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44.1KHz or 48KHz as soundcard setting?
- Thread starter sanderh
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Irrelevant as you use "passthrough" (which I told you many, many times, you shouldn't)
From the many many times Ive read this questions...I think James always says that using "passthrough" pretty much begs the question...why use reclock at all then?
In any case, the output on your card in my opinion should be matching whatever your file is recorded at...ie, movies recorded at 48000Hz then use that. If playing CD audio recorded at 44 then use 44.
Regards
In any case, the output on your card in my opinion should be matching whatever your file is recorded at...ie, movies recorded at 48000Hz then use that. If playing CD audio recorded at 44 then use 44.
Regards
- Joined
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... and with SPDIF passthrough this setting is irrelevant - as the soundcard doesn't do anything.
James, we have discussed this item over and over before but I still don t agree with you (not meant as flaming, just a discussions where things can be learnt from! 
). I ll explain why:
If your display timings are EXACTLY the same as the media that is played, you will benefit from what ReClock has to offer: Smoothing and Synchronisation.
This is the first reason why I use ReClock.
Second:
When using ReClock with Powerstrip and a player like MPC-HC (which cannot auto-detect the fps of the media and send some kind of signal to Powerstrip), you can use the vbsscript to auto-change the res/refresh rate of your display. If I am correct only ReClock has this option (and of course a lot of software players internally but not mine, MPC HC).
So two important reasons for me to keep using ReClock also when I only use SPDIF Passthrough.
Feel free to correct me where wrong or where you disagree.
). I ll explain why:If your display timings are EXACTLY the same as the media that is played, you will benefit from what ReClock has to offer: Smoothing and Synchronisation.
This is the first reason why I use ReClock.
Second:
When using ReClock with Powerstrip and a player like MPC-HC (which cannot auto-detect the fps of the media and send some kind of signal to Powerstrip), you can use the vbsscript to auto-change the res/refresh rate of your display. If I am correct only ReClock has this option (and of course a lot of software players internally but not mine, MPC HC).
So two important reasons for me to keep using ReClock also when I only use SPDIF Passthrough.
Feel free to correct me where wrong or where you disagree.
and I ll post a relevant, little off-topic, subject about AC3filter SPDIF passthrough here too because I can t get any feedback from the AC3filter forum (seems a little dead):
1.
When I play regular dvd's (VIDEO_TS folders with included .vob files) SPDIF passthrough work great (sample 1). I can see in the Decoder info that the sound is only beeing passed through by AC3 filter and that the filter does not decode it.
2.
When I play HD content, it gets different. Playing .mkv files gives my also SPDIF passthrough (sample 2). But playing my .wmv material, the ac3 filter has to decode it (sample 3) or else I do not see Dolby Digital on my receiver display. I know this has something to do with how the movie was ripped and decoded. Also also see that the presented signal is PCM. I would like to know if these kind of files (where the audio is presented in PCM) can be played in some way that my receiver does the decoding.
Before asking more questions, Ill first post this one, one thing at a time
sample 1:
sample 2:
sample 3:
1.
When I play regular dvd's (VIDEO_TS folders with included .vob files) SPDIF passthrough work great (sample 1). I can see in the Decoder info that the sound is only beeing passed through by AC3 filter and that the filter does not decode it.
2.
When I play HD content, it gets different. Playing .mkv files gives my also SPDIF passthrough (sample 2). But playing my .wmv material, the ac3 filter has to decode it (sample 3) or else I do not see Dolby Digital on my receiver display. I know this has something to do with how the movie was ripped and decoded. Also also see that the presented signal is PCM. I would like to know if these kind of files (where the audio is presented in PCM) can be played in some way that my receiver does the decoding.
Before asking more questions, Ill first post this one, one thing at a time
sample 1:
sample 2:
sample 3:
No, there is no way. WMV files have WMA audio, not AC3/DD. I do not think there are any amps that can decode WMA. If there are, they are very very rare. So you must decode to PCM on the PC and then re-encode to AC3.
There would be no point. For your amp to decode it you would have to decode the WMA track to PCM then re-encode it to AC3 on the PC, which is exactly what AC3Filter is doing on the fly.
On your second question, I do sympathise. If you search this forum you will see that I and several others have made exactly the same points to James.
James, does seem to downplay, even ignore, the clock synchronisation benefits if Reclock that Ogo made much of, seeing it exclusively as a tool to speedup/slow down video and/or audio, when either fps/refresh rates do not match or to correct PAL speedup. He also makes much of the difficulty of getting refresh rates accurate enough to use s/pdif passthrough.
However, from my personal experience, I have found it as difficult, if not more so, to get a filter chain that works (without timeouts and/or drop/repeats) for all the different media types as I found it to get my video timings spot on for s/pdif to work well.
At least the process for improving s/pdif performance is understood. The same does not seem to be true when it comes to varying Reclock resampling performance with different filters. What's more, timeouts and PCM drop/repeats are far more audible than one or two dropped s/pdif packets (due, we think, to built-in error correction).
However, I think the fans of s/pdif passthrough and James are just going to have to agree to differ. There is little to be gained by continuing to flog a dead horse!
On your second question, I do sympathise. If you search this forum you will see that I and several others have made exactly the same points to James.
James, does seem to downplay, even ignore, the clock synchronisation benefits if Reclock that Ogo made much of, seeing it exclusively as a tool to speedup/slow down video and/or audio, when either fps/refresh rates do not match or to correct PAL speedup. He also makes much of the difficulty of getting refresh rates accurate enough to use s/pdif passthrough.
However, from my personal experience, I have found it as difficult, if not more so, to get a filter chain that works (without timeouts and/or drop/repeats) for all the different media types as I found it to get my video timings spot on for s/pdif to work well.
At least the process for improving s/pdif performance is understood. The same does not seem to be true when it comes to varying Reclock resampling performance with different filters. What's more, timeouts and PCM drop/repeats are far more audible than one or two dropped s/pdif packets (due, we think, to built-in error correction).
However, I think the fans of s/pdif passthrough and James are just going to have to agree to differ. There is little to be gained by continuing to flog a dead horse!
this clears things up for me! So there no possible way to passthrough the audio of a .wmv file, bummer. Maybe I ll give it a shot and let my HTPC do all the decoding of all my content.
What do I have to do in order to achieve this? Config ac3filter in a way so all media is beeing decoded and keep ReClock the same as I have now? (by now I mean that ReClock only functions as passthrough because it gets its feed by AC3filter). If so, how do I config AC3filter?
What do I have to do in order to achieve this? Config ac3filter in a way so all media is beeing decoded and keep ReClock the same as I have now? (by now I mean that ReClock only functions as passthrough because it gets its feed by AC3filter). If so, how do I config AC3filter?
One more question about your last reply (I thought about it a little longer now ):
Let s take my example of an .wmv which contains wma audio:
This file is beeing decoded by ac3filter, after this the audio is presented to reclock as SPDIF. Reclock smoothens the file and after this sends it as SPDIF to my receiver.
But then what? How does my receiver 'reads' the signal? It is presented as an SPDIF signal so my receiver must be thinking that he needs to decode it?
Can you explain what I don t understand here Jong?
thxz.
):Let s take my example of an .wmv which contains wma audio:
This file is beeing decoded by ac3filter, after this the audio is presented to reclock as SPDIF. Reclock smoothens the file and after this sends it as SPDIF to my receiver.
But then what? How does my receiver 'reads' the signal? It is presented as an SPDIF signal so my receiver must be thinking that he needs to decode it?
Can you explain what I don t understand here Jong?
thxz.
It is not being decoded by AC3Filter, it is being decoded by another filter before it gets to AC3Filter. That is why AC3Filter sees multi-channel PCM on its input. Check the filter list in your player to see what is doing it. In MPC-HC you can right click and select "filters", if not in D3D mode. In TheaterTek you can <ctrl-c> and look on the information tab.
Then, you have AC3Filter set up to encode all multi-channel PCM to AC3. So, your amp sees AC3 over s/pdif.
WMA -------> PCM ----------> AC3
-------Filter?--------AC3Filter
Then, you have AC3Filter set up to encode all multi-channel PCM to AC3. So, your amp sees AC3 over s/pdif.
WMA -------> PCM ----------> AC3
-------Filter?--------AC3Filter
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AC3Filter is actually of limited use as it can only decode AC3 and DTS. You need to find a decoder for all the different types of multichannel audio you encounter
For AC3 and DTS, most players can do it themselves, or with TheaterTek by buying the advanced audio pack, or whatever it is called. However, i would not recommend buying that better to use AC3Filter or ffdshow.
For AAC, MPC-HC can do it internally. TheaterTek would need ffdshow. Some AAC files uses multi-channel audio @44.1Khz; If using Reclock to re-encode to AC3, it may be best to set ffdshow to resample all audio to 48khz, or you can set AC3Filter to process PCM and do this.
For FLAC you can use ffdshow or I would recommend MadFLAC
WMA will normally be handled automatically using Microsoft filters (if you have WMP10/11 installed)
TrueHD and EAC3 can now be handled by ffdshow-tryout beta 6
You still need commercial codecs for DTS-HD and I think only the Arcsoft ones are usable in Directshow.
Turn off s/pdif in AC3Filter so it does not re-encode everything, pass the multi-channel PCM to Reclock and then tick the "Use AC3 Encoder" box in Reclock. Then James will be your friend!
Or you can use AC3Filter to re-encode everything and stop Reclock resampling. Your choice!The pieces are falling more and together as you give my a clear explanation to my questions Jong, big thanks for this!
So, I ve checked the filters that are used on the 3 mediatypes I m using. I put a short explanation with every filter why I think it is beeing used, feel free to correct where I am wrong):
.MKV:
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, in this case only passes the SPDIF through)
- CoreAVC Video Decoder (installed by myself, needed for .mkv container decoding)
VIDEO_TS material (dvd's):
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, only passes the SPDIF through)
- MPEG-2 Video Decoder low merit (I see that this is one of the internal filters of MPC-HC, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use for 'VIDEO_TS' content?)
.WMV:
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- WMVVideo Decoder DMO (needed video decoder because it s a .WMV file, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use?)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, in this case sees a PCM input signal that is already decoded by the WMAudio Decoder DMO, and ENcodes it to SPDIF that my receiver can handle)
- WMAudio Decoder DMO (needed audio decoder (that decodes the wma audio to PCM) because it s a .WMV file, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use?
You see that I have some questions at the some filters that are beeing used. Hopefully I m on the right track with all understand better what happens with video and audio.
So, I ve checked the filters that are used on the 3 mediatypes I m using. I put a short explanation with every filter why I think it is beeing used, feel free to correct where I am wrong):
.MKV:
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, in this case only passes the SPDIF through)
- CoreAVC Video Decoder (installed by myself, needed for .mkv container decoding)
VIDEO_TS material (dvd's):
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, only passes the SPDIF through)
- MPEG-2 Video Decoder low merit (I see that this is one of the internal filters of MPC-HC, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use for 'VIDEO_TS' content?)
.WMV:
- VMR9 Renderless (selected my myself in MPC settings as directshow video)
- Reclock Audio Renderer (installed prefered audio renderer installed by myself)
- WMVVideo Decoder DMO (needed video decoder because it s a .WMV file, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use?)
- AC3filter (selected my myself, in this case sees a PCM input signal that is already decoded by the WMAudio Decoder DMO, and ENcodes it to SPDIF that my receiver can handle)
- WMAudio Decoder DMO (needed audio decoder (that decodes the wma audio to PCM) because it s a .WMV file, is this a good filter or do you maybe have other recommendations for a filter to use?
You see that I have some questions at the some filters that are beeing used. Hopefully I m on the right track with all understand better what happens with video and audio.
Most is fine. The Microsoft DMO filters are good for wmv.
In each case you are missing one item - normally the one at the bottom of the MPC-HC list - that is the "splitter". The filter that breaks apart the audio and video from the container for decoding. For mkv that should be Haali Splitter (you should disable the internal "Matroska Splitter", which is out of date).
You appear to misunderstand the way mkv works. As you say it is a container not a codec. It is one of the most flexible containers out there. It can have AVC/H.264, MPEG-2, even wmv video in it and AC3/DTS/FLAC/LPCM/TrueHD..... audio. So an mkv will use Haali to split it apart, but the filters used in decoding will depend entirely on what is in it. The example you give is just one of many many possibilities. CoreAVC is actually decoding the AVC video stream.
Regarding your other question, as James has said many times "use the preferred option!" (DirectDraw). In fact if you are using VMR9 D3D you have to use DD. Direct3D will not work.
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Can this filter be altered to make it work better or is it ok to leace it standard?
Ok, I ve checked it again and you are right, there is an item at the bottom of the filter list, but this item is different on all 3 media types I m using:
- For my .MKV files there is indeed the Haali Media Splitter (I ve installed version 1.9.42.1 and I ve put the setting 'Auto Load VSFilter' to YES, is this correct?).
- For my .WMV files I see a filter called 'WM ASF Reader'
- For my VIDEO_TS content I see a filter called 'DVD Navigator'
I have DISABLED all internal filters of MPC-HC and added 3 external filters: Haali Media Splitter, Core AVC Video Decoder and AC3Filter.
ok, so playing .mkv files will not always be the same and sometimes I will see that MPC-HC uses other filters correct?
check!
Not sure to be honest. But I'd say probably no and it's not worth the bother. There is hardly any wmv stuff around anyway, mostly several years old or produced for demo purposes.
Yeah sorry, that was a brain slip/typo on my part. Should have read "For mkv that should be Haali Splitter". I will correct it.
Depends. It will break any hardware acceleration, but its OK if you are happy to software decode. Personally I have that set to "No" and let MPC-HC's internal subtitle handler do the work, which it can do WITH hardware acceleration.
OK, but personally not what I would do. MPC has a very good DXVA decoder for AVC and VC-1. If you have a DXVA capable card I would use MPC Video Decoder. But of course you can use CoreAVC to software decode AVC video if you wish. It will not work for VC-1 though, when you will probably fall back on the WMVVideo Decoder DMO , which will also run in software mode.
Yes
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