The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC - The Something Awful Forums

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dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

luma posted:

I've recently jumped into the HTPC world with the Asus P5N7A-VM motherboard and I have to say it's been pretty great so far! The system is running Vista Ultimate x64 with VMC.

I am however having one weird audio problem. I am running HDMI to my projector (Mitsubishi HC5500) and optical audio to my receiver (Panasonic SA-XR57). The receiver supports DD/DTS but not WMA Pro. I am running optical to the receiver separately from the HDMI feed as the receiver also will not pass 1080p. I have configured the digital output in Vista's speaker properties for DD and DTS but left WMA unchecked.

The problem is that whenever I play a WMV video file with multi-track WMA audio streams I only get stereo audio passed to my receiver. Here's an example file:
code:
Audio
Format                           : WMA3
Format profile                   : M2
Codec ID                         : 162
Codec ID/Info                    : Windows Media Audio 3
Description of the codec         : Windows Media Audio 10 Professional - 640 kbps, 48 kHz, 5.1 channel 24 bit 1-pass CBR
Duration                         : 1h 44mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 640 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 6 channels
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Language                         : en-us
All other formats work fine and pass multi-channel audio information via S/PDIF as expected. I've installed the latest Vista Codec Pack. This problem persists if I use MPC-HC, Zoom, VMC, or WMP11.

Any thoughts as to what might be happening?

Best thing to do is open the file in graphedit and see what your filter graph looks like. Could be that you need to promote or demote some of your audio filters and/or change some of the filter properties.

Which reminds me, I found a sweet replacement for graphedit the other day, graphstudio. If you fire it up as administrator you should be able to modify your filter priorities easily enough if need be.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2009 03:11

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 22:40

dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

el_caballo posted:

I'll probably step up to a HDTV once I get my tax return in a month or so but I'm wondering if I'll need an upgrade on HTPC to do 720p. (Right now the plan is to get a Samsung LN32A450 that can only do 720p.)

AMD Athlon64 3200+ @ 2 ghz
2 gigs ram
9800 pro
running MediaPortal 1.0

Right off the bat this can't handle 720p files. The audio desyncs after a few seconds.

So then I got CoreAVC, figuring I'd probably want it even if I did upgrade. But I'm getting basically the same results. Maybe it audio takes a little longer to desync. And I'm pretty certain I've got ffdshow turned off and CoreAVC handling all the h.264 stuff.

So my question is, should I be fiddling with more settings or is a 2 ghz A64 just not enough for 720?

I may be mistaken, but doesn't the 9800 support dxva? Try downloading the mpc-hc standalone filters and enabling DXVA/avivo acceleration in the properties dialogue in graphedit/graphstudio. CoreAVC is good if you want the decoding to stay on CPU, but if you have gpu offloading available it seems almost silly not to use it.

http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

# ¿ Feb 12, 2009 19:31

dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

Loutre posted:

Is the 9800GT + an E8400 processor on 4GB of RAM not enough for HD playback? I use this computer hooked up to both a 1080p 42" plasma and this monitor and I can't even run 720p videos without random stuttering.

With absolutely nothing running, using the latest CoreAVC (which makes use of hardware acceleration) with Haali's Video Renderer, and ffdshow audio

I've tried every output option in MPC, various decoders and both 720p and 1080p sources, as well as turning this monitor off and making the TV the only one. It can't handle 1080p at all, with the stuttering/pausing happening almost once a minute.

Can we start a new thread with some of this stuff stickied? I swear every page of this thread includes almost this exact question....

Use graphedit or graph studio to assemble the exact filter graph you want to use. Double check the properties pages for any filter you use. Be aware that the "hardware acceleration" that coreavc does is Cuda offloading which is different than avivo or purevideo video acceleration. I've personally never bothered with coreavc since it has always been targeted as the "fastest software decoder" which doesn't really speak to it's suitability for leveraging hardware acceleration. Your system specs look more than sufficient for playing back any high-def 1080[pi]/720p video that is in vc-1 or x264. Try downloading the mpc-hc standalone directshow filters and playing your video through those in graphedit with hardware accel enabled in the properites box. Also during the windowsed playback you should open the performance viewer (or whatever the hell microsoft is calling it these days) and watch for processor utilization as well as disk i/o.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2009 20:36

dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

ShaneB posted:

install CCCP

Beware! Codec packs are generally poor practice. The shotgun approach to installing codecs/filters often times ends with unexpected render graphs. YMMV, but the trend around here seems to be advocacy towards installing specific codecs as needed.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2009 20:11

dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

Wood for Sheep posted:

Ok, I discovered today that my Satellite STB has a Coax out, but it puts it all on channel 3. So now I'm trying to set this up for recording using MediaPortal. What I hope to get to is:

-MediaPortal tunes to channel 3 at all times (The TV Server already has found only channel 3)
-When I want to change channels, it changes the STB using my IR Blaster

I haven't looked into this too much, but GB-PVR might do this more easily. We'll see. Let me know if you've got any ideas to help me out.

You'll have to excuse me if you already answered this and I missed it, but why on earth would you want to use rf capture over coax from a satellite stb?!? This is bar none the absolute worst signal path that you could possibly get to your htpc. What capture card are you using on your PC? Does it have an svideo input? How about your STB? That coax output on your STB is for people with stone age TVs...

# ¿ Mar 19, 2009 23:26

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 22:40

dfn_doe: Apr 12, 2005; I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW STUPID FUCKING CATCHPHRASE OVERLORDS

Alright, I've had this thread bookmarked and have checked it daily pretty much since its inception. It has gotten to the point that nearly every page asks a question which has been answered at least once on the previous 2 pages. I'm dropping this one from my thread bookmarks. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on this topic, but I've tired of repeating the same advice again and again for people who can't be bothered to read back a few pages.

Good luck everyone. Maybe one of you will be kinda enough to PM me when we have a new thread with all the FAQs pinned in the first page.

BTW: there was someone a few days ago who erroneously said that the arcsoft totalmedia 3.5 directshow filters couldn't be called from external programs. They can, I've recently switched from the powerdvd filters to the arcsoft ones when I realized that the latest OEM software for my hdhomerun includes an oem license for arcsoft totalmedia 3.5. For what it's worth the arcsoft filters seem to be a bit more configurable than the cyberlink ones from powerdvd AND they included a sweet deinterlacing filter which is seperate from the main decoder filters.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2009 01:15

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