[Hagfish]

Well, my win7 beta is finally expiring so I'm going to have to wipe and start from scratch. I'm considering xbmc (have been using mediaportal) but have a few questions. Most of my mkv's have the hd audio converted to flac- I realize that xbmc supports flac, but do you still have to tweak to get the full hd goodness? For example, with MP I had to use madflac/reclock- will xbmc "just work"?


One more question for those that have done it- how much of a beating is it to get dxva working w/ an ati card / dsplayer? One of the reasons I'm considering xbmc is if its faster to get up and running (mainly flac/dxva) but if it's the same or even more involved then I'll prob just stick with trying to recreate my mediaportal setup. Other suggestions very welcome also..

 

[candre23]

Last I saw, FLAC works fine for stereo, but not multichannel. It may be fixed in the recent nightly builds, but I'm fairly certain the stable distribution (9.11) still doesn't do multichannel properly. And by not properly, I mean it mixes up the rear and surround channels.

 

[Mallet21]

DSplayer can use FFdshow so i don't see FLAC being an issue.

 

[Karmyna]



Quote:
Originally Posted by candre23 /forum/post/18234694


Last I saw, FLAC works fine for stereo, but not multichannel. It may be fixed in the recent nightly builds, but I'm fairly certain the stable distribution (9.11) still doesn't do multichannel properly. And by not properly, I mean it mixes up the rear and surround channels.

Then this is only a problem in 7.1 system. IN a 5.1 system there is no rear, opnly surround so this has no impact, no?

 

[Hagfish]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Mallet21 /forum/post/18234761


DSplayer can use FFdshow so i don't see FLAC being an issue.

Guess my next question would be does ffdshow currently handle "hd" flac very well? Back when I was messing with my original setup it wasn't really cutting it, which is why I moved to madflac/reclock..

 

[candre23]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Karmyna /forum/post/18235167


Then this is only a problem in 7.1 system. IN a 5.1 system there is no rear, opnly surround so this has no impact, no?

Yes, but the OP said "Most of my mkv's have the hd audio converted to flac", which means that most of his movies have 7.1.


5.1 FLAC hardly exists anywhere because it is pointless. Any 5.1 track is going to be coming from an AC3 or DTS source. Since it is silly to convert from lossy to lossless (larger file size with no quality improvement), nobody does it.

 

[pheare]



Quote:
Originally Posted by candre23 /forum/post/18236616


Yes, but the OP said "Most of my mkv's have the hd audio converted to flac", which means that most of his movies have 7.1.


5.1 FLAC hardly exists anywhere because it is pointless. Any 5.1 track is going to be coming from an AC3 or DTS source. Since it is silly to convert from lossy to lossless (larger file size with no quality improvement), nobody does it.

This is not true. HD Audio does not necessarily = 7.1


Of the 70 or so blurays I've ripped only a handful have anything more than 5.1. At this point in time, the majority of HD audio tracks are 5.1.


So, FLAC 5.1 (from an HD source) is not uncommon.


To the OP, have you looked at using WMC7 with the Media Browser plugin? I am using that with my flac mkv's no problem. Am using madflac and reclock - launching to external player (mpc-hc)

 

[Hagfish]



Quote:
Originally Posted by pheare /forum/post/18236717



So, FLAC 5.1 (from an HD source) is not uncommon.

Yep- most if not all of my collection is truehd/dts-ma converted to flac, but still 5.1

Quote:
Originally Posted by pheare /forum/post/18236717


To the OP, have you looked at using WMC7 with the Media Browser plugin? I am using that with my flac mkv's no problem. Am using madflac and reclock - launching to external player (mpc-hc)

I need to look at that it seems like a lot of people use it but I haven't really researched it.. Pretty easy to set up? So the vids aren't actually playing in media center? It just uses a modified MC as the frontend?

 

[Karmyna]



Quote:
Originally Posted by candre23 /forum/post/18236616


Yes, but the OP said "Most of my mkv's have the hd audio converted to flac", which means that most of his movies have 7.1.


5.1 FLAC hardly exists anywhere because it is pointless. Any 5.1 track is going to be coming from an AC3 or DTS source. Since it is silly to convert from lossy to lossless (larger file size with no quality improvement), nobody does it.

Almost all of my original disk have a 5.1 DTSMA, THD or PCM track.


And anyway, depending on which codec you use when ripping and converting to flac you may end up with a 5.1 version of your 7.1 rare audio track anyway because some of them can only do 5.1 channel.


Oh, there are also some mono lossless track, stereo lossless track, maybe some 3.1, 4.1 and 5.0 audio track. Those all exist also you know.

 

[pheare]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish /forum/post/18236833


Yep- most if not all of my collection is truehd/dts-ma converted to flac, but still 5.1


I need to look at that it seems like a lot of people use it but I haven't really researched it.. Pretty easy to set up? So the vids aren't actually playing in media center? It just uses a modified MC as the frontend?

Yes it is easy to setup, there is some organization of your movies, as the directory structure has to be just so. I find as a bonus, you actually can (i do) use MetaBrowser to download and maintain the metadata.


I have mine playing in MPC-HC, but you don't need to. In WMC, I was having issues with audio cutting out for a split second here and there - no issues in mpc. I just got tired of trying to fix it.


If you do decide to use mpc, there is a bit of config needed to get it to launch correctly (mpc will not take focus, so remote doesn't work). At least there was in the previous version of MB, apparently the recently released thunderblade addresses the issue - though I haven't checked as my setup is working great now. Assuming the issue hasn't been fixed in Thunderblade, this guide will get you there.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010...media-browser/


For sure check out the Chocolate theme, very nice.


Check out the Community Tracker for all kinds of tips and guides:

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/

 

[Hagfish]

Thanks for the info - I'd like to give it a test run on my office pc (Vista MCE).. Any disadvantages or major differences I'll encounter doing it on vista as opposed to win7?

 

[pheare]

That I don't know. I've only used it on win7. Functionality wise, it should be the same.

 

[Balthazar2k4]

Thought I would chime in to defend XBMC. The latest nightly builds do properly support (map)FLAC 7.1. The developers (mostly gnif2) have spent quite a bit of time rebuilding the audio subsystem in XBMC. Also, XBMC now supports DXVA2 in Vista/Win7 through and official implementation and WinXP with DSPlayer.

 

[Hagfish]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Balthazar2k4 /forum/post/18238900


Thought I would chime in to defend XBMC. The latest nightly builds do properly support (map)FLAC 7.1. The developers (mostly gnif2) have spent quite a bit of time rebuilding the audio subsystem in XBMC. Also, XBMC now supports DXVA2 in Vista/Win7 through and official implementation and WinXP with DSPlayer.

Sorry, I may be reading this wrong, maybe you can clarify.. So with vista/7 I can grab a nightly build and should be good to go with dxva/flac? But if I have windows xp I need nightly build plus dsplayer?


ps- this is for a radeon 4000 series hdmi if that makes a difference..

 

[Balthazar2k4]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish /forum/post/18238983


Sorry, I may be reading this wrong, maybe you can clarify.. So with vista/7 I can grab a nightly build and should be good to go with dxva/flac? But if I have windows xp I need nightly build plus dsplayer?

Sorry, I am assuming too much. Yes, if you have Vista/Win7 a nightly build will be all you need and much simpler to setup. With WinXP it gets a bit more complicated. XBMC with DSPlayer is a separate branch (currently) of XBMC. You would need to download a copy from http://passion-xbmc.org/gros_fichier...ayer/index.php . Also, there is quite a bit more setup involved and I would recommend reading the forum thread on DSPlayer in the XBMC Forum.


Edit: I see you have a Radeon card. There are some known issues with XBMCs DXVA2 implementation and ATI cards. You might want to check the XBMC thread for more info http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=69306

 

[Hagfish]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Balthazar2k4 /forum/post/18239033


Sorry, I am assuming too much. Yes, if you have Vista/Win7 a nightly build will be all you need and much simpler to setup. With WinXP it gets a bit more complicated. XBMC with DSPlayer is a separate branch (currently) of XBMC. You would need to download a copy from http://passion-xbmc.org/gros_fichier...ayer/index.php . Also, there is quite a bit more setup involved and I would recommend reading the forum thread on DSPlayer in the XBMC Forum.


Edit: I see you have a Radeon card. There are some known issues with XBMCs DXVA2 implementation and ATI cards. You might want to check the XBMC thread for more info http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=69306

Very nice- just grabbed a nightly build and fired it up.. Worked as advertised with a few things to note though.. Dxva worked great with 264 encodes, but no video on vc-1 - this could have something to do with the vid card on my office pc (nvidia 9400gt) I'm testing on. Also flac worked, but this was through headphones, no hdmi so I'll still need to test on the main rig with the ati/hdmi/onkyo..

 

[Balthazar2k4]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish /forum/post/18239217


Very nice- just grabbed a nightly build and fired it up.. Worked as advertised with a few things to note though.. Dxva worked great with 264 encodes, but no video on vc-1 - this could have something to do with the vid card on my office pc (nvidia 9400gt) I'm testing on. Also flac worked, but this was through headphones, no hdmi so I'll still need to test on the main rig with the ati/hdmi/onkyo..

Glad it is working for you. The DXVA2 implementation is in early development and elupus is still working on it, but it is definitely a good start. I would recommend following the thread in the XBMC forum for updates. I encode all of my titles in H264 so I can't comment on VC1 playback.

 

[Hagfish]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Balthazar2k4 /forum/post/18239320


I encode all of my titles in H264 so I can't comment on VC1 playback.

Interesting you should say that- I just tried a avc/264 vid that I hadn't run through ripbot/handbrake and I got the dreaded lower third green screen that I had read about from the thread you mentioned.. So it appears it this stage it's very picky about profiles.. Getting there but not quite ready for prime time unless you take the time to properly encode all your vids.. Also seems some people have had low volume issues with ac3/dts (but that was early in the thread).. I'll keep bangin away at it though.

 

[Balthazar2k4]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagfish /forum/post/18239353


Interesting you should say that- I just tried a avc/264 vid that I hadn't run through ripbot/handbrake and I got the dreaded lower third green screen that I had read about from the thread you mentioned.. So it appears it this stage it's very picky about profiles.. Getting there but not quite ready for prime time unless you take the time to properly encode all your vids.. Also seems some people have had low volume issues with ac3/dts (but that was early in the thread).. I'll keep bangin away at it though.

Yeah, I re-encode all of my vids with RipBot. They all play without issue on XBMC with an ION GPU.

 

[Hagfish]

Unfortunately not such great results on the real htpc setup.. Flac audio seemed super weak, just as did before with mediaportal before I used madflac/reclock. Also, if I changed the xbmc setting from analog to digital audio, it sounded better, but it was sending it out as DD and my lights would come on the receiver.. Is this normal behavior? It actually did sound better this way, but there was something not right about DD lighting up for flac audio..