no settings under the filter properties that were open besides stereo and surround.

 

[Blight]

It was possibly enabled because your card has the DirectDraw overlay API working, unlike my TNT2 card.

 

[John K]

OK. I've given up on the PDVD audio filter and am trying the WinDVD 3 filter in its place. This is a problem. The filter tab offers SP/DIF pass through but when enabled there is no sound and it reverts to unenabled on restarting the app. As before, ideas anyone? Blight, have you had this filter working fully?


John

 

[Blight]

I don't have an AC3 capable system

 

[John K]

Blight, that's bad news. Time you upgraded! We should all be interested in how different the ATI/Cinemaster filter sounds when used in the Zoom player. Clearer directionality and separation; less nasty "digital" sound etc. For audiophiles, imagine the effect of adding a discrete PS to a preamp.

I really want to get the WinDVD filters working because WinDVD sound has been generally poor compared to PDVD and ATI but may actually be useable in Zoom, while giving DTS capabilities. PowerDVD might be better but it looks as though the SP/DIF functionality is not part of the filter so . . . . . . WinDVD it is.

If anyone has achieved SP/DIF output with any WinDVD filter under Zoom, please post details of how you managed this.


John

 

[IanD]

Quote:

Originally posted by John K OK. I've given up on the PDVD audio filter and am trying the WinDVD 3 filter in its place. This is a problem. The filter tab offers SP/DIF pass through but when enabled there is no sound and it reverts to unenabled on restarting the app. As before, ideas anyone? Blight, have you had this filter working fully? John

I think if you set up a filter graph and choose default wave-out device, then the SPDIF property is supposed to stick.


Ian

 

[John K]

Quote:

Originally posted by IanD I think if you set up a filter graph and choose default wave-out device, then the SPDIF property is supposed to stick. Ian

Ian, can you elaborate? I have a copy of Graphedit (I guess this is what I'll need) but frankly don't have the first idea how to use it or even what it's for.


BTW, running back to back with PDVD and Zoom/Cinemaster, the PDVD DD sound is noticeably better - very frustrating but let's persevere with WinDVD sound for the moment.


John

 

[Blight]

My current living arrangements don't have the room for a 5.1 speaker system. Not to mention I'm saving up for a driving apparatus.

 

[IanD]

Quote:

Originally posted by John K Ian, can you elaborate? I have a copy of Graphedit (I guess this is what I'll need) but frankly don't have the first idea how to use it or even what it's for. BTW, running back to back with PDVD and Zoom/Cinemaster, the PDVD DD sound is noticeably better - very frustrating but let's persevere with WinDVD sound for the moment. John

As I understand it, DirectX links a sequence of filters (modules) together to perform tasks. Such a linkage is called a graph. Media Player tries to automatically create a graph to best suit an input file format from the available registered filters, but unfortunately a user has no control over what filters it selects unless you register/unregister filters to suit.


Anyway, Graphedit is a utility to manually or automatically create and edit a graph, play it with pause and stop options and to save it as a file that can be opened again at a later time.


When you open Graphedit, one of the options is to insert filters. You are presented with a list of all registered DirectX filters and you can insert them into the graph and then click and drag links between the filter pins to connect them together. One of the filters is an Asynchronous File input. When inserted, you can select which file on your PC to open as input. If you right click on the output pin of this filter and select Render option, Graphedit will do a Media Player and automatically complete the rest of the graph as best it can. You can then edit this graph.


For playback of an unencrypted vob with WinDVD filters registered, for example, there will be the file source, mpeg2 splitter, WinDVD video decoder, overlay mixer and video renderer and WinDVD audio decoder followed by an audio renderer. By right clicking on a filter you can often modify the properties.


The WinDVD audio decoder filter offers SPDIF and analogue options, but in the normal scheme of things as soon as the properties dialogue is closed, the settings go back to their non-SPDIF defaults. If you replace the standard audio renderer filter in the graph with the 'default wave-out device' audio filter, then I believe changing the properties in the WinDVD audio decoder filter to SPDIF will stick when the properties dialogue is closed (but don't hold me to that ;-).


Give it a spin and see if it helps.


Since ZoomPlayer is also supposed to be able to define the filters to be used in a graph, it should also be possible to do it that way. Preferable too because Graphedit is a clunky way to play media files, but it is a good test environment for filter graphs.


Good luck and I hope this helps.


Ian (only an amateur at understanding)

 

[MKANET]

Jeff, I understand what you're trying to do. I'm sure you figured out by now that you dont necessarily need grafedit; especially, if you already can see what filters you end up with using in Zoom Player and you can reasonably control what default filters WMP and Zoom player use by registering/unregistering the filters via command line. I think when things get REALLY messy you can use grafedit.


I honestly think if you want to use zoom player to get the best combination of audio and video filters is to replace WinDVD's audio (which is relatively poor) with Cineplayer 4 (which sounds pretty close to PowerDVD 4's S/PDIF audio). Video filter, you can either use Cineplayer 4 or PowerDVD 4. They both look comparable to me when DXVA is implemented.


Jeff, I just re-read a post you made in this thread. Do you really like PowerDVD 4's S/PDIF passthrough for AC-3/DTS much more than Cineplayer 4's? I found that they are pretty close. Unless, of coarse you're using PowerDVD's stereo or 4 speaker options in conjunction with Prologic 2 or "TruSurroundX" audio processing.

 

[John K]

Ian

Thanks for the input. I may well try playing around with graphedit if all else fails.

Michael,

I think you are talking to me and that you have John K (me)mixed up with JKohn (Jeff).

I haven't got any sense out of the Cineplayer 4 so far and have failed to get Zoom to use its filters. Therefore I can't comment on its sound quality. What I said was that the PDVD sound was much better than the Cinemaster/ATI sound and, yes, I am talking about the DD quality in both cases.

Having not tried the WinDVD audio other than with its own player I wondered whether it might be magically improved under Zoom (as the Cinemaster/ATI sound was). If you can tell me it ain't so, I won't waste my time.


Are there any particular probs with the Cineplayer4 filters? They're dlls rather than axs but they register fine. It's just that Zoom doesn't see them (at least under Win98SE).

Thoughts?


John