Some of my movies are AC3 others come up as stereo So no sound sometimes

[RTIInstaller]

So here is the problem on my old raid I have 3.9 TB of movie VOB files , when played back in myth or xbmc these movies playback with either AC3 or stereo obviously stereo is not going to output out of a coax/optical output so I have to change the setting on the output device for each movie that is different otherwise I wont hear anything. The only way around this I can see is to have two simultaneous analog and digital outputs on the playback machines, or batch convert the whole lot into a different format?

Thoughts?

[TheFu]

No real answer. Much more specifics about your hardware, codecs, and equipment is probably needed to "know" the answer.

VOB files are huge. Why not convert them all to about 1/3rd the size and drop all the non-extras?
Handbrake-CLI at 19.5R doesn't show any artifacts that I notice. It can transcode pretty easily at about an hour per 2hr movie for the conversion to h.264 with audio copies (I retain English, French and Spanish audio) and subtitles included in the resulting MKV file. Of course, the CPU and RAM available will matter. Don't bother transcoding if your XBMC machine is an Atom-based or low end CPU and you probably want to pull the VOB directory over to the physical machine, even on a GigE LAN.

I don't keep any intermedia VOB files around (deleted when I box up the DVD to the attic), but I can say that AC3 or Stereo doesn't seem to matter for playback through HDMI connections. I don't have optical or coax audio connections. Sorry.

My xbmc box has nvidia hardware and MPEG + h.264 codec support built-in. I suppose the drivers could be handling the audio conversion to PCM for me, but I know that a WD TV Live HD never had sound issues before I switched to XBMC either.

I also record TV shows and retain whatever audio channels were included in the broadcast. PBS often has 3+ audio tracks, which makes it fun to find the correct one to mark as "main" during playback.

[nickrout]

So here is the problem on my old raid I have 3.9 TB of movie VOB files , when played back in myth or xbmc these movies playback with either AC3 or stereo obviously stereo is not going to output out of a coax/optical output so I have to change the setting on the output device for each movie that is different otherwise I wont hear anything. The only way around this I can see is to have two simultaneous analog and digital outputs on the playback machines, or batch convert the whole lot into a different format?

Thoughts?

ay stereo won't play out your coax/optical out? It does on my system.

What bitrate is the audio on the the files that do not play properly. mediainfo helps you to find out.

[RTIInstaller]

I am looking at replacing the video card as the best solution.
Looking at this card because it has HDMI audio out. its silent and has a low profile which I need ASUS GeForce 210 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express

http://www.amazon.com/EN210-SILENT-DI-1GD3-V2/dp/B004I8W4VI

It is also on XBMC's list of working cards for future updates http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=AudioEngine

[nickrout]

I am looking at replacing the video card as the best solution.
Looking at this card because it has HDMI audio out. its silent and has a low profile which I need ASUS GeForce 210 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express

http://www.amazon.com/EN210-SILENT-DI-1GD3-V2/dp/B004I8W4VI

It is also on XBMC's list of working cards for future updates http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=AudioEngine

Replacing the video card will not solve this problem. Why don't you respond to my previous reply?

[RTIInstaller]

Replacing the video card will not solve this problem. Why don't you respond to my previous reply?

I have not checked the bit rate but its an old winfast px 8600gt tdh card from 2007.

The sound does however play great.. pcm, ac3 and so forth through the Zotac zbox id41 I am using as the other front end

The digital audio is coming off the old msi motherboard.

I would much rather come up with a single hdmi solution to the situation

Thanks

.

[BicyclerBoy]

The GT210 was rubbish when it was released..

Better choices:
The GT620 (rebadged 530) or 520 (==610) or 430

note: none of the 600 series cards are kepler, just badge re-engineering..

The HD4000 GPU in latest intel iCPUs would be a match for some of the above.
The intel drivers (with vaapi) is getting close to being a good option.

[nickrout]

I have not checked the bit rate but its an old winfast px 8600gt tdh card from 2007.

The sound does however play great.. pcm, ac3 and so forth through the Zotac zbox id41 I am using as the other front end

The digital audio is coming off the old msi motherboard.

I would much rather come up with a single hdmi solution to the situation

Thanks

.

sounds to me like your spdif to 48kHz, it is possibly sending analogue at 44.1kHz. There is a setting in advanced audio in mythtv's frontend setup screens.

[RTIInstaller]

The GT210 was rubbish when it was released..

Better choices:
The GT620 (rebadged 530) or 520 (==610) or 430

note: none of the 600 series cards are kepler, just badge re-engineering..

The HD4000 GPU in latest intel iCPUs would be a match for some of the above.
The intel drivers (with vaapi) is getting close to being a good option.

Yeah but from what I have been told they are lower power consumption. I wanted to go with a 430 but I have a very small chassis and power supply. A lot of guys on line have said good things when using the 210 with myth buntu. That all said see my reply to nick below.

[RTIInstaller]

sounds to me like your spdif to 48kHz, it is possibly sending analogue at 44.1kHz. There is a setting in advanced audio in mythtv's frontend setup screens.

Well I did a stupid thing and put the 210 video card in my machine and guess what?

Now it wont boot into the Gui, it just drops into a command line asking for a user name and password. I did all the usual recommended stuff such as a command line update of the nividia drivers and so forth trid to load gnome from a comand line but nothing, it is just plain detrumined to boot to the comand line and stay there