Guide: Setting Up Bitstreaming With Your Windows 7 HTPC – PART I

by Damian on February 2, 2010 · 618 comments

in Guides

If you have been following along with my last few posts (The Family IT Guy and Setting Up MPC) the main goal that I was working towards was to finally set up bitstreaming of HD Audio (DTS-MA and TrueHD) with my HTPC. Leading up to the last few months this was only possible by using an expensive sound card (such as the Xonar HDAV1.3) along with dedicated software (such as PowerDVD and TotalMedia Theatre). Additionally, this would only work either from a Blu Ray disc or a Blu Ray disc image/structure, so you were out of luck if you had ripped your Blu Ray discs into formats like mkv. This was less then ideal for me since whenever I purchase a Blu Ray movie the first thing I do is rip it to my server in either ts or mkv format, so I would need to reformat my Blu Ray rips into a Blu Ray structure and also pay to use one of the 3rd party softwares. Things started to get more interesting with AMD releasing the 5xxx series GPU which supports bitstreaming, and Intel released the core i5/i3 CPU which had built in support for bitstreaming as well. However, you are still stuck with the same requirement of having your videos in a Blu Ray structure and having to pay for a 3rd party solution (although I know TMT has yet to release a patch for this to work with the 5xxx GPUs). Well, it looks like there is finally a solution. Damien Bain-Thouverez (also known as Albain on Doom9), developer of Media Control, has devised a way to allow for full bitstreaming of HD Audio through FFDShow. For those who don’t know, FFDShow is a very popular DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats. With the latest beta FFDShow, you can now bitstream from standalone files using either MPC or WMC/WMP. Thanks to the help of the folks over at AVSForum (especially Tulli who provided much of the information for this guide, Andy o, vladd, and SamuriHL) and of course the work by Damien on FFDShow I now have bitstreaming working! The steps are slightly different for setting up using MPC HC (Part I) or WMC/WMP (Part II), so I will try to work through each situation. Also, I can only verify that this works with my setup, so different setups may yield different results.

DISCLAIMER – It is highly recommended that you have a backup or image of your O/S that you can revert to in the instance that something doesn’t work. Really this should be done before installing any software, but I find it particularly important when dealing with codecs/filters. Also, make sure you download the correct files (x32 vs x64).When I first set up my PC I make a backup immediately with WHS (I call the backup something like “W7 Clean”) and lock the backup so it does not get deleted. I have used WHS quite a few times to restore to this backup and it has worked like a charm.

My Setup:

  • Windows 7 x32 HTPC w/ Sapphire 5670 GPU connected to Receiver via HDMI
  • Onkyo TX-SR906 AVR, 5.1 speaker setup connected to TV via HDMI
  • Panasonic Viera TH-58PZ800U Plasma HDTV

Hardware Requirements:

  • PC running Windows (preferably Windows 7) with either an AMD 5xxx GPU, Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale CPU, or HD Bitstream capable Sound Card
  • A Receiver that can decode the DTS(MA) and TrueHD

—————SETTING UP WITH MPC HC—————

Files to Download:

Setup:

1. Install AMD Video Card Driver (only applies to 5xxx GPU). Restart PC

2. Install Realtek ATI HDMI Audio Driver (only applies to 5xxx GPU) or Intel Driver. Restart PC

3. Set up HDMI Audio (showing setup using 5xxx GPU)

  • In toolbar right click on speaker icon and go to “Playback Devices”. The Realtek HDMI Output should be set as default under the Playback Tab. Highlight this, and click the “Configure” button.

  • Walk through the speaker setup, which is pretty self explanatory.

  • After the Speaker Setup is complete you should be back at the Playback Tab. Select RealTek HDMI Output and click the “Properties” button. Under the Supported Formats tab, you should see all supported formats, including DTS-HD and TrueHD.

4. UPDATE – IT APPEARS THAT WITH THE LATEST ATI CCC RELEASE (10.4) THE EDID ISSUE HAS BEEN FIXED, SO THIS STEP SHOULD NO LONGER BE NEEDED!!! Download and install EDID override (only applies to 5xxx GPU). There appears to be an issue with the ATI drivers not parsing correctly the EDID of certain receivers. Hopefully this will be fixed in an upcoming driver release, but until then you can override the current driver to correct. To make it even more confusing, it appears to only affect Denon, Onkyo, and Sony (but even then not all models). Best idea would be to skip this step completely, set everything up, and if bitstreaming is not working install the EDID override per Tulli’s instructions.

  • Download necessary EDID and extract somewhere on your PC
  • Right click on desktop and select “Personalize”
  • Click on Display -> Change Display Settings
  • Click on Screen of AVR display -> click “Advanced Settings”
  • Select Monitor Tab -> “Properties”
  • Select Driver Tab -> “Update Driver”
  • Select “Browse my computer for updates” -> “Let me pick from a list of drivers my computer” -> “Have Disk” -> “Browse” -> navigate to display device .inf file -> Click Open -> OK -> Install new driver
  • Reboot

5. Install FFDShow. Launch ffdshow audio decoder configuration, go into Output, and tick off all the audio options under the “Pass-through (S/PDIF, HMDI)” settings.

EDIT – IF YOU GET AN “ACM WRAPPER” ERROR WHEN PLAYING MOVIES WITH LPCM TRACKS, GO INTO THE CODECS SECTION OF FFDSHOW AUDIO, SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM, AND FOR UNCOMPRESSED CHANGE FROM DISABLED TO ALL SUPPORTED. BIG THANKS TO DSUDOT FOR HELPING ME TROUBLESHOOT.

6. Install DirectX End-User Runtime if necessary.

7. Install MPC HC. Open MPC HC, go to View -> Options

  • Under “Output” keep default settings. Make sure Audio Renderer is set to “System Default”

  • Under “Internal Filters” uncheck “H264/AVC (ffmpeg)” and “VC1 (ffmpeg)”

  • Under “External Filters” click the “Add Filter” button.

  • Select “ffdshow Audio Decoder” and click OK

  • Highlight ffdshow Audio Decoder and tick “Prefer”

  • Follow the same process, except this time select “Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder” and set it to “Block”

8. Now it is the moment of truth. Navigate to one of more movies that has a DTS(MA) or TrueHD audio track and play it with MPC HC. If all went well you should see the the DTS(MA) or TrueHD logo light up on your Receiver. You can also verify by placing your cursor over the ffdshow icon in your toolbar (pictures below in the bottom right hand corner)

The beauty of using MPC HC as your player is that many Media Center platforms supports the use of a 3rd party player such as MPC. For instance, check out this guide on how to set up MPC as your 3rd party player in WMC + Media Browser. If you have any problems I would definitely recommend visiting one of the resources mentioned below, as there is a wealth of information and very helpful members.

Part II, which will explain how to set up bitstreaming in WMC using the default WMP player, can be found here.

UPDATE – an alternative to using FFDShow for HD Audio bitstreaming is LAV Audio. See my guide here

Links/Resources:


Article by

Hi, my name is Damian, and I'm tech gadget addict! Although I always had some interest in technology, it wasn't until I got my EX470 and more importantly found Mediasmartserver.net, that my interest became an addiction. My goal, aside from world domination and to see the Mets/Broncos win another championship, is to set up the perfect digital home where all my media is available at the click of a button. When I am not writing for Mediasmartserver.net you can find me over at my blog at http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com or follow me on twitter


{ 607 comments }

Rob February 4, 2010 at 5:55 am

Awesome! thanks for this guide.
Though i’m only able to get it to work partially…. I followed all your steps (except the EDID one, since when i check out the audio properties is already says it supports dts-hd and dolby-truehd, *ati 5750 + onkyo 607*).
My problem is only dolby-true HD is working for me…
When I play a true-hd file all is good and the truehd light on my receiver turns on. But when i play a DTS-MA file (tried several, both an original bluray m2ts file with dts-ma stream and a (wanted) test file which i found on a forum which worked for others) only the DTS light gets lid. Do you have any idea what my problem is and how to fix it? Thanks!

other than that i’m patiently waiting for the part 2 of your guide since i’d really like to see this integrated with windows 7 media center /w media browser!

Damian February 4, 2010 at 6:23 am

Rob,

I thnk you need to do the EDID process. I know others were using the EDID for their 607. I just did a search and can’t find the exact EDID, put I would post on AVSForum and someone should be able to point out where the file is (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1179134&highlight=607&page=152)

I should have Part II up in the next day or two. Did you take a look at my writeup on using MPC and integrating with Media Browser?

Rob February 4, 2010 at 7:03 am

Hi Damian,
I was just about to follow your guide for MPC and mediabrowser so thanks for that. The reason why i’d also like the windows media player compatability is that sometimes i play my un-indexed files through the MCE “videos” tab which I presume still uses WMP as the videoplayer.

Other than that thanks for your tip about the EDID process, will try that after all, doenst seem to diffucult as long as i can find the onkyo 607 file!
Keep up the great how-to’s! im glad I ended up on this website :D

Damian February 4, 2010 at 7:35 am

Hi Rob,

Yes, the “Videos” tab does use the default WMP videoplayer. Much of the Part II writeup is done, but I want to test one more thing out first before I post, shouldn’t be much longer.

Glad you have been enjoying the site, hope to keep more content coming so make sure you check back frequently :-)

Rob February 4, 2010 at 4:45 pm

Soo… found a modded file for my onkyo 607, but tulli mentioned it probably wasn’t neccesary put posted a modded file for testing purposes anyway.
So installed it and to my dissapointment it still doesnt work… No idea what im still doing wrong. oh well, maybe with a little miracle i’ll get it to work with WMP or with some newer drivers for my ATI or Realtek (or a newer version of tmt?) and as a last resort a windows reinstall (it’s getting about time for one…).

But I’m off to mexico for the next 2 weeks anyway so who knows what’ll happen in that time! haha.
anyway, thanks again for your advice

Damian February 5, 2010 at 5:40 am

@ Rob,

Hope you have a good time in Mexico, some warm weather would definitely be nice!!! I am going to spend some more time with WMP and bitstreaming (I am just using MPC right now), so I will report back .

Vasilis February 15, 2010 at 6:20 am

Hi Damian thanks for excellent guides and the effort you put in

Same case here, I have Sapphire HD5570-HDMI and Denon 2808 with all the EDIDs from Tulli but only DDTrueHD works, the DTS-MA reverts to the core DTS only.

I am very keen to find out how WMP12/WMC can bitstream because although as you said MPC is good player the GUI is not for HTPC. The bad thing with WMP12 is that it does not accept 3rd party codecs so will it be able to play m2ts files?

Maybe an alternative would be to trying to set XBMC to run fddshow filters for bitstreaming

I so excited to read this new guide for WMC you are preparing because having migrated from WMC-Vista I do not see any other alternative now apart from WMC-W7

Thanks for all

Damian February 15, 2010 at 8:04 am

@ Vasilis,

Funny enough I cannot get bitstreaming to work with my Pioneer VSX94, it only works with my Onkyo. Haven’t been able to solve why.

Don’t forget, if you use MyMovies or Media Browser you can have MPC launch from there. This is what I am using now.

I will probably post the WMP12/WMC guide later today. I actually already have it written, but I have inconsistencies with getting it to work. For your m2ts you actually have to use Gabest instead of the WMP12 m2ts player and then disbale a few things.

I will try to get Part II posted later today

Vasilis February 15, 2010 at 8:38 am

@ Damian

thanks for your fast response. Hope u solver the bitstreaming issue with Pioneer.

Regarding making WMP12 play m2ts files will this be included in the latest guide you are preparing or should I search elsewhere?

Thanks
V

Damian February 15, 2010 at 9:39 am

@ V,

m2ts and mkv are part of the guide. I have actually had this working for a while. m2ts is tricky because WMF does not support VC-1, so you need to shut off WMF and MS Audio Decoder to get it to work properly. Just got some errands to run today and then I will get the guide up in a bit

Vasilis February 16, 2010 at 1:34 pm

Finally I managed to make MPC-HC to work for both DDTrueHD and DTS-MA need to sort out only few audio shuttering issues only!! It all came down to an older version of MPC-HC I was using!

Damian February 16, 2010 at 1:46 pm

Great to hear. So far I have one video that has audio drop outs with MPC (The Last Harry Potter). Otherwise everything works great. Still cleaning up the WMP12/WMC guide, did some more testing last nigth and I get inconsistent results, so trying to pinpoint the problem

Vasilis February 16, 2010 at 2:14 pm

Well in my case Batman Dark Night with DDTrueHD the audio stops when I FF or FR . The DTS-MA is more stable, only few specific movies cause audio shuttering after a while or when I FF/FR

My only problem now left is to make WMC to play all mkv and m2ts files with or w/o bit-streaming. Currently WMC do not play any m2ts and the most strange of all is that although it can see all of my mkv files it cannot play one of them it comes up with a message like the file does not exist or is offline. However, the WMP12 plays the same files fine, very strange maybe codecs issue again!

Damian February 16, 2010 at 2:18 pm

That is weird about the m2ts. You should be able to play these in WMC unless they are VC-1, in which you need to mess around with. Part 2 of my guide will be based off of this codec guide that I put together on my personal blog which I have been using since day one of W7 for playback of all my m2ts/mkv in WMP12/WMC:

http://dbone1026.blogspot.com/2009/10/setting-up-codecs-for-7mc.html

Vasilis February 16, 2010 at 2:21 pm

Thanks for the tip I will read it through see if I can fix some of my issues!!!

Nice One

Cheers

ziggy February 18, 2010 at 7:28 am

Great writeup as always. I got it working fallowed this procedure.
Denon avr890 and samsung lcd TV

nemesi54 February 18, 2010 at 10:39 am

Great guide but there is one thing that i dont get…

If we are going to install the Realtek driver for the HDMI dont we have to NOT install the ATI one??

I mean that we need to UN-check the HDMI audio driver during the Catalyst instalation…

Am i wrong??

Damian February 18, 2010 at 10:50 am

@ Ziggy – great to hear you got it working

@ nemesi54 – the Realtek HDMI driver will overide the ATI one. So if you install CCC first and then install Realtek the realtek driver will get used. If you install Realtek first then CCC should recognize this and not install the ATI HDMI driver

nemesi54 February 18, 2010 at 11:02 am

omg mega speed answer… :D

Thanks for clarifying this….

nemesi54 February 18, 2010 at 11:06 am

Another thing that i forgot…

Is the Realtek driver THAT good instead the ATI one?

PS: Something is wrong with the realtek site..Cant dl the driver…

Damian February 18, 2010 at 11:09 am

I think initially there were problems with the ATI driver, so most people used the Realtek one. Based on what I have read I just went with the realtek driver. You can always test out just using the ATI driver, and if for whatever reason something doesn’t work try installing the Realtek afterwards.

FYI – when you click on download does the Realtek website seem to reload? It took me several clikcs to finally get the download to start

nemesi54 February 18, 2010 at 11:58 am

well i use the ATI HDMI driver and i manage to get DTS MA but no trueHD yet…
I’m thinking to use the realtek driver…

Thing with the site is that i check the”agree with above” box, i click next and it takes me to a page writing that “Object moved to here”.I click here and directs me again to the previous screen!!

This happens all the time again and again..!

Anyway they might have a prob so i’ll wait

Carl Newton February 21, 2010 at 6:35 am

Hi

I have gone through ya guide step by step and i have run into a few problems!

When i install the ffdshow and go to the output options i don’t have any options for DTS HD or Dolby True HD!

Also when i try and add it as an external filter none of the ffdshow codecs are shown!

Anyone have any ideas/suggestions?

Cheers

Carl

Damian February 21, 2010 at 8:09 am

Carl,

Can you confirm what version of FFDShow you are using? Older versions don’t have the TrueHD/DTS(MA) option. Same goes for MPC-HC, what version are you using?

This may also solve your second issue. Let me know

Cheers
Damian

ziggy February 21, 2010 at 9:05 am

So I got my first trueHD Vc-1 movie. When I ripped to mkv it did not work(AVR did not recognize trueHD, only 5.1) Then I ripped to M2ts and it is working in MPC-Hc ( blue light in AVR)
The only problem, it can not be play it from WMC. All my mkv movies play no problem from WMC media browser. I have integrated MPC-HC in The media browser in WMC.
Any idea?

Thank you

ziggy February 21, 2010 at 9:19 am

Vasilis
Funny think is, I have exacly seme problems you have, that include same movie Batman dark knight

Carl Newton February 21, 2010 at 9:22 am

Hi

I am using Media Player Classic Home Cinema Version 1.3.1680.0

And i am using the ffdshow codec veraion 2154 December 8th 2009

I got them both from the links that are listed above.

Are they correct?

CHeers

Damian February 21, 2010 at 9:35 am

Yeah, you have the wrong FFDshow. When I said the latest I am not talking about the download now one (the big green button). If you look below under “Browse Files for ffdshow” you will se the latest is rev3274

Damian February 21, 2010 at 9:38 am

@ Ziggy,

So you cannot get bitstreaming through WMC? You are fine if you play with MPC but not when you try the default WMC player?

Carl Newton February 21, 2010 at 9:46 am

Thats it :)

Cheers for that :)

Carl Newton February 21, 2010 at 9:56 am

And I am using the ati driver and not the realtek one

ziggy February 21, 2010 at 10:09 am

yes, it play fine in MPC, but in WMC the MPC will not open to play M2ts. It says “Video can not be play”

Damian February 21, 2010 at 10:20 am

@ Ziggy,

What do you mean WMC the MPC will not open? Are you talking about the WMC player or MPC (two different things)?

ziggy February 21, 2010 at 12:50 pm

When I am in WMC in the media browser it is switching to MPC when I watch a movie. I did that from your Guide: “Guide: Using MPC HC As Your Video Player In WMC + Media Browser/MyMovies
by Damian on January 29, 2010 · 120 comments”

Sorry I did not know how to explain.

Damian February 21, 2010 at 3:21 pm

@ Ziggy,

Did you set up your m2ts to play with MPC + MediaBrowser as well?

ziggy February 21, 2010 at 10:09 pm

I am afraid I did not. I fallowed the procedure as written above, and I do not think there was anthing about m2ts.
How would I do that?

Thank you for you help

Damian February 22, 2010 at 2:49 am

@ Ziggy,

Makes sense now. So when you are using MediaBrowser WMC is trying to play your m2ts files with its default player (which is the reason why it is not working), where you want it to use MPC instead. Just go into the Media Browser Configuration Tool -> External Players and add m2ts the same way you did mkv.

ziggy February 22, 2010 at 6:36 am

Thank you Damian
I try to fallow this procedure”

4a. Go into your Media Browser Configuration Tool, select Advanced, and go to the External Players tab. Click the Add button and select the media type you want to assign a 3rd party player to. Now click the Select Player button and navigation to the ExternalLauncher.exe file. That is it, Media Browser will now launch MPC for any media type you choose (see my screenshot below, I used mkv as my media type)

but when I click “add” the windows pop up and it say select “media type to add ‘
Then there is no option for m2ts. There is somthing like: dvd, blue ray, unknow, itc. I forgot how I got mkv there before.
Please help

Thank you

Damian February 22, 2010 at 6:40 am

@ ziggy,

m2ts is the same thing as ts, so just select ts. MKV is not showing up now because you have already added it (th elist only shows what formats have not been added)

ziggy February 22, 2010 at 6:57 am

Ok, I did the ts and the location ExternalLauncher.exe (same like mkv)
Still get mesage in wmc : can not play video.
The mkv plays fine

thank you

Damian February 22, 2010 at 7:05 am

@ Ziggy,

So it sounds like it is still not using MPC but instead trying to play with the WMC default player. I have an m2ts movie (iRobot), I just set up ts and MPC launched fine from Media Browser. Not sure why it isn’t working for you. Make sure WMC/MediaBrowser is closed, remove ts, re add it and point to externallauncher, restart WMC, and see if it works now

ziggy February 22, 2010 at 7:43 am

That is exaclly what hapend, is not using mpc and trying to play default wmc player.
The screen blinks like is trying to switch to mpc but it can not.
I did all you said in the last sentence, still the same. Restart pc , samthing.
I will try other movie rip to m2ts and see what happend.

I noticed in the wmc if I point to this m2ts movie “The dark night” it the right corner it does not show the icons about the audio, there is only one icon “blueray movie” Every other mkv movie shows there icons, like resolution, audio format and aspect ratio.

Thank you very much for your effort

Damian February 22, 2010 at 8:08 am

@ Ziggy,

You got me stumped on this one. It is just a single m2ts file, correct? How are you ripping to m2ts? Possibly try to test out by ripping to ts (most of my Blu Rays are ts but I do have a few m2ts that I did test out and working with Media Browser + MPC). We will get to the bottom of this!!!

ziggy February 22, 2010 at 8:43 am

I am using anydvd for m2ts. The movie has it own folder, conain two folders : BDMV and CERTIFICATE. In the BDMV The streem folder contain 12 m2ts files.
How would I conver to ts? The movie is vc-1 and trueHD

Thank you

Damian February 22, 2010 at 8:46 am

Well, there is the answer, you have it saved as a BDMV folder. This is different then a standalone m2ts or mkv. For playback of a BDMV folder (which means you want your PC to play back the movie as if the actual Blu Ray disc was present) you need to purchase separate software like TMT or PDVD, which you would then tell Media Browser to launch. If you want a single m2ts file you need to use a program like Clown_BD, and then you can play back with MPC.

ziggy February 22, 2010 at 12:21 pm

Thank you
Do you mean clown bd v0.75 option?
I downlod that and can not figure out how to use it. I do know if this is the right one. Can not find movie location eac3to?? When I extract to desktop I get clown bd option, if I just open it is clown bd step one. Very confusing

Thank you

Damian February 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm

Here is the wiki I wrote for Clown_BD:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/index.php/Clown_BD

Download Clown_BD here (It has everything you need including eac3to):

http://clownbd.com/Clown_BD_v0.75.zip

Petdroo February 22, 2010 at 3:41 pm

Hi every one, I tried all this, but I could not get the hd lamp on my denon 1909.
Although I did not try the realtec ati driver as ati now have catalyst 10.2.
Should I still try the realtec?
Also any progress on the part 2 for wmc, as since i have put ffdshow on my pc wmc wont play mkv or mpeg2/4
I already have haali media spliter should I delete that?

Damian February 22, 2010 at 4:12 pm

@ Petdroo,

Did you try the EDID override for Denon?

I would uninstall Haali and just use MPC to see if you can get Bitstreaming working first. Once you get that done then you can try WMC. I have the guide about 95% done for Part II and will try to post tomorrow, but there are still some problems I am running in to.

Petdroo February 22, 2010 at 4:24 pm

Yes I did try the edid overide, it works with powerdvd and a bluray disk.
But can’t seem to bitstream hd audio mkv/mpeg movies i have with the above configuration.
I prefer to use wmc anyhow as it has all my movies under one roof..So I look foward to your guide on that.
At the moment I can play anything thru wmc, accept hd audio.
Will ffdshow work as well as haali in wmc?And will arcsoft tmt play hd audio thru media center when playing bluray movie files?Many thanks

Damian February 22, 2010 at 4:29 pm

You can use MPC with WMC, this is what I do. I use Media Browser with WMC, and when I play a movie MPC launches (http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/01/29/guide-using-mpc-hc-as-your-video-player-in-wmc-media-browser/)

Regarding TMT I cannot speak as I don’t play blu ray disks through my HTPC, but I believe there is a patch that was released to allow for.

Haali I have found to be generally unstable for me, at least the latest version. I have also gotten some inconsistencies when trying to play back mkvs/m2ts in WMC. Using MPC with WMC has for me been the only fool proof way to get bitstreaming working with standalones.

The reason why mkv/mpegs are not working for you is because it is not as simple as just installing ffdshow/haali. You also need to disable Media Foundation and a few other steps which will be in Part II

nemesi54 February 23, 2010 at 8:20 am

After a lot of time i managed to get DTSHD-MA and TrueHD

[b]Thing is that in true HD i need to raise the volume to maximum to hear sound!!
In DTS HD MA all are ok!![/b]

I did the EDID override from the url you give from the AVSForum (the ready one that tully gives not my own)
When i try to make my own .inf i get the Denon ID but it Writes [Registry] next to it and NOT [Real time]

I use this:
Win7 Ultimate x32
MPC HC 1.3.1597.0
FFDShow tryouts 3255
Denon 1910

ziggy February 23, 2010 at 10:02 am

Damian, thank you for wiki write up, it helped.
So I got the movie The dark knight working. As your advice I converted this movie to TS using Clown BD. Now the the MPC open in the WMC an plays that movie:)

One more issue:
I got this concert David Gilmour trueHD VC-1 which I converted to TS and there is no video in MPC (the screen freezed on first video clip and blinking)
The sound truehd plays fine.
When I tried to play same concert from original blue ray dvd using MPC it is exacly same problem.

I know the disk is fine because it play in TMT3 but only 5.2 audio, that is separate issue beacuse non of my bluray dvd do not get trueHD from TMT3

Thank you for all your help

Damian February 23, 2010 at 1:21 pm

@ nemesi54 – I haven’t noticed volume differences with TrueHD. Possibly Dialogue Normalization is kicking in?

Damian February 23, 2010 at 1:23 pm

@ Ziggy,

That is odd. Try putting the concert into an mkv and see if that fixes the problem (I know if you try playing VC-1 ts in WMC it does not like, but it shouldnt matter for MPC)

nemesi54 February 23, 2010 at 4:03 pm

@Damian I don’t know for what you talking…What is that ? Something on my AVR?
Please be more specific.

Damian February 23, 2010 at 4:37 pm

@ nemesi54 – check out this link to best explain, it states that DTS movies play louder then Dolby Digital (TrueHD):

http://forum.blu-ray.com/audio-theory-discussion/121087-understanding-dialog-normalization.html

Whenever I play a TrueHD track I always see Dialog Norm -4db pop up on my AVR

nemesi54 February 23, 2010 at 5:57 pm

Shit…
I can hardly hear what they are saying (i live next to a big street) and it seems i can do nothing about that can i ??

I tried a sample of trueHD and my Denon states under
Menu-Information-Audio Input Signal-

Surround Mode: Dolby trueHD
Signal: Dolby trueHD
fs: 48kHz
Format:3/2/.1
Offset -31dB

Damian February 24, 2010 at 2:58 am

@ nemesi54,

To be honest audio is not my thing. Offset of -31dB seems rather low

vasilis February 24, 2010 at 3:10 am

I have a Denon 2808 and a W7 HTPC setup with ATI 5570 bitstreaming (via MPC-HC) DDTrueHD & DTS-MA. I can check when I go home what is the Denon offset in the Menu Screen when I play the m2ts of Dark Knight. I do remember though that it is normalised by default to -1dB (it comes up in the amp display as soon as you play the movie) and the volume is fine. Even @ -40dB Amp sound level I can hear everything. Only problem though with the specific m2ts is that if I FF/FR the audio stops although the amp does display DDTrueHD! Play/Pause is fine though!

nemesi54 February 24, 2010 at 5:51 am

@vasilis

That would be great…
For your information the sample i played (both of them) are .mkv

Pragmatika tha me ypoxrewnes!!
Mipws xreiazetai na kanw kapoia extra rythmish ston Denon mou?
Exw treksei kanonika to Audysey..

Vasilis February 24, 2010 at 1:21 pm

File nemesi54

There is indeed an inconsistency issue in general with DDTrueHD decoding, or if I better rephrase there is at least an inconsistency in the bitstreaming functionality between ATI 5xxx series & Denon Receivers. However, there is no such issue though with DTS-MA that is pretty stable. Most of the Blue-Rays I have are using DTS-MA so it is not so much noticeable.
Therefore, following an extended testing I did this evening I can also verify the below with regard to my setup HTPC W7 32bit, ATI 5570, Denon 2808, Kuro LX5090H:
1. If I play the same m2ts Blue Ray Movie (Dark Knight) again & again there is a 50% probability that when the movie starts the Denon Receiver applies a normalization offset of -31dB to the DDTrueHD signal which in my case is translated to no audio at all while the movie is playing. In the remaining 50% the Denon for the same movie and input signal does not apply any offset and the Movie including the sound works fine. The same case I experience with other m2ts movies (eg. Iron Man) encoded with DDTrueHD. May I remind you that the offset applied by the Denon Amp is automatically controlled, cannot be overridden or deactivated and only applies for Dolby Audio Signals.
2. In my last post I mentioned about a normalization offset of -1dB, this was indeed true but not for the DDTrueHD case, it usually applies -1dB offset for some .mkv movies that are encoded with DD only and NOT True HD
3. In general I have loads of stability issues with DDTrueHD as I mentioned before the FF/FR does not work well or at all in most cases

I hope all the above make it more clear and I would be interrested to know if other users experience similar issues.

P.S. I do recall now that the Auzentech HD Audio card when it was first released (a year or so ago) had different bitstreaming issues for DDTrueHD with Denon receivers (specific models/year)

Kalo Vradi!

nemesi54 February 24, 2010 at 8:59 pm

:( :(

That means that we have to wait ATI to fix that in an upcoming driver (maybe i’m dreaming of that!) cause i don’t think that it is a Denon issue

Anyway thanks for the valuable informations..

PS:Vasilis are you a member in the AVclub forum??

vasilis February 24, 2010 at 11:59 pm

I agree with you it is probably not a Denon issue but an ATI issue or a compatibility issue from ATI side with Denon.

When I reviewed the WD Live TV with the same exact m2ts Blue Ray movies I had no issues with DDTrueHD and the Denon, FF/FR and Audio were working fine

PS: Yes I am indeed a member of the AvClub

nemesi54 February 26, 2010 at 8:11 pm

@Vasilis
I have some more question for you…

1. Which Catalyst you use

And Second:

Let me see if i get it correct when you say that:
“I do remember though that it is normalized by default to -1dB (it comes up in the amp display as soon as you play the movie)”

You mean that the amplifier adjusts the Volume (sound level) of your speakers??
I’m a bit confused about that

goondog February 26, 2010 at 11:32 pm

Damian
i followed your instructions but anytime i put in a disk and ask mpc-hc to play it i get “cannot render file” in the bottom left of the screen. Can you help?
im using a dell zino with a 4330 ATI card.

Vasilis February 27, 2010 at 12:36 am

@ nemesi54

1. I am using Catalyst 10.2
2. The offset that you see (sometimes) in the Denon display when you play a DD or DDTrueHD is the Dialogue Normalisation that the Denon automatically sets that impacts the Sound Volume from your speakers. Depending on the movie I have seen the following values: Nothing = No Display = No Offset, -1dB, -4dB (in all these cases audio is fine) and the worst -31dB (= No Audio)
3. Try using FFD Show 3285 I noticed that the normalisation offset @ -31dB issue has been improved although NOT fixed!

Damian February 27, 2010 at 5:21 am

@ goondog

Just curious, why would you follow this guide since you cannot bitstream with the Zino, you need a 5xxx ATI card.

goondog February 27, 2010 at 10:36 am

Damian
d’oh. thanks for the clarification.
im a little overwhelmed with BD rips and trying to play them on the zino.
can you suggest where to begin or which guides of yours to follow.
sorry for posting noobie stuff here and thanks for all your info.

Damian February 27, 2010 at 11:25 am

goondog,

Would be glad to help out. Just give a little more background on what you are trying to play (are these Blu Ray ISOs, BDMV folders, mkvs, m2ts, etc…)

goondog February 27, 2010 at 2:43 pm

Damian
thanks. i would like to get BD rips using makemkv (looks like its the most straitforward?) to play on the zino.
just didnt know how to set up MCE and what codecs to use. Just trying to learn.
i saw some info you posted at avs so i will try to follow that so as to not divert discussion here. thanks

Damian February 27, 2010 at 3:04 pm

goondog,

I think we can get you up and running very quick :-)

Use MakeMKV to rip your BR discs to mkv.

Use WMC + MediaBrowser or MyMovies to view your mkvs.

Use MPC to launch as an external player from MyMovies or MediaBrowser, no codecs needed!!!

Check out the guides/review section here for writeups I have done about both MyMovies and Mediabrowser, as well as launching MPC.

Don’t hesitate to ask any other questions, I will do what I can to help.

goondog February 27, 2010 at 11:26 pm

Damian
thanks for the start up help!
i got the rip working in MPC(looks and sounds great), but mediabrowser doesnt see it.
any thoughts? i ripped my Dmatthews/timreynolds live bd disk btw.
will try to get MPC to launch from mediabrowser if i can! looks really cool!

Damian February 28, 2010 at 4:50 am

@ goondog,

Did you add the library where you ripped DMB to to MediaBrowser? Also, MediaBrowser required each movie to be in its own folder

Vidkun February 28, 2010 at 2:14 pm

Any particular reason that you use the Realtek driver instead of the ATI one?

Damian February 28, 2010 at 4:07 pm

The ATI one has been noted as somewhat unreliable. I just went with the Realtek from the start. Others who were using the ATI driver noted some issues (I think some sort of silent bug). However, if you want to use TMT you need to use the ATI driver as right now it won’t support Realtek for bitstreaming.

Vidkun February 28, 2010 at 5:16 pm

Yeah, that’s why I was asking. TMT only supports the ATI driver and I hadn’t looked into it enough yet to see any issues people were having with it. I’ll have to see if maybe the new x.12 drivers released the other day have resolved it. Keep up the good work.

P.S. The media center integration tools are a gift from the gods!!

Damian March 1, 2010 at 6:21 am

Here is more info on the silent stream bug that gets introduced with the ATI driver:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18163660#post18163660

Damian March 3, 2010 at 7:07 am

Set up my Clarkdale i5 build (writeup to come soon). Bitstreaming via MPC worked perfect, no need for the EDID override!!!

Bekker March 7, 2010 at 9:28 am

Thank yoy for a very informative guide.
I have a problem with getting more than 2 channels from my radeon 5570 graphic card?
I have a htpc ASUS 785G chipset, disabled on-board graphic and sound. Put in a ASUS EAH 5570. Perfect picture but only 2 channels in the ATI HDMI out? I installed latest driver from ATI (catalyst 10.2) also tried installing latest driver from Realtek website. My Yamaha 765 reciever is connected by HDMI and only says PCM 2 channels? I use TMT3 with latest 170 patch and blueray as ISO rips.
How do I get more than 2 channels to be able to get bitstream and true HD?

Damian March 7, 2010 at 10:24 am

@ Bekker,

Any reason why you disabled on-board graphic and sound? My HTPCs are 780G and I did not need to do that step.

So when you go to step three you see the Realtek HDMI Output option but you don’t see 5.1 when configuring?

Bekker March 7, 2010 at 4:25 pm

Yes, exactly. I have the same image, just only the ATI HDMI. Before I disabled onboard sound I had the same connections. I did this because I would make sure to remove all causes of errors?
When I then go to speaker setup I only see stereo, not 5.1 or 7.1?
I read somewhere that the onboard HDMI only carries 2 channels, but now the 5570 should do it?
Some of the idea of buying the radeon 5570 instead of Xonar slim seems to disappear when I can’t get bitstream and true HD.

Damian March 7, 2010 at 4:41 pm

@ Becker,

Yeah, something is definitely not right if you can only see two channel. Adding the 5570 should have taken care of this. You are using TMT so the realtek driver is no good for you (I think right now only the ATI drivers work with TMT).

Maybe try posting your issue in the ATI 5xxx thread I linked to in the last section. I have gone through 4 different ATI cards (2 4670 and 2 5670) and have never had only 2 channel show up. I will dig around as well to see if I find anything

Bekker March 7, 2010 at 5:33 pm

@Damian

Thank you for the advice.

I posted it on AVS as suggested. Also tried ASUS support.

MHabib March 15, 2010 at 9:44 am

I have my htpc hdmi output sent to a monoprice splitter where one goes to tv and the other one to a receiver. It is so I don’t have to have receiver on for normal tv shows. Problem is, windows configures the ati hdmi device as two channel output and I cannot get HD audios. Is there a way to disable jack monitoring so the sound is always configured as 5.1?

Brock March 26, 2010 at 10:14 am

First off I want to say thanks for all the hard work. I have been able to get a sample of video/audio to bitstream TrueHD with the help of your guide. However, for some reason I can’t get my blu-ray ripped mkv files to bitstream TrueHD. I use makemkv to create the mkv file and make sure to include the TrueHD audio option with the dropdown carrots. When I go to play the file however, all I get is DTS bitstreaming with no TrueHD. Ive tried to go into ffdshow and uncheck and then re-check all the pass-through audio options with no luck. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

robp March 27, 2010 at 9:53 am

In the guide, it says, “either an AMD 5xxx GPU, Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale CPU, or HD Bitstream capable Sound Card”.

Does this mean that if you have an i3/i5 Clarksdale CPU you do not need the 5xxx GPU? Or vice-versa? I’m building my first HTPC so I’m not sure what I really need.

Damian March 27, 2010 at 11:22 am

@ robp,

Correct, the i3/i5 GPU allows for bitstreaming without the need for a dedicated card (i.e. 5xxx or Sound card)

Damian March 27, 2010 at 11:26 am

@ Brock,

Can you clarify, you get DTS bitstreaming when playing a TrueHD mkv? Or do you meed you only get Dolby Digital? TrueHD does n ot have a DTS track so not sure why you would see that.

Brock March 27, 2010 at 12:18 pm

@Damian

Sorry for the confusion, I meant to say I only get the core Dolby Digital when I play the TrueHD. I’ve been able to get TrueHD to bitstream but I have to select that as my only audio track in makemkv and forgo all other audio including the core DD. Last night I sat down and tried a few things without much luck. When I play a mkv with TrueHD and DD ffdshow audio decoder shows both TrueHD and DD streaming to my receiver but the signal info on the receiver says its only DD. Ive tried to use mkvmerge to set the TrueHD track to the default audio in the mkv without any luck.

Damian March 27, 2010 at 12:52 pm

@ Brock,

That does sound odd. So when you have two audio tracks you only get Core DD, but if you just have TrueHD you get bitstreaming of TrueHD? If you want I can send you a test mkv that I created that has both a TrueHD and AC3 track that I have no problems Bitstreaming

Brock March 27, 2010 at 1:27 pm

@Damian

I just tried my test files again today and all seems well. Last night I enabled the stream switcher function in ffdshow but I couldn’t select what audio stream I wanted. Well after a reboot everything seems to work I can select which stream I want (TrueHD or AC3). I’m going to rip a few mkv files today to make sure everything is working. I’ll make sure to post the results as well. Now the last thing to do is get ffdshow’s audio decoder to work in XBMC with the DSPlayer build then I’ll be in HTPC bliss.

Thanks,
Brock

Damian March 27, 2010 at 6:08 pm

Testing XBMC w/ dsplayer is next on my list. Let me know if you have any luck.

robp March 27, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Thanks for the response, Damian.

Something else I can’t seem to find any info on:

I keep seeing discussions about TrueHD and DTS-MA, but no mention on multi-channel LPCM. Can that be bitstreamed too?

Damian March 28, 2010 at 7:39 am

@ robp,

Yes, LPCM can be bitstreamed as well. Best bet is to use Reclock so Windows Mixer doesn’t get its hands on the LPCM stream. You can see more info about setting up here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152520

Matspm March 30, 2010 at 10:17 pm

Great tutorial. Finally, i am all set for HD bitstreaming. Integrated that with MC using Media Browser and MetaBrowser…and wow…what a HTPC i have now.

One minor thing and in a different topic too. I am all set for Movies. Is there something that i can do so that i can use 7MC for music too? Most of my music are flac.

Damian March 31, 2010 at 5:35 am

Matspm,

I am not a FLAC guy so don’t know how much I can help you. However, from what I have read if you want to play back FLAC and ensure that it is not messed with by Windows Mixer, you need to be able to play back in WASAPI exclusive mode. I am not sure if this can be set up in WMC, I frequently here t hat using Foobar w/ WASAPI exclusive is the best bet (but don’t know if you can integrate into WMC).

matt April 7, 2010 at 2:12 am

any way to get this to work correctly 64 bit?

32bit mpc will do the bitstreaming but will not playback smoothly

64 bit does not work with the ffdshow audio decoder

Damian April 7, 2010 at 4:10 am

@ matt,

No reason why it shouldn’t work with x64, did you download the x64 version of ffdshow?

matt April 7, 2010 at 5:32 pm

thanks, yeah i got the x64 ffdshow now and it works, but I still have playback issues.

Blu rays dts hd master audio plays fine off disc with powerdvd, but through mpc it is not working correctly. It comes up and displays master audio, but then it starts going off and on and playback is severely stuttered.

Any suggestions?

robp April 8, 2010 at 2:55 am

I recently built a HTPC around the i3 Clarkdale CPU. Thanks to the info here, I’m able to get perfect bitstreaming with no GPU. However, the integrated graphics didn’t seem to like Blu Ray subtitles or the EVR Custom Pres., so I decided to go ahead and install a Saphire 5670 GPU.

Now I’m having all sorts of issues: Anything with TrueHD streams as LPCM (but with smoother video than before, and subtitles are no problem now). If the video has DTS-HD, ffdshow says it’s bitstreaming, but I get no sound and the video is VERY choppy.

Any idea what might be going on?

All my videos are in M2TS or TS containers – none of them are MKV’s.

Damian April 8, 2010 at 5:48 am

@ matt,

Can you confirm that you are using the latest versions of MPC HC and FFDShow? Also, do you have any other codecs/splitters installed such as Haali which could be conflicting with MPC HC?

Damian April 8, 2010 at 6:35 am

@ robp,

With my core i5 HTPC the internal filters in MPC HC don’t play nice with the core i5, so I had to disable and use MS DTV-DVD Video decoder. In MPC select External filters|Add Filter| select Microsoft DTV-DVD Decoder and set to preffered. Also add FFDshow filter and set to block. Without this I actually got green blocks during playback for any content that used DXVA. I never tested to see how Blu Ray subtitles work, if I have some time I will play around with.

As far as the 5670, what receiver are you using? Did you do the EDID override if necessary? Also, are you using the latest MPC HC/FFDShow and do you have any other filters/codecs installed that may be conflicting with your setup?

matt April 8, 2010 at 9:32 am

I do have Haali installed so I guess that might be it….oddly enough I do bitstreaming working flawlessly with media center now

Damian April 8, 2010 at 9:34 am

Haali does cause a lot of problems with MPC HC. You can try this to make sure MPC does not use Haali:

In MPC HC go to View – Options. If you go to Internal Filters check the “Matroska” box under source filters.

Then go to External Filters -> Add filter. Select Haali Media Splitter and hit ok. You should now see it listed in the External Filters box in MPC. Make sure it is highlighted and to the right set the merit to block.

robp April 8, 2010 at 10:23 am

I have a Sony STR-DN1000. I followed the instructions for EDID, so I assume that’s ok.

For ffdshow, I followed the link you posted, and scrolled down to get the latest version (rev 3342)

For MPC-HC, I also followed your link – it’s version 1577.

Damian April 8, 2010 at 10:25 am

robp – yeah, version 1577 is an older version (when i wrote the article). I need to update the link, but grab the latest here:

http://www.xvidvideo.ru/media-player-classic-home-cinema-x86-x64

robp April 8, 2010 at 10:56 am

OK, so as of right now, I should try 1782?

Also, I forgot to answer your question about other codecs/filters. I’m pretty sure I’m all clean there. I downloaded Radlight as you suggested in one of your other guides, and deleted anything suspicious (I had installed Nero, a FLAC codec, and TiVo Desktop – I removed all those just to rule them out).

If the newer MPC doesn’t work for me, I think I’ll try the WMP12/W7MC approach. Any method that results in bitsreaming is fine with me.

And again, big thanks for your help – it’s very appreciated.

Damian April 8, 2010 at 10:58 am

Yeah, Try 1782. Let me know if it works, odd that you are having those issues with the 5670

robp April 8, 2010 at 11:02 am

Odd, and stressful :p.

I’m also thinking of doing a fresh Windows install. I’ve only had the PC for about a week, so I won’t be losing anything really.

Whatever I do, I’ll keep you posted.

robp April 8, 2010 at 11:04 am

BTW, do you think the “Redwood” driver for the 5670 is necessary, or do you think Catalyst 10.3 is fine? I’ve tried using both, and the results are the same.

Damian April 8, 2010 at 11:18 am

I would definitely recommend doing a fresh install if things don’t work out. I have stuck with the Redwood driver for one reason, for some of my shows that I record, when I play back in MPC they come out very blocky with 10.3, but play fine with Redwood. I have no idea why though.

robp April 8, 2010 at 2:23 pm

No luck with MPC 1782 or WMP12/W7MC. TreuHD: gets streamed as LPCM. DTS-MA: ffdshow says it’s bitstreaming, but I get no sound and the video is choppy (plays at about 1/10 speed). But this may give you some insight as to what is going on:

I decided to remove the 5670 GPU and mess around using just the i3 graphics. Again, I’m able to bitstream everything perfectly using MPC, but WMP12 does the same thing it did with the 5670 GPU.

One thing I have to change with the i3 is that I can’t use DVXA. In fact, the EVR renderer gives trouble as well – the default renderer works best.

Damian April 9, 2010 at 11:17 am

@ robp,

Let me know how it goes if you do a clean install. Using just the core i5 I had to switch to the Microsoft DTV Decoder to get DXVA to work properly in MPC for h.264. For VC-1 I think there is another filter that works best. Unfortunately MPC does not play nice with the core i family as of yet

robp April 9, 2010 at 7:57 pm

I just got everything working. The problem was the EDID, and the fact that I hadn’t understood/followed Tulli’s directions correctly – I hadn’t actually downloaded one of the overrides, I had just run Moninfo to generate one.

One thing that’s different with the 5670 is that now I MUST change the audio renderer to Reclock to play anything other than DD and DTS. When using the i3 integrated GPU I could just leave it on Default. Certainly worth the trade-off for the MUCH smoother video – the i3 just couldn’t handle MPEG-2 very well.

Anyway, I can’t thank you enough for your help. If it wasn’t for your guide, I would have been clueless, and probably wouldn’t have known that bitstreaming was even possible now.

DamianP April 10, 2010 at 5:34 am

@ robp,

Glad t hear everything is working. Of course the key now is to sit back and actually enjoy your setup :-)

Supe April 13, 2010 at 5:41 pm

Hi Damian. This is an awesome write up. You have been saving my butt. I have one tiny problem that is keeping me from going any further though and I can’t figure out if I did something wrong or not. The ffdshow filters are not showing up for me. How do I get those to show up to be able to choose ffdshow audio decoder? I have installed and re-installed both ffdshow and MPC over and over. I also don’t know what to look for to browse for the decoder.

Supe April 13, 2010 at 6:55 pm

OK, I figured it out. I was using the 64 bit version of MPC. The filters don’t seem to be available for that version. The 32 bit MPC has them.

Damian April 14, 2010 at 11:31 am

@ Supe,

Glad to hear you got it working, but x64 filters are available

Supe April 14, 2010 at 12:01 pm

I am pretty sure I downloaded the most current version from the .ru website. Oh well, I’ll stick with the x86.

Could I ask a stupid question? I can’t seem to find the answer anywhere and the the doom9 MPC forum is HUGE.
1. How do you get bluray folders to play in MPC?

With DVD’s I found that I had to take the .ifo’s and.vob’s out of the TS_VIDEO folder and put them in the movie root folder in order to play from Media browser with MPC. I have tried that with the .m2ts but, of course, that does not work.
If I use MPC on it’s own and point it to the movie folder it plays just fine so I am wondering if there is a setting I missed?

Or should I just convert everything to .mkv? Big job but may be worth it.

One more thing just for posterity. When playing .mpg/.mpeg (as all my DVD tv series are) through MB/MPC, I have found that if the file is .mpeg I lose remote control but after changing them to .mpg everything is fine. Weird. I use iMon (came with my Antec case) and harmony one.

Damian April 14, 2010 at 12:04 pm

Good question on the Blu Ray. I honestly put all my Blu Rays into mkv. When I tested out a Blu Ray with MPC I did as you said and just pointed to the folder to get it to work. If I find anything out I will let you know

robp April 14, 2010 at 6:18 pm

@Supe:

Are you wanting MPC to load all the menus in the Blu Ray, or just play the movie? To just play the movie, you only need the one, large, m2ts file that contains the actual movie.

I don’t keep, or even rip, all the other files. I just take the one file and remux it with tsmuxer to remove all the unwanted audio and subtitle streams and save a few GB’s of space. You can also just rename the file if you want to keep all the extra languages, but either way is fine.

I don’t believe MPC can open the Blu Ray menus.

Supe April 15, 2010 at 1:02 pm

@robp – Hey, thanks for replying. No I do not want menus, warnings or previews. I am all about just playing the movie. Right now I use DVDFab 7 to rip DVD and Bluray and it has a menu structure to choose which video and audio files you want, much like tsmuxer it sounds. I might have to try that because I have tried out MakeMKV on one of my movies that I ripped with only HD Master audio stream and all I have for sound on the resultant .mkv was dolby digital.

@Damian
So here is the good news. Up until about an hour ago I was not getting any HD audio love. I uninstalled MPC x86 and installed the newest x64, from Russia with love. Again, ffdshow filters were not available to choose for external filters. Tossed that and installed the newest x86 from the .ru site. set things up and viola. By loading the folder into MPC I have the pretty blue light on my Denon. True HD, DTS True HD and HD Master. Woohoo. Up to that point I wasn’t sure if DVDFab was including the HD audio.

However I am still unable to get the folder to play from WMC/MB….in fact now the darn DVD’s won’t play. It doesn’t seem that MB is throwing the movie at MPC since the error of not finding the movie is a WMC error. So it seems with all my tinkering MB and WMC are not working correctly. In fact MB has been acting very funny lately in general.

But here’s what gets me. If I can get MPC to load a folder from File/Open Directory… and it plays fine, which shows that it does work, why won’t MPC do the same when opened by MB? As I understand it the “{0}” is the folder path in MB external player parameters. Maybe there is a CLI switch that can be added to accomplish what I need. I dunno. If I figure it out I’ll post with results.

Damian, seriously, thanks for this writeup, I would never have figured out how to do this without it.

DamianP April 15, 2010 at 1:24 pm

@ Supe,

A few things. I don’t know when you tried MakeMKV last but recent updates now allow you to grab the HD Audio track. Previously you would only get the core audio (DTS for DTS-MA and DD for TrueHD). This sounds like the issue you were having.

Since it sounds like you only want to play the main movie I would just stick with a single m2ts or mkv file. If you have AnyDVD you can just use Clown_BD, Another EAC3To GUI, or others to do this (check out the guide section here for more guides that I have put together). If you don’t have AnyDVD then you will need to rip the disc with DVDFab to remove the encryption, and then use Clown_BD or others afterwards. MakeMKV removes the encryption on its own so you don’t need a 3rd party app.

Glad to hear the guide helped. I honestly document this stuff not only to be of help to other but as a reference guide for myself!!!

Supe is retarded April 15, 2010 at 6:43 pm

Man I wish there was a way to edit or delete posts here. I am a huge dumba$$.
The reason why nothing was playing and I was getting errors is because I switched so many times between MPC x64 and x86 that the path in MB’s external player was pointing to the old x64 that no longer exists.

I have made so many little changes here and there that I do not know what I did but I got folders to play!!!! (hope the bold worked)

Here are a number of small things that I did:
IN MPC
Formats – chose Blu-ray playlist file (mpls bdmv), DVD file (vob ifo) and Matroska Media file (mkv)
I also checked Directory in Explorer Context Menu
Move .m2ts file from the STREAM folder and put it in the root movie folder. (potential downfall, more than one m2ts file. Terminator 2 has something like 23.)

I honestly do not know what really made it work since I put the .m2ts in the movie folder before and it did not work so it might have been the other changes I made in MPC. I also had problems with the various MPC’s crashing. I think one of the problems was when you uninstall MPC there is a radio button asking if you want to keep current settings so when you install again they will be there. Just SAY NO so you can start fresh. I have installed and uninstalled the current official MPC in x64 and x86 from sourceforge and the newest builds, both versions, from the russian website. Just get the newest X86 from http://www.xvidvideo.ru/media-player-classic-home-cinema-x86-x64

Funny thing is now it does not matter where the .ifo and .vob for DVD’s are. Whether they are in the TS_VIDEO folder or the root movie folder seems to make no difference now.

I downloaded MakeMKV v1.5.4 today so I think I have the most current version…unless there is a nightly build site? I will look into it more and explore the tsmuxer route also and see which I like better. I already use DVDFab. The reason why I chose it over AnyDVD (before bluray) was that it broke encryption and allowed you to choose video and audio streams without menus, warnings and etc. just like Slysoft’s Clone DVD along with AnyDVD (too expensive).

This route with MPC + ffdshow, being all free saved me from purchasing Total Media Theater 3 premium.

And really Damian, You done good son. I had read alot of the stuff that you have in this “how to” but until it you put it together I had no clue on a few points on what to do that made huge strides, I mean monumental, in pointing me in the right direction.

The moral to the story:
Follow Damian’s instructions to the freaking letter. Download the newest version of MPC from http://www.xvidvideo.ru/media-player-classic-home-cinema-x86-x64 and make sure it is the x86 version with the full install and keep it. You may experience unique problems because of your system but stick with it. It should work.
Retard Supe……OUT

Aaron April 21, 2010 at 10:16 pm

Wow, I can’t figure out what i’m doing wrong. I get to step three and after running the speaker config under supported formats I still only have dolby digital and DTS audio. My setup is a 5450 with win 7 64 ran through a Denon 1610 . I have installed catalyst 10.3 along with the latest realtek hdmi driver. Any suggestions on what to try next?

Damian April 22, 2010 at 7:02 am

@ Aaron,

That definitely doesn’t sound right. I haven’t run into that issue but I know some others have. I see you just posted over on AVS, hopefully someone there who had the issue can help out. I am actually still running the older Catalyst 8.69RC driver and the realtek 2.39 driver.

Chris April 22, 2010 at 8:31 am

Hi Damian, I have tried using your steps above and can not get it to work

I’m using a 5450 connected via HDMI to a Denon 3808CI. I’m using Win7 x86 with the latest MPC-HC and FFDShow. No luck though, I can get LPCM with everything but I can’t get nothing else.

Chris April 22, 2010 at 8:32 am

I should also mention that I’m using .mkvs that I made using eac3to.

Damian April 22, 2010 at 8:33 am

Chris,

Did you do the EDID override?

Chris April 22, 2010 at 8:45 am

I did but I’m not sure which one to use. I tried just about all the ones that use a Samsung LCD and a Denon AVR. No luck. Unless I did it wrong. I updated the driver rebooted and tried to see if it worked. If it didn’t, I updated the driver again and tried.

Aaron April 22, 2010 at 9:14 am

@Damian

I tried Catalyst 10.1 and 10.2 as well as RealTek 2.43 to no avail. Hopefully someone at AVS has a solution. One thing I did do initially that might be messing something up is after installing my 5450, on my ASUS M4A785G mobo, I didn’t uninstall my old Cat drivers before intalling the 10.3 for the 5450 (I hope this makes sense). After realizing my mistake I unistalled all Cat drivers on my system and reinstalled the 10.3. I don’t know if it would have caused a conflict or not? Furthermore under my audio devices the HDMI audio has a 2 beside it like there was or is a second HDMI audio device installed (maybe from the onboard 4200). These are just some observations that I thought might help. If I can’t find a solution a fresh install of Win 7 will be my next step.

Damian April 22, 2010 at 9:36 am

@ Aaron,

I am thinking you are having driver issues. I think there are a few utilities that can be used to clean out old drivers, but worse case I would just go ahead with a clean install.

Damian April 22, 2010 at 9:38 am

@ Chris,

You may be having a driver conflict as well. I think installing multiple EDID overrides causes issues if you don’t remove them properly. Also, could it be a setting on your AVR? I was having problems and only getting LPCM with my Pioneer, turns out the issue was a setting on the AVR and not my 5670

Aaron April 22, 2010 at 2:21 pm

I was set to re-install Win 7, but then I read on AVS that in order to install the ATI HDMI Driver you need to uninstall the RealTek through Control Panel>Uninstall Programs. I did this and then installed the ATI HDMI Driver and it now shows support for all of the formats. So my question is can I use this driver as opposed to the RealTek? I was reading that there are some hangups with this driver, but I wasn’t sure if they pertained to bitstreaming

Damian April 22, 2010 at 2:46 pm

The main issue I heard about with the ATI driver is some silent stream bug (honestly not sure what it means). I would definitely try the ATI driver since it at least corrected one of your problems, and then take it from there. Let me know how it goes.

Aaron April 23, 2010 at 5:32 am

Everything is working as it should now….woooot! After installing the ATI HDMI Driver I proceeded with the guide without a hitch. I ripped my first BD (Star Trek) using MakeMKV and played it back with MPC HC. First try…no blue light. I then applied the EDID override and bingo, TrueHD was bitstreaming. A big thanks to you Damian for taking the time to write this guide and answer questions as they arise. And thanks to Tulli for the EDID override files and instructions.

Damian April 23, 2010 at 5:37 am

@ Aaron,

Great to hear. Star Trek was my test movie as well, I can’t even tell you how many times I played the first minute or two of the movie to make sure everything was working :-)

Chris April 23, 2010 at 1:35 pm

It probably is a driver error. I guess I need to correctly uninstall the EDID overrides and try them 1 at a time. Lot of work

Nino April 23, 2010 at 1:39 pm

Damian,

Just went through this post and others. You are nothing short of awesome. Can’t wait to get home and set this up.

I wonder if I can get the bitstreaming to work with my new MBP (Arrandale i5) in boot camp, or is there ffdshow-tryouts for OSX? I purchased the Griffin MiniDP->HDMI and got some audio streaming going the other night (DTS,etc), but TrueHD wasn’t working (this was all in OSX – haven’t tried with boot camp Windows 7).

Thanks for all the great writeups!

ND

Damian April 24, 2010 at 2:21 pm

@ Nino,

I just got my core i5 laptop yesterday. Running W7 x64 I just confirmed that bitstreaming works without issue using the steps I outlined in the post. Honestly I have never used a MAC so I don’t know anything about boot camp. I don’t think there is an FFDShow for OSX so my guess Boot camp is the way to go. Write back if you get it working.

Aaron April 24, 2010 at 10:04 pm

Everything seemed to be going smoothly with MPC-HC until today. I set 2012 to rip with MakeMKV while I was at work today. I got home and went to play it with MPC-HC and at 1 min 20 sec into the movie a message pops up “Media Center Classic – Homecinema has stopped working” telling me that a problem caused it to stop working correctly. I tried to replay and still got the message. I restarted my comp to and tried again and still it won’t play. I tried to play Star Trek that I ripped earlier and it gave the same error at 1 min 15 sec (keep in mind that this was my first rip and I never had watched it that far in yet). Last night my wife and I were able to watch Law Abiding Citizen with no problems at all. I tried this rip again and it seemed to work just fine. Since ripping Law Abiding citizen yesterday and watching it I had made no changes to my setup at all. Any suggestions?

Damian April 25, 2010 at 5:22 am

@ Aaron,

That is odd, I watched 2012 and Sherlock Holmes yesterday, MPC has been a champ. I would suggest try updating to the very latest MPC HC and see if that fixes the problem.Did you install anything else on your PC that may have conflicted with MPC?

Ackbar114 April 28, 2010 at 8:30 pm

Damian,

This guide is fantastic and you have are a true guru. About a month or so I followed the directions and got my HTPC running perfectly with MPC-HC bitstreaming both True-HD and DTS-HD. Then I stupidly changed a few things, and after the problems snowballed, I did a fresh install of windows 7.

Now I am pulling my hair out. No matter what I do I cannot get the “sample rates” listed under the “supported formats” tabs of the hdmi audio device to go above 88.2khz, meaning that 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192.0khz (as shown in your picture above) are simply not there. This is a problem since my HD audio tracks seem to be mostly 96khz. The weird thing is that when I place my cursor over the ffdshow icon during playback under MPC-HC, it does indeed say that it is bitstreaming 96khz over HDMI, but there is no sound whatsoever. I think this makes sense given the absence of 96khz as a supported format under windows.

Previous to my fresh install, I also tried using the HDMI drivers that came supplied with various CCC center downloads from the ATI website, specifically versions 10.1-10.4. These also do not allow 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192.0khz to be displayed under the supported formats tab and, depending on the specific version, also takes away 88.2khz.

All of this has led me to believe that the fix must lie somewhere in windows itself, although I haven’t a clue where. Past experience tells me that this is probably a simple fix and I am making things much more difficult than need be. So can you please help me enable 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192.0khz so that my “supported formats” tab looks like the pic you posted above? Thanks so much for even reading this.

Damian April 29, 2010 at 7:34 am

Folks,

It appears that the latest ATI CCC Release (10.4) fixes the EDID issue, so if you are using a 5xxx card doing the EDID override is no longer necessary!

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Damian April 29, 2010 at 7:43 am

@ Ackbar114,

I assume you are using a 5xxx card, are are you using a core i3/i5 system? I can’t imagine what could have happened that this was working originally but now it doesn’t. Can you try using the Realtek driver to see if that fixes the problem?

Aaron April 29, 2010 at 8:40 am

@Damian

As per my last comment about the error message with MPC-HC, I have since uninstalled and re-installed MPC and it has fixed the issue except for the movie 2012. I have ripped it with MakeMKV three different times with the same results. I can’t understand why it would only be with that movie, though I’m not too upset because the movie kinda sucked anyway.

As for the new Cat 10.4 drivers have you confirmed that 10.4 has resolved the EDID override issue on your system? I’m always hesitant to mess with something that is working, although maybe the 10.4 drivers will help my other problem.

Damian April 29, 2010 at 8:45 am

@ Aaron,

LOL, yeah, 2012 sucked pretty bad, watched it this past weekend. I wonder if it is a MakeMKV issue (there are forced subs which is possibly causing the issue?)

I am actually still on the 8.69RC Cat drivers. For whatever reason of which I cannot explain upgrading to the 10.x drivers actually causes some of my son’s recorded cartoons to become unplayable in MPC. I am moving his shows over to either mp4 or avi so that WMC will use its default player (which plays them fine with the 10.x drivers) instead of MPC HC which is used for all my mkvs. I am a fan of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it though”

Aaron April 29, 2010 at 8:52 am

I may try to rip it with the Clown-BD/MKVMerge method and see if that works. I used this for ripping Swordfish the other day, but it seemed like I was getting some stuttering during playback. I was transferring a large amount of other files across my network at the time so that may be why I was getting the stuttering.

robp April 29, 2010 at 10:17 am

I just installed 10.4 and I no longer need the EDID.

Regarding MakeMKV: I haven’t tried it on 2012, but it’s given me issues with a few other movies. With District 9 it produced and unplayable file, and the same for all of the Star Wars DVD’s.

Clown BD has not failed me so far, but I’ve also never tried to use it to create an mkv file – I just use it to create one m2ts file if the movie is in multiple files.

Damian April 29, 2010 at 11:16 am

Same as robp, I have never had a problem using Clown_BD (which I then use MakeMKV to create the mkv). I don’t know what tools MakeMKV uses to create the mkv but it appears from time to time there are issues with some movies.

Damian April 29, 2010 at 11:30 am

@ aaron,

Try ClownBD + MKVMerge or you can just use Another EAC3To GUI (it uses the same tools as ClownBD + MKVMerge). Hopefully you should get better results

Ackbar114 April 29, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Damian,

Thanks for your reply. I am using a Radeon 5450, and my system is an AMD quad core Athlon II x4 620 in an Asus M2N68-Am Plus motherboard. The OS is windows 7 64-bit. Using the Realtek driver (version 2.42) I only have 32khz, 44.1khz, and 48khz listed under sample rates for the “Realtek HDMI Output.” On the other hand, the encoded formats appear to be correct: i.e. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD are listed along with the others. After uninstalling the Realtek driver and going with the ATI HDMI driver that comes with the CCC packages (10.3 and 10.4) 88.2khz is added to the samples rates, but that is it (no 96khz and above).

I have two hard drives in this computer and on the 2nd one I did a fresh install of windows vista 32-bit just to see what results that would yield. In this case the Realtek driver (version 2.42) does list all of the sample rates (including 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192.0khz) but the HD-Audio options are no longer present under encoded formats. So essential this seems to be the exact problem as under the Win 7 install.

A few other things. When using the ATI driver under both operating systems all sounds seem slightly distorted when the HDMI output is set to anything other than stereo. When playing back the sample windows sounds there is a distinct (but quiet) pop and then only part of the sound actually plays. This is the same when testing the quadrophonic, 5.1, and 7.1 setups (I have a 7.1 setup). Only part of the bell sound is heard through each speaker.

When using the realtek driver, all sounds seem normal, except that during quadrophonic, 5.1, and 7.1 testing the front left speaker produces no sound at all as if there is some kind of lag.

More info. I have a pioneer elite vsx-01txh AVR and an olevia 37″ HDTV. The HDMI setting on the receiver is set to “amp.” In an effort to rule as much out as possible, I have tried two different HDMI cables and also hooked the 5450 up to different inputs on the pioneer. No changes to the situation(s), except that when hooking the 5450 up directly to the TV via HDMI there is only one sample rate available (either 44.1khz or 48khz I forget which) and all encoded formats disappear. This suggests to me that the 5450 “knows” what options are available for a given hookup, but for some reason does not want to cooperate with the pioneer by giving the sample rates and encoded formats that it should.

Apologies for such a long post; I just wanted to supply as much info as possible. I have had many, many computer issues in my life and this is one of the most frustrating. Thank you again.

Ackbar114 April 29, 2010 at 6:51 pm

EDIT: The last sentence of the second paragraph of my last post should read “So essentially this seems to be the exact OPPOSITE problem as under the Win 7 install.”

Sorry for the typo

Ackbar114 April 29, 2010 at 10:03 pm

@Damian

So a major miracle happened and everything is now working with the Realtek 2.42 driver. I had given up and decided to reinstall winamp to listen to some mp3s. Then poof! 96khz, 176.4khz, and 192.0khz are now being displayed and mpc-hc can bitstream out HD-audio. I’m very happy and not complaining about this turnaround, but I have no explanation for it. Do you? Thanks again, you’re knowledge of all this stuff is just incredible!

Damian April 30, 2010 at 5:15 am

@ Ackbar114 – I said a prayer for you before I went to bed last night :-)

Great to hear everything is working. Now go throw on Avatar, crank up the sound, and enjoy!!!

Ackbar114 April 30, 2010 at 10:05 am

@ Damian

Guess you have friends in high places!

Bekker May 1, 2010 at 7:07 pm

As mentioned earlier I had trouble getting bitstreaming to work with my ASUS EAH 5570. I had it replaced by ASUS.
I received it back this week. Since I last had the graphic card installed I have upgraded from a 32 bit to a 64 bit version of windows 7. All other specifications are unchanged.
I plugged it in updated the driver (Radeon 10.4) and bitstreaming worked!!!
All formats were supported under sound properties.
I got true HD from a Blueray disc confirmed by the surround receiver. Afterwards I tested a standard DVD, and there I only got 2 channels? No surround?
But the next day it was even worse: I couldn’t get Bitstreaming to work again? Only changes made was standard windows updates? Now I am back with only 2 sound channels?
I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it, but still no success?
Is it so that the bitstream function is very sensitive? Little changes shut it down? Is it my mainboard, also from ASUS (AMD 785G chipset), who delivers unstable conditions?
I don’t see a lot of posts with bitstreaming on and off, when bitstreaming is working it seems to work? I suspect my system has a defect?
Anyone experiencing similar problems?

Aaron May 2, 2010 at 10:13 am

Last post in regard to my 2012 issue, I tried to watch it last night out of boredom and lo and behold it worked without issue….go figure?

@Bekker

Have you tried the earlier Cat drivers with the EDID override?

Damian May 3, 2010 at 8:33 am

@ Bekker,

I don’t think your issue is related to your mobo. What player are you using (TMT, PDVD, …) for playback?

Also, if you uninstall/reinstall drivers make sure you a driver cleaner utility, as it appears when you uninstall some of these drivers bits can be left behind that cause conflicts.

twisterr May 5, 2010 at 3:33 pm

Hey, followed your setup and everything worked thanks! However, i seem to have a problem after about 5 minutes of play the audio starts skiping. i have msi 5850, and followed your setup step by step.
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Damian May 5, 2010 at 4:00 pm

@ twisterr,

Try using this ffdshow, there were some seeking issues that supposedly this ffdshow fixes (I think it is x32):

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1395813#post1395813

twisterr May 5, 2010 at 4:38 pm

thanks will do, i actualy figured out when this happens only when i minimize mpc-hc or change some ffdshow settings on the fly, so basecly if dont do anything within the mpc-hc while video is playing it plays out fine, and i can live with that.

Thanks for a great guide once again.

Aaron May 19, 2010 at 7:04 pm

I believe I figured out my issue with 2012. This started happening more frequently with other movies I was ripping. When I first used the guide to setup my bitstreaming I had previously downloaded an earlier version of MPC HC. I have since downloaded the most recent version from the link in the guide and the issue has gone away completely. I should have thought of that in the first place.

Radik June 2, 2010 at 11:48 am

Great guide, but I just can’t get it to work using W7 X64, the latest ffdshow and MPC-HC, an Onkyo HTR-380 receiver and an ATI HD5850. When trying to play an .m2ts file which has a default DTS-HD MA track, ffdshow says it’s bitstreaming regular DTS through S/PDIF but I don’t get any sound. For some reason I have to seek through the movie to actually trigger the receiver to play the DTS track, but of course that’s still not what I wanted. Dolby TrueHD doesn’t work either, and changing the audio track in MPC seems to make ffdshow revert to decoding DTS in software. After 2 days of reinstalling and trying to get this to work I’m not really making any progress, so any help would be appreciated.

Damian Perez June 2, 2010 at 12:03 pm

@ Radik,

You cannot bitstream HD audio over SPDIF, it doesn’t have the required bandwidth. You need to use HDMI. I assume this is the reason for the issues you are encountering

Radik June 2, 2010 at 7:07 pm

Actually I am using HDMI, it’s just that ffdshow simply refuses to bitstream the HD audio. Ffdshow is configured to bitstream DTS-HD MA but it always ends up displaying that it’s using SPDIF. When I hover over the ffdshow audio icon, it says it’s using “DTS (bitstream)” as input and “SPDIF” as Output. The odd part is that in reality it’s actually bitsreaming the (core?) DTS over HDMI. If it can do that I don’t understand why it won’t just bitstream the HD tracks. The Realtek HDMI output says it supports the formats and the receiver does as well…

robp June 2, 2010 at 7:21 pm

@Radik:

That sounds very similar to what was happening to me when I hadn’t done the EDID override correctly. I would try downloading the latest ATI drivers, which has eliminated the need for the EDID override, and use that instead of the Realtek driver.

I’ve used both the latest ATI drivers (10.4 and 10.5) with two different video cards, and with both 32 and 64 bit W7 – in all cases, everything worked perfectly.

Radik June 3, 2010 at 3:21 pm

Robp, I did in fact use the latest ATI drivers and also the EDID override afterwards to try and resolve the issues but they didn’t seem to make a difference. The display is now listed as “Onkyo HT-R380 (EDID Override)”, so I’m guessing that’s correct? I just reinstalled everything listed in this guide again but still no luck…

Damian June 3, 2010 at 5:33 pm

@ Radik,

Did you use a driver cleaner program o get rid of any excess left over from any ATI drivers you may have uninstalled? Also, did you follow the instructions on the AVSForum site about properly removing the EDID?

Radik June 4, 2010 at 12:04 pm

@Damian

I used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any Realtek and ATI drivers before reinstalling. I haven’t seen the instructions to remove the EDID, but I don’t think those are the issue anyway seeing how the default display driver didn’t work either.

Damian June 5, 2010 at 4:48 am

Hmmm…I am at a loss then why it isn’t working. I would recommend posting on the AVSForum 5xxx thread. Member Tulli may have an idea of what the issue could be. I have set up on 3 HTPCs and on all of them I have had no issues getting bitstreaming to work.

Radik June 5, 2010 at 2:55 pm

@Damian

I finally got DTS-HD MA to work after finding the thread you mentioned, deleting the EDID override and then using the “(*) Samsung LN-S4095D – ONKYO TX-NR906″ mod! Previously I used my own override mod created with moninfo, but apparently I should have downloaded one of the mods posted there instead. TrueHD works depending on the source, on at least one m2ts file the TrueHD audio is heavily distorted though for some reason. Perhaps I need to try a different EDID override mod? Worth noting is that I did use the latest ATI drivers and I still needed the EDID override to get any kind of HDMI bitstreaming to work. In any case, thanks for the help in getting this to work.

Damian June 5, 2010 at 6:03 pm

@ Radik,

I am going to do a clean reinstall of W7 on my HTPC that is connected to my Onkyo NR906. I have been using the override (I am actually still on the ATI 8.69RC driver amd teh Realteck 2.39 HDMI driver). I am curious to see if I just use the latest ATI (I think 10.4 or 10.5) that no EDID override is needed.

Eugene June 6, 2010 at 12:59 am

Thanks for this guide. I was able to set up MP-HC to bitstream both True-HD and DTS-MA fine to my Onkyo 507 receiver. However, I have to questions.

First, when playing movies with True-HD (and I would assume DTS-MA as well), after a little while, the audio and video become out of sync. I was able to get it sort of back into sync by stopping and playing the movie several times. It doesn’t do this through xbmc and whatever player it uses (not bitstreaming here).

Second, and this has just become an issue. When playing movies with DTS-MA audio, the movie starts to play for 2 seconds, and then pauses and becomes really jerky: jerky to a point where it just freezes. Receiver still shows DTS-MA however. The only thing I have changed since then was one windows update that looks like it has nothing to do with the problem. Movies with True-HD audio play just fine (except with the out of sync audio mentioned in the first point). After following this guide, both audio codecs (correct?) played just fine. I don’t know what has happened since then as I said, I haven’t changed anything really. Any one with these same problems. Any help?

Thank you.

Damian June 6, 2010 at 4:26 am

@ Eugene,

That is odd, I never have sync or stuttering problems. Can you try updating to the very latest FFDShow Beta and MPC HC to see if that fixes your problem.

Eugene June 6, 2010 at 10:59 pm

@ Damian,

Still, nothing. I was using Shark007 Win 7 codecs pack which worked fine before. I noticed there was a new version and upgraded to that. Still nothing. I installed ffdshow even though the pack I had before already registered those filters (hopefully, I am getting the correct lingo of terms). Nothing. I saw this post

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/general-support-51/mkv-file-dts-ma-audio-video-extremely-jerky-82131/

and this wasn’t any help either. I never downloaded and installed Haali as a standalone package but I did disabled some of the filters in the listcodecs program provided my shark007 and registered thos three files (they probably were already registered) and still nothing. I managed to mess up Windows media player as it doesn’t play my mkv files anymore. oh well. Will get to that later. Any other ideas? Thanks!

Eugene June 8, 2010 at 11:53 pm

Just following up. I got it working with MPC-HC. Essentially I uninstalled the Shark codec pack, grabbed the svn version of ffdshow tryouts and MPC-HC. The only issue I am facing now is lip sync/lip audio sync. A movie with TrueHD track, the audio goes out of sync with video after 10 minutes or so. Movies with DTS-MA (and all others I suppose) have no problems under MPC-HC. Haven’t configured WMP to play and bitstream these files yet. Currently looking for an easier, less buggier alternative to XBMC (Aeon).

Damian June 9, 2010 at 7:02 pm

@ Eugene,

I haven’t come across any audio sync issues to date. I just did a clean install of W7 on my HTPC and loaded the very latest MPC HC / FFDShow Beta and it worked well.

I have been tinkering around with XBMC getting bitstreaming to work and it has been relatively smooth. One option is to have MPC HC launch, and the other is to use DSPlayer which is still a little bit more in development. I can get halfway with bitstreaming in SageTV, but I posted a bug log which hopefully will clean up the issues I was having.

Haydon June 16, 2010 at 4:27 pm

Thanks for this – tried all of the versions i can find of ffdshow tryouts and none had the checkboxes for DTS HD / True HD etc, even beta 7 from the main sourceforge site.
Nice and easy to follow and up and running in 5 minutes using this – after a day of trying to find the right version I was very grateful!

Damian June 17, 2010 at 5:24 am

@ Haydon,

Great to hear it is working. The good thing as well is that with FFDShow you can also get bitstreaming working in other players (XBMC, SageTV, etc…) and not just MPC HC.

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 9:41 am

Hi All

Am I the only the person on the planet who is having playback issues when bitstreaming. I finally took the plunge and got an ATI 5450 – arrived this morning and I have spent the best part of the day trying it out. Dolby TrueHD – no problem plays back flawlessly. DTS-HD MA different story – sound received by receiver OK – video – s..t micros stutter throughout anyone else seeing these characteristics or who might be able to help troubleshoot (Damian?),

Win7 x86
ATI HD5450
ffdshow r3476
mpc-hc 1.3.2058.0 (build 18.06.10)

This is so frustrating – oh and Damian carried out a quick test using DSPlayer – audio playback OK with HD Codecs (lights up my receiver lovely), but with the same provisio as mpc-hc (which we might expect)

True-HD – fine
DTS-HD MA – crap.

D

Damian June 18, 2010 at 9:55 am

Derek,

Do you by chance have Haali installed on your PC?

Eugene June 18, 2010 at 10:06 am

@steelman1991
“Am I the only the person on the planet who is having playback issues when bitstreaming.”

please see my posts

@Damian

Are you supposed to have it installed?

Damian June 18, 2010 at 10:14 am

@ Eugene,

You “can” have Haali instaled but I find it causes a lot of issues. If you have it installed but want to use the MPC internal mkv splitter you have to block Haali in the External filters section of MPC HC.

Currently myself and a few others have encountered a bug where mkvs with DTS(MA) audio track created by mkvmerge do not play with Haali (TrueHD plays fine). mkvs created with MakeMKV with DTS(MA) audio tracks play fine with Haali. This issue Derek described sounds like the Haali issue I experienced, so that is why I was asking if he had Haali installed on his system

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 12:29 pm

@Damian

I did have but Haali installed but I uninstalled after reading that there may be an issue with it – unregistered all instances through GraphStudio – still the issue remains. The file I have issues with is an mkv/H264 encode (with DTS-HD MA soundtrack) and not a straight rip. Using CCC 10.6 drivers (ATI HDMI Driver – not the Realtek one, I couldn’t get True HD Playback with it).

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 3:06 pm

Damian

Just popped the offending file into GraphStudio and its showing the decoder as the Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder – I presume this can’t be right, therefore might I have a conflict here and any suggestions how I might resolve it?

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 3:16 pm

Ignore last comment I had blocked it already in mpc-hc as per your guide – ho hum!!!.

Damian June 18, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Derek,

Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder should not matter. In MPC HC the important thing is to make sure that FFDShow Audio Decoder is set in your external filters as Prefer and possibly block Microsoft DTV Audio Decoder.

FYI – just dropping the mkv in Graphstudio wont tell you what filters MPC are using. Try playing the mkv, and while playing open graph studio, go to I think File –> connect to remote graph, and you should see a playlist that you can connect to which should be the MPC video.

Also, in the external filters section of MPC go through the list of filters and confirm that Haali is not showing up in the list

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 4:00 pm

Damian

Yeah checled everything for Haali – nothing there. The sound regrettably isn’t the issue – FFDShow set-up as preferred decoder. The receiver shows both types as being received (True HD and DTS (MA) its the video that seems screwed.

I realised the futility of graphstudio almost immediately after writing and checking the filter settings during playback. Will keep trying anything and see where we get to.

Derek

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 4:05 pm

Don’t know if its any use, but here’s a link to a screenshot showing stat details

http://www.imagebam.com/image/c5249684976638

Damian June 18, 2010 at 4:07 pm

Derek,

Real sorry you are having these problems. I am really not sure what the problem is as DTS(MA) mkvs play fine with me (using the same FFDShow and MPC that you are using, I think I am on ATI 10.4 or 10.5). It still sounds like Haali even though uninstalled is still messing up your system as the DTS(MA) choppiness/stuttering is the exact symptom I get with Haali. Do you by chance have some time to create a Blu Ray mkv with MakeMKV (pick a movie that has a DTS(MA) track). If it plays back without stuttering then we at least know that most likely Haali is still haunting your system.

Cheers
Damian

steelman1991 June 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm

Damian

Will try that in the morning. But am I looking for continued stuttering or not – might be me, but there seems to be some confusion with the last sentence. If it plays back ‘without’ stuttering I assume it means that Haali is no longer an issue, but if it plays back ‘with’ stuttering then its still there somewhere.

Will let you know how I get on tomorrow – thanks again mate.

Derek

Damian June 18, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Derek,

Currently I have encountered a bug with Haali where a mkvmerge mkv w/ DTS(MA) stutters but the same mkv created with MakeMKV does not stutter. That why I am curious if you create a MakeMKV and it plays back without stutter that could mean that somehow Haali is still lurking in your system and being used.I would say worse case scenario you do a clean install of W7, but hopefully we can get it working

Cheers
Damian

robp June 18, 2010 at 7:56 pm

You could also try running the mkv through tsmuxer to create a .ts or .m2ts file. See if you still have stuttering with the movie in one of those containers.

Also, do you have any other movies with DTS-MA to test? Possibly one with a different video codec? (VC-1 maybe?)

steelman1991 June 19, 2010 at 8:22 am

Hi Damian

Right – sorry for the delay I’m sure your all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for my report back.

Using MakeMKV produces a file that plays back perfectly in both MPC-HC and XBMC (But for MPC-HC only where 1 audio file exists – it doesn’t like more than one – not a problem though). I also read the thread on Doom9 regarding the mkvmerge problems and decided to try the latest build, thought I had it but turns out there was a new release in May.

Extracted the DTS-HD MA track from the original source and merged it with the video from the previously encoded source (the file I had problems with) using the new mkvmerge and voila again perfect playback.

I then thought I would run the previous problematic file through mkvmerge to see whether a remerge would make any difference – but it didn’t, seems as soon as the audio source has been ‘touched’ by a previous version of mkvmerge it remains ‘borked’.

Conclusion use MakeMKV, or extract new Audio Source and carry out a merge using the newest mkvmerge.

Sorry for the ramble, and thanks for all your help, really appreciate it.

DSPlayer working perfectly on a bog standard installation (providing ffdshow is set-up for HD AUdio). No changes to either of the config files.

Happy Days

Derek

Eugene June 20, 2010 at 12:31 am

Thanks Derek for the followup. I can confirm, after downloading the June release (I had the March release) of mkvmerge, (and also upgrading eac3to .18 to .21) the audio is now in sync with the video….at least for the first 20mins. Didn’t have a problem with DTS-MA tracks before, just True HD….now I need to rip my movies again….great! will report back if something changes.

hapaboy June 26, 2010 at 9:16 am

Hi,

I just wanted to say thank you for this guide. Bitstreaming is working perfectly.

I have a question regarding blurays with pcm audio – how do you setup MPC HC to play this audio? For example, the movie Patriot does not have audio output with my current setup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Damian June 26, 2010 at 9:25 am

It should play via ffdshow. In the output section of ffdshow audio for you have LPCM checked off?

Eugene June 26, 2010 at 10:13 am

After re-ripping my movies with the latest release of mkvmerge, i still experience incorrect audio sync. It seems to be very slight and much more of an improvement using the older version of mkvmerge. maybe I am just being picky at this point, or maybe I was doing other tasks on the computer when merging, or perhaps it is MPC-HC with trueHD movies. I guess I will have to do more testing. It looks like I am the only one with this problem. peace!

hapaboy June 26, 2010 at 10:18 am

Thanks Damian, but i still have no audio.

16 bit LPCM is checked off in ffdshow, but I receive a warning in MPC stating that some of the pins could not be rendered in the graph and that I may not have the correct codecs or filters installed. The failed filter is the ACM wrapper output. I am unsure how to fix this issue. Any thoughts? Thanks once again.

Damian June 26, 2010 at 5:43 pm

OK, I just had a chance to test a LPCM mkv I have (Casino Royale) with MPC HC and I had no problems playing. I am not familiar with ACM wrapper output. Do you by chance have any other codecs installed on your PC (such as AC3Filter, Haali, etc…)?

Damian June 26, 2010 at 5:47 pm

@ Eugene,

That is odd, it is only TrueHD that you have the issue?

I am having some funky issues with my 5670 HTPC. I just tested a few movies (trying to look at hapaboy’s issue) and I noticed that MPC was stuttering slightly and the picture seemed “off”. This has happened in the past as well with MPC where this just happens out of the blue. I have only ever had this issue with the 5670 HTPC in the family room, never run into this issue with my core i5 and my other 5670 htpc, so don’t know if something is just off with that HTPC. Might have to do some more investigating if the kids ever go to bed.

hapaboy June 27, 2010 at 1:57 pm

I have Haali installed…might this be the culprit? If so, what’s the best way to resolve this issue?

Damian June 28, 2010 at 2:51 am

@ hapaboy,

Haali might be the issue, but I don’t think so since your issue is LPCM. You can try uninstalling Haali to see if that fixes your issue. If it does fix it but you still need Haali on your PC then reinstall and simply block in the External Filters section of MPC HC.

john July 1, 2010 at 7:49 am

Thanks for this briliant guide. I did this 2x on two installations (on the same computer – one was a reinstall).

However, both times I got a side effect.

In both cases, after doing this, my 7MC doesn’t play Live TV for more than 5 seconds. I get that dreaded “Video Error” stating that some files needed for video playback aren’t installed properly, etc etc.

I have a Radeon 5770 for my vid card, an asus p6x58D-e mobo with the realtek drivers installed and using a SiliconDust HDHomerun tuner.

tried installing/uninstalling the HDHomerun software. The funny thing is, I can see TV on the QuickTV program – just not in 7MC.

Any thoughts?

bmac6996 September 9, 2010 at 8:50 pm

see my comment.. sounds like you have the same issue..

Damian July 7, 2010 at 9:05 am

@ john,

Hmmm…you got me on this one. I have the HDHomerun as well and have no issues. Installing FFDShow + MPC HC should have no effect on Live TV. Is there anything else you possibly installed on your PCs?

islander84 July 7, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Damien,

I downloaded everything and could not see the FFDShow filters when i went to add filter. The only 64bit version of MPC HC i can find is v1.3.1249.0 Is there a different version i should be using? Should i just use the 32 Bit even though everything else i have is 64 bit?

robp July 7, 2010 at 4:54 pm

If you’re using 64bit mpc, then you must use 64bit ffdshow – the same if true if you use 32bit mpc.

Actually, if you use 64bit mpc, then all the filters you use must be 64bit. There’s still quite a few filters/decoders/renderers that are not available in 64bit, so I just use 32bit for now – I use Reclock for LPCM/Flac, and Cyberlink’s video decoder for VC-1 (Cyberlink’s video decoder is the only one I’ve found that handles 1080i VC-1 well), both of which are not available in 64bit.

DamianP July 7, 2010 at 6:17 pm

@islander84

as rob mentioned you must use al x64 or x32. It sounds like you have the x64 mpc but x32 ffdshow, or vice versa. On an x64 system I still prefer to use x32 mpc and ffdshow. You can find both x32 and x64 versions of mpc hc and ffdshow from the links I posted at the beginning of this guide. Post back if you get it working or hve issues.

hapaboy July 8, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Hi Damian,

I got another issue for you…hopefully you might have an answer.

I have a video playback issue that is consistent throughout all of my videos (Blurays, TV shows…). During viewing, I will have one, single instance of stutter (video and audio) usually 20 to 40 minutes into the viewing, but the rest of the time, the video and audio is flawless.

I have an i5 750 and a Sapphire 5670 and I am using your bistreaming method through MPC HC. Any thoughts of what might be the culprit?

Damian July 8, 2010 at 12:57 pm

@ hapaboy,

So just one instance and the rest plays fine. My guess it may just be a hiccup in your network or where you are serving your files from (unless your files are stored locally on the HTPC you are using)? Every once in a while I will get a random stutter but I usually attribute it to something going on with my network (maybe my WHS is performing some action, etc…)

hapaboy July 8, 2010 at 1:54 pm

The files are on a local drive…

Damian July 12, 2010 at 7:57 am

@ hapaboy,

You got me on that one. The only thing I can think of is that at some point your PC is running some process (maybe a virus scan in the background) that spikes your CPU momentarily?

AmokK July 13, 2010 at 3:33 am

Hi !

I followed the tutorial, but I can’t get DTS-HD from my mkv that contains it.
Sometimes for 1 or 2 seconds, my A/V receiver will display DTS-HD, then it switches to Core DTS.
My setup is : Windows Seven x64 home premium, Ati 5450 Catalyst 10.6, latest MPC-HC x64 / ffdshow x64 from xvidvideo.ru, Yamaha RX-V567 A/V.
Any idea ?

Damian July 14, 2010 at 4:38 am

@ AmokK,

Not sure what the problem could be. Do you by chance have a TrueHD mkv to test out to see if that passes through? Also, do you have Haali installed on your system?

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 7:19 am

I just downloaded a Dolby TrueHD: 7.1 lossless TrueHD audio file from this link : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1181902
Bitstreaming of Dolby True HD works fine, well displayed on receiver.
Is my receiver the cause ?

Damian July 14, 2010 at 7:35 am

I don’t think it is a receiver issue. Do you have Haali installed on your HTPC?

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 8:22 am

No I haven’t, but I have problems bitstreaming too in TMT3, only core DTS I get :(

Damian July 14, 2010 at 8:31 am

Something in your HTPC sounds messed up. You didn’t install the Realtek HDMI driver, did you (or did you only use the Cataklyst driver)?

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 8:36 am

When I first installed my htpc, ATI HDMI installed with catalyst, but I’m now running with Realtek HDMI 2.49.

Damian July 14, 2010 at 8:38 am

The Realtek HDMI does not work for bitstreaming with TMT, you have to use the Catalyst HDMI driver

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 8:46 am

But to bitstream in MPC-HC I have to use Realtek’s one … so TMT is secondary and not relevant for testing purposes :)

Damian July 14, 2010 at 8:52 am

For MPC HC you don’t have to use Realtek. Both the Realtek and Catalyst HDMI driver works with MPC HC. Catalyst is only required if you use TMT.

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 12:35 pm

Just tried with ATI HDMI driver, same problem with DTS MA (but smoother playback in TMT)

Damian July 14, 2010 at 1:49 pm

Any luck you can try doing a clean install? I am thinking that you may have driver conflicts going on if you are installing/uninstalling drivers. You can try using one of the drivers cleaner programs as well.

If you can do a clean install, I would do so, load the O/S, load Catalyst 10.6, load the latest ffdshow/mpc hc (try doing x32 for both, will still work with your HTPC), and see if that does the trick.

AmokK July 14, 2010 at 2:41 pm

I use drivercleaner.net each time I change drivers.
I could do a clean install but it means a lot of time to me :(

Damian July 14, 2010 at 3:50 pm

I am out of ideas. Before you do a clean install try posting your issue on this thread, hopefully someone else can help:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18905633#post18905633

Also, try installing the latest x32 ffdshow from soureforge and the latest x32 MPC HC from xvidvideo, see if that works (you don’t need to uninstall your x64 versions)

Alex July 16, 2010 at 3:53 am

all my attemts to get HDaudio failed..
hd5670, win7, mpc hc, Onkyo-606 (starting to suspect it of a bad work)
tried all possible combinations, including clean installation
catalist, realtek, tmt, mpc..
I can see bitstreaming or hdmi pass through in players, but not on the reciver.
it makes me crazyyyyyy!

AmokK July 16, 2010 at 3:08 pm

Hi again !

I just tried my gaming computer plugged on my yamaha receiver, running 7 pro x64 with Ati 5850 Catalyst 10.6 : same issue, only DTS after a blink of DTS-Hi-RES displayed (in fact I just learned DTS-HI-RES is different from DTS-HD MASTER).
I tried also a folder rip from Avatar blu-ray, it will display DTS-HD Master max 2 seconds then sometimes switch to DTS-Hi-Res and back to DTS. So I guess my Yamaha receiver is messing up, either displaying false info (and in fact getting real DTS HD), or having problems decoding DTS HD.

Dsudot July 16, 2010 at 11:04 pm

great guide thanks damian, I have the same issue as hapaboy, LPCM tracks give me an ACM Wrapper output issues, indicating unable to render pin.

I am bitstreaming all codecs to my reciever with no issues for every codec (except one bluray that has a Truehd 2 channel track, but i think thats a ffdshow deficiency)

I have done a clean install with the following installed

Windows 7 64 bit
ATI 5450 /w at 10.6
Realtek HDMI audio 2.49
mpc-homecinema.1.3.2099.0.x64
ffdshow_rev3507_20100707_clsid_x64

I have not been able to find a fix anywhere

here is a part of the error

Media Type 0:
————————–
Audio: PCM 48000Hz 6ch 4608kbps

AM_MEDIA_TYPE:
majortype: MEDIATYPE_Audio {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
subtype: MEDIASUBTYPE_PCM {00000001-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
formattype: FORMAT_WaveFormatEx {05589F81-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}
bFixedSizeSamples: 1
bTemporalCompression: 0
lSampleSize: 12
cbFormat: 18

WAVEFORMATEX:
wFormatTag: 0×0001
nChannels: 6
nSamplesPerSec: 48000
nAvgBytesPerSec: 576000
nBlockAlign: 12
wBitsPerSample: 16
cbSize: 0 (extra bytes)

Damian July 17, 2010 at 5:38 am

@ Dsudot/hapaboy,

I am happy to report (um, I guess not happy) that I just tried playing Casino Royale (LPCM) and get the same exact error message regarding the ACM Wrapper. I am going to test on a few different HTPCs I have set up all with different versions of MPC/FFDShow to see if this error is consistent.

Damian July 17, 2010 at 5:48 am

OK, an update. I just tested Casino Royale on my HTPC and it plays perfect in MPC without the ACM Wrapper issue. So the question, something is running a muck in the systems that get this issue. The different between the HTPC I just tetsed on and my desktop PC that I get the error is that the HTPC is as minimal as possible (5670 + ffdshow + mpc). My desktop PC has a lot of crap on it (including Haali). Will keep doing some more digging around.

Dsudot July 17, 2010 at 6:29 am

thanks for testing it out, i havent been able to test my theory yet on my HTPC setup, but i think the issue i am having is due to running mpc-hc and ffdshow in 64 bit mode,

on one of my test PC’s i has the same ACM wrapper issue using the 64 bit stuff, but the 32 bit mpc-hc didnt report same error,

By chance is your desktop 64 bit, and your htpc 32 ?

dusdot July 17, 2010 at 6:36 am

also i should state, i demuxed the mkv, and tried to play the resulting lpcm .wav file directly with mpc-hc,, again this is just on my test PC, the 64-bit setup resulted in the same acm wrapper output error, the 32 bit stuff seems to playback okay, this computer is not outputting to any sound system though .

dusdot July 17, 2010 at 8:41 am

meh no suck luck installing 32 bit ffdshow and mpc-hc on my htpc, it still gives wrapper issue

on my desktop, when it playsback the file, the ffa icon in the systray provides the following info

input 8000 hz mono libamr_nb (libavcodec)
output 8000 hz 6 channels 16-bit integer

if i right click the tray icon, in the top section, theres a ” MOnogram AMR encoder” , i believe that is what is decoding the PCM stream on my desktop machine in 32 bit mode.

is that what you see on your HTPC damian ?

dsudot July 17, 2010 at 9:42 am

so the MOnogram AMR encoder, on my test PC i believe was left over from a shark install.

For some reason it seems MPc-Hc and ffdshow is having issues getting a the AMR decoder to function

Damian July 17, 2010 at 6:35 pm

@ dsudot,

My PC and HTPCs are all x32. Even on my laptop which is x64 is use x32 MPC/FFDShow

Mine tray icon shows:

input 48000 Hz 6 channels 448 kbps AC3 (liba53)
output 48000 Hz stereo 16bit integer

I am going to post on the MPC HC site the error we are getting to see if others have an answer. This only affects my desktop

dsudot July 17, 2010 at 8:54 pm

i split off a sample, this is from the LPCM track on The Crazies,
On my HTPC, i cannot get it to play in MPC-HC 32 or 64 with ffdshow, nor will media player, or media center play it back

http://www.writeoncopywriting.ca/PCM.wav

dsudot July 17, 2010 at 11:00 pm

ive got a work around for my issue

see this thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18921627&posted=1#post18921627

Damian July 18, 2010 at 5:05 am

Since for whatever reason I have no issues on my HTPCs I shouldn’t have to do a workaround as this only affects my desktop pc. Even with my desktop it will still play the movie, just give me the error message. Very strange???

dsudot July 18, 2010 at 8:19 pm

My problem was actually that in FFDSHOW, under codecs tab, “uncompressed” was not enabled, once enabled i can playback PCM tracks without issue.

Damian July 19, 2010 at 9:18 am

Just confirmed, enabling “uncompressed” fixes this issues as well. I will update my guide, thanks for picking up on this

Damian July 19, 2010 at 9:22 am

Guide updated (see step 5) for ACM Wrapper error fix. Big thanks to dsudot

hapaboy July 20, 2010 at 9:30 am

dsudot/damian -

Thanks a bunch guys…I had given up on this one and was happy to find that you guys were able to figure this one out.

dsudot July 20, 2010 at 11:21 am

np, did you test it ? did it work for you?, I found even after changing the codec setting within ffdshow for a few of my movies with PCM (not all) i still had an issue, to resolve i had to “add media type” – “any type” to the ffdshow audio decoder, within the external filter options of MPC-HC

hapaboy July 20, 2010 at 4:51 pm

I’m going to try it this evening and I’ll let you know. Unfortunately I only have a few movies with PCM tracks…but I’ll give them a try.

hapaboy July 20, 2010 at 8:56 pm

dsudot -

Just tried the fix and both the Patriot and Donnie Brasco now have audio. Thanks a lot!

Eugene July 23, 2010 at 7:22 pm

Ok, I am back with some new observations. First of all the problem I am still facing is after about 20minutes into a movie with a TrueHD track, the audio and video become out of sync. This happens when bitstreaming the TrueHD, but if it somehow gets converted to something else (for example, if I play my mkv file without setting it up for bitstream as per this guide) then it is fine. The funny thing is I don’t experience this with Master Audio.

What have I done so far?
– downloaded a trial version of Power DVD and played Hancock straight from disc to make sure it wasn’t anything external. I also went into the options and changed something such that it bitstreamed the TrueHD audio track (light lit up on receiver)
- clean install, and followed this guide and putting nothing more, MPC-HC x64, ffdshow tryouts x64 (SVN), DirectX.
- installed media portal. Since I couldn’t get WMP to play properly and too much work if you ask me, I wanted to use media portals built in player. At first, I couldn’t get it set up properly as this guide

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1092168&highlight=x64

pointed me to register MPC Video Decoder (i assume x86). I registered the x64 since I cannot do the x86. When trying to choose H264 decoder, the MPC Video Decoder was not listed. I gave up on that and downloaded the Divx codec pack which was good in a way. ffdshow is the audio decoder just like in this guide.

So my conclusion to the problem?
1. ffdshow
2. the way how I am ripping the movies

More on number 2, I used MakeMKV and also used ClownDB+mkvmerge and both showed the same problem with the Hancock movie using this guide.

any help would be appreciated on this. Thanks in advance.

Eugene July 23, 2010 at 9:21 pm

Hmm….I played Star Trek to see if it is still affecting other movies with TrueHD and it seems as if it was slightly off (I was looking really hard at that point) and after a little while, it seemed fine. Maybe the way how I am ripping the movies to my computer is the key here. I am guessing I am causing a stutter when ripping the movies (specifically those with TrueHD) when I also browse the internet or play music or something. I know I am not playing Call of Duty or anything like that. I am ripping them using a Intel Quad Core, with 6GB. I dunno, I will do some more testing, specifically with the Hancock movie and see what happens.

robp July 24, 2010 at 1:57 am

I doubt it has anything to do with using your pc while ripping, especially if you’re just web surfing or playing music.

I would try playing the movie straight from the disc in MPC. If you don’t have it, you’ll need to download a trial of AnyDVD-HD. Then, with AnyDVD running, open the disc and browse to the m2ts file that contains the movie: right click the drive and click “expand” > BDMV > STREAM, and look for the largest file – it could be anywhere from about 15-40GB. Depending on whether or not the audio is still out of sync, you’ll at least know if the problem is with the player/filters, or with the ripping process.

Also, try to avoid seeking while playing the movie, at least while you’re testing.

Eugene July 24, 2010 at 8:12 am

Thanks robp, it never occurred to me that I can do that. Ha. I do have AnyDVD- HD so I will try that and will let you know. Thanks for the suggestion.

Eugene July 25, 2010 at 12:19 am

Reporting back. I chose Star Trek for my test instead of Hancock as Hancock had the movie in multiple streams that didn’t last the amount of time for me to start noticing audio sync problems. The Stark Trek disc had one 40GB file. I played the ripped Star Trek on my computer and for some reason, playing that file required more time until I noticed audio sync problems. Regardless, it was still there however playing straight from the disc, there were no issues (watched about half that movie).

So it seems there is a problem with my ripping process? So my question to you guys is, what do you use? I had used MakeMKV and ClownBD+mkvmerge on another computer and transferred to my htpc (when testing out Hancock, it seems like using both methods didn’t make a difference). I will try the actual ripping process on my htpc and see if that makes any difference.

Damian July 25, 2010 at 3:27 pm

@ Eugene,

I am not convinced it is the ripping process (as I have used both methods that you mentioned and don’t get AV sync problems). It almost seems like it may be an issue with your HTPC (possibly some decoders/filters conflicting with each other that are used with your mkvs)?

Eugene July 25, 2010 at 4:22 pm

@ Damian,

Well I have formatted my hard drive and simply loaded only ffdshow x64, MPC-HC x64 with the same results on the Hancock movie.

What is strange is Star Trek takes a little longer for it to become out of sync it seems like. I just tried ripping the movie on my HTPC rather than my other computer (as I have been doing) and played the movie Hancock. I played the movie for quite some time and came back way into the movie and it seems like it was in sync. Then I said, let me watch it until the part where I know it starts messing up and surely enough, it was still messing up. A simple seek, pressing the slider or seeking a little bit backwords seemed like it fixed the problem. This leads me to believe that it has nothing to do with the file. I hope not because its not like I am using some software people don’t use. So now I am thinking it may be hardware related. Possibly my video card

XFX ATI Radeon HD 5450
2GB of RAM
Mobo: MA785GM-US2H
AMD X2 (which I unlocked the other two cores but have since reset it to use two cores).

DTS-MA works fine last time I checked.

It’s only a guess but could it be the video card? This is so frustrating.

Damian July 25, 2010 at 5:57 pm

@ Eugene,

Do you get the same issue with an mkv and you do with a single m2ts file? Also, do you get the same AV Sync issue on both your desktop pc and your htpc, or is it only your HTPC that gives you the issue (if it occurs on both PCs then it would rule out the5450 being the issue)

Eugene July 25, 2010 at 9:23 pm

@ Damian,
I don’t get this issue it seems when playing a m2ts file str8 from the Blu Ray disc. I have not tested playing back on my desktop computer as that may be a timely process. I may investigate that but it may be my last option. I am in the process of moving so hopefully, I will have some time to do it soon.

azzkicker July 28, 2010 at 1:29 pm

hi problems with the realtek installation

i installed the latest ccc 10.2- 10.6 after installing relatek driver
in control panel is no relatek hdmi output its an windows digital audio hdmi device set up only to 2 channels, i wouldt install the driver manuel over the hardwaremanager but i have no plan wich inf i must used for my ati 5770

please help

thx

Damian July 28, 2010 at 4:49 pm

You could possibly have some conflicting drivers messing around with your system. If possible I would uninstall the Realtek HDMI driver, uninstall CCC, use a driver cleaner program to clean out everythinig, and then just install CCC 10.6. See if that works (there is no need to install the Realtek HDMI anymore). Let me know if this works. Worse case, do a clean install and just install CCC 10.6

Tony July 30, 2010 at 2:05 pm

Woohoo! Almost there. Followed your guide and had success. Thank you! However, there is always a however, it works with a few demo/test files that I have downloaded, but when I use a m2ts rip from a blu-ray as is, I can’t select more than the default audio. MPC only sees 1 audio stream. Something I forgot to set maybe?

-Tony

Eugene July 31, 2010 at 1:27 am

There is no need to installt he Realtek HDMI driver anymore? Hmm, well I still had audio sync problems before and after installing it on my htpc.

UPDATE: I did a clean install on my desktop and installed only what this guide requires to get bitstreaming to work using MPC-HC. I installed
MPC-HC x64 svn
ffdshow tryouts x64 svn
CCC (the latest)
Realtek HDMI driver

I installed the HD 5450 card in my desktop and still the problem exists. At this point, would you guess it is my card? XFX card.

Damian July 31, 2010 at 4:26 am

@ Tony,

Just tested with an m2ts and no problems switching audio tracks. I right clicked on MPC HC, and went to Navigate -> Audio Language and I see all the Audio Tracks

Damian July 31, 2010 at 4:28 am

@ Eugene,

I am at a loss to be honest. Either your files are bad or there is a problem with your GPU. The Realtek HDMI driver is no longer needed. What happens, if you install the Realtek HDMI driver first when CCC installs it won’t install its own HDMI driver. My last clean install I did a month ago I just skipped the Realtek driver and am going solely with the CCC driver

Eugene July 31, 2010 at 10:24 pm

@ Damian,

Yes, I beleive it to be my GPU. I just did a clean install again and just installed the CCC 10.7. What is strange is that the audio sync problem happens earlier (I think it has to do with the recent 10.7 or perhaps a different computer). I am looking at getting something more powerful that i can perhaps play games, but don’t know which yet. I notice you use a Saphire 5670? I may look into that since I know it works on your end. I would hate to find out that my card wasn’t the problem after all. Then again, I can’t see how it could be my file as I used MakeMKV (which is like a 1-click solution) and eac3to+mkmerge_GUI.

RonDMC July 31, 2010 at 10:51 pm

I used this guide to get DTS-MA and TrueHD working with MKV’s and it has been working great for a while now. Thanks for the great guide. I have a few MT2S files with DTS-MA streams in them but these only playback as DTS (it must only be seeing the core audio stream) can someone tell mw how to get the MT2S files to bitstream DTS-MA and TrueHD? I would normally just use MakeMKV to convert them to mkv files but it fails to convert on these mt2s files (although playback with normal DTS is perfect) does anyone have any ideas?

I read somewhere that I had to register some standalone filters (MpcAudiRendererFilter.ax and MpegSplitter.ax) I worked ok for the MpegSplitter but I can’t register the MpcAudioRendererFilter (module not compatible with this version of windows error). I am not sure if I am even on the right track here. I downloaded these filters from here but they are from 09 so not sure if they are outdated http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/files/

Damian August 1, 2010 at 6:33 am

@ Eugene,

For a file that is not working does the A/V sync issue always happen in the same spot? If so you could try sending me a sample of the spot where the AV sync happens and I can test out on my system

Damian August 1, 2010 at 6:34 am

@ RonDMC,

Are you using MPC HC for playback, or are you trying to play back in WMP/internal WMC player?

With MPC HC there is no need to register anything, just using MPC HC + FFDShow is all you need

RonDMC August 1, 2010 at 6:52 am

Yes I am using MPC HC for playback but they only playback as straight DTS. If I open these files with MakeMKV I can see the DTS-HD MA streams in them, if I right click on the movie while playing in MPC HC and go to navigate – Audio Language – it shows one Audio stream (DTS-HD Master Audio….) but my receiver only says DTS.

All mkv’s with TrueHD/DTS-MA playback fine and receiver shows as TrueHD/DTS-MA so unless there is a setting I have missed somewhere that is not related to getting mkvs and HD audio working. Is there any additional settings in ffdshow that are unrelated to mkv playback that I need to change?

The version of ffdshow and MPC HC is probably 2-3 months old now but don’t really want to change because everything is working great and assume if these versions can playback mkvs with HD Audio they should be fine with MT2S files.

Damian August 1, 2010 at 7:55 am

I would recommend updating to the latest MPC HC and FFDShow betas. I usually do this every couple of weeks. This may fix your problem. Also, can you confirm with Graphstudio what filters are being used when y ou play the m2ts file in MPC HC. Here is a link on how to set up:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18865604#post18865604

Eugene August 1, 2010 at 9:53 am

@ Damian,

Yes, it happens at the same spot. Do you know the best way to go about sending a 3GB file?

Damian August 1, 2010 at 9:56 am

You can either use mkvmerge (if it is an mkv) and just let mkvmerge cut it into 100MB pieces, and just grab the 100MB piece that has the a/v sync issues. I like to use MediaFire to upload my files, so if you use that you can upload your file and then post the download link for me to grab the file

Eugene August 1, 2010 at 2:30 pm

Hmm, it seems we are at a misunderstanding. I cut the movie into 20minute intervals (could have done it with 10mins as it happens that fast with this particular movie). The problem occurs within 8 minutes or so of playing the movie (on my htpc/previous version of CCC 10.6, it happens a few minutes later –> specifically for the movie Hancock; Star Trek, takes a little longer). This means, regardless of what piece I chose (a scene at the end, or in the middle, or at the beginning, once I hit play, I can expect the audio and video to go out of whack within 10-15mins, and then later come back together. I just tested this to see if it occurs at a specific point for a movie file (such as Hancock), but no, no matter which interval I load up in MPC, once i hit play, the problem occurs soon after that.

I hope that makes a little more sense. Now I could split the 3GB file (20min scene) further into 200MB files but you would need to join them again. If I had split the movie into 100/200MB intervals, it wouldn’t be long enough to experience this problem. Each file would play perfectly as the problem doesn’t occur that fast (1-2mins).

Damian August 1, 2010 at 4:32 pm

Gotcha, I thought it was the same point/scene in the movie. If you want to take a crack at splitting into a enough files for me to test out (maybe with 7zip), but with that amount of data it may not be worth it. You tried your GPU with both your HTPC and your desktop, and with both you got the same result, correct? If so I gotta believe it is the GPU as I can’t think of a reason why you would have this problem with the methods you use.

Also, I never answered your other question. I have the Sapphire 5670 and HIS 5670 and both work great. For any sort of serious gaming you are problem going to want to go with something like the 5770 or 58xx. I know the new NVidia 460 supports bitstreaming although driver support is still in the works

Drew August 2, 2010 at 5:52 am

Just found this and tried it-worked perfectly.u r a legend dude. I did notice sync problems with avatar (dts-ma), Dolby true-HD seems fine so far.I will start testing with other bluray (m2ts single file rips) soon and post results.

drew August 2, 2010 at 7:07 am

OK – The Problem i see is that with MPC HC playback of .m2ts files is bad – looks like it is struggling big time – with PVP10 perfect everytime.

Any suggestions what might be causing this?

ASUS p7h55M + I3 530, 4gB, DDR3 1333, Win7 x64

Eugene August 2, 2010 at 2:28 pm

I noticed when downloaded the ATI CCC that it says it does not support Beta and RC versions for Windows 7. I am using a school supplied license which I am guessing is Windows 7 RTM as it was available (i think) one or two months before the official release of Windows 7. Do you think this is a potential problem? I don’t know how I can test this though, by the time I spent the money on another license, I could get another GPU :P

I think I will look at getting another GPU and explore the price comparisons of that and an i3 combo

robp August 2, 2010 at 10:05 pm

@ Eugene:

Regarding the comparison of the GPU vs i3, keep in mind that you can’t get bitstreaming with the i3 unless you also have the correct motherboard. And when you change your motherboard, you might have to either purchase a new W7 license, or request for it to be transfered to your new board. Just look into it carefully.

I’d see about getting your school supplied license “upgraded” – I have no idea if that’s even possible, but if it were, then it might be the easiest and cheapest solution.

@Drew: I have a system almost identical to yours, and early on I did have some choppy playback. Somewhere along the way though, Intel released updated drivers and playback is just as smooth now as it is with my 5750 GPU. I’d check to make sure your drivers are up to date. Also, make sure you have DXVA enabled.

If all of that checks out, you may want to try using Cyberlink’s video decoder inside MPC, since PDVD10 seems to work for you.

Tony August 3, 2010 at 11:26 am

@ Damian,

Thank you. I knew I was looking in the wrong place. Works perfectly!

Damian August 3, 2010 at 4:38 pm

For anyone having sound issues with your Onkyo SR705 + DTS(MA), have a look here:

—————————————————————————
14a) Can the 705 be firmware updated? Is there new firmware available for it?

PLEASE READ THIS LINK FOR THE MOST UP TO DATE INFO ON FIRMWARE UPDATES
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1016297

Currently there is new firmware available for download. However it only updates the DSP’s. There is a full firmware update floating around the net you may have read about but nothing has been officially posted on Onyko’s site yet. This DSP update fixes the DTS HD MA “gunshot” problem users have reported. If you are a user with a lossless bitstreaming player this update is very important to download to prevent the possibility of damaging your speakers.

Alex Kuretz August 3, 2010 at 4:47 pm

Nice find, Damian!

RonDMC August 3, 2010 at 6:45 pm

Thanks very much for your help Damian the latest version of MPC HC fixed the problem and all mt2s files are playing HD Audio now. I didn’t think my version was that old but it was from Aug last year, the website is a little misleading when when I matched up the version numbers off the new betas I realised how old it was (probably before DTS-HD and True HD were running in MPC HC)

robp August 4, 2010 at 12:16 am

@ Eugene

Have you been able to test with any other movies? When you mentioned that Hancock was getting out of sync, and that it was a movie made up of several smaller files (on the disc), I thought that maybe it might be the movie that was causing the problem. So, I got my hands on a copy of Hancock, ripped it to an mkv, and sure enough it’s doing the same for me – the audio gets out of sync, and seeking gets it back in sync again.

I had problems with another movie in the past, Spiderman 2.1 I believe, which was also in several small files (both movies also have two versions on one disc). It’s been a while now, but I believe I used a program called BDInfo to find out which files made up the movie (and in which order). Then, I used TSMuxer to manually join them together.

Anyway, you might want to test out some other TrueHD movies before you go buying a new GPU or something – it may indeed be a problem with the file.

Eugene August 4, 2010 at 12:55 am

ahh yes, Thanks for doing that. I am definitely trying to avoid buying a GPU (opened a ticket with XFX) but glad I didn’t do so. I played Bourne Ultimatum (HD-DVD with TrueHD track) and for the first 45mins, I saw no problems. That got me scratching my head. The only other movie that I am aware that does have the problem besides Hancock is Star Trek and even that does not have the problem so soon as done by Hancock. I figured I would use eac3to from the command line instead of ClownBD but that is what ClownBD uses anyways. So that didn’t make any sense.

Anyways, I will try your method and see if that helps. Thanks for your efforts!

Eugene August 4, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Apparently, that was the problem. I used BDInfo to see which playlist file to grab, used tsMuxer to Demux and then remux (I also did a version using eac3to to demux ,and mkvmerge to remux). Both files were much better. There was still an audio and video sync problem (the video is ahead about some milliseconds I am guessing, but I am pretty much ready to settle for this). Maybe I am being extremely picky now as I look for it. I will have to go through my other movies one by one to correct it. Anyways, thanks again for all of your help. Hope this helps others as well. Hopefully, I don’t run into more stumbling blocks

RonDMC August 4, 2010 at 6:21 am

Sorry Damian just found another small issue with m2ts playback and getting subtitles to work. I sorted this out a few months ago with mkv files and they all playback fine automatically with subtitles but is there anyway to get MPC HC to automatically use a srt subtitle file without having to manually right click – subtitles – select subtitle? If I do this they work fine I would just prefer it to use a srt file automatically if detected in the same directory as the movie so I don’t have to user a mouse (takes the experience away from MCE) I had a look through FFDshow and MPC-HC but couldn’t see anything.

cheers

Damian August 4, 2010 at 6:36 am

@ RonDMC,

In MPC HC, I think under Options – Playback, try selecting “Auto Load Subtitles”. Let me know if that works

RonDMC August 4, 2010 at 7:11 am

That option was already selected, been working great for mkv’s for the past few months but does not automatically load subs for m2ts. It is not a big deal if you are unsure I only have a few movies in m2ts format and can just use the mouse to select the sub when required.

Bekker August 17, 2010 at 12:27 am

Just a little help for other owners of Yamaha RX-V765 receiver. I had serious problems getting bitstreaming to work with Radeon 5570 and the Yamaha receiver. Asus even replaced the card. The only way was to power of the HTPC, Receiver and TV, and power on again (1 HTPC 2 receiver 3 TV). A little time consuming. However a flash update for all Yamaha RX-V….65 receivers solved the problem. Bitstreaming is working without the need to restart, even after standby. The problem was probably a handshake issue? The update can be found at Yamaha homepage. Also solves a problem with connecting a Nintendo Wii (component and analog input).

Alex Kuretz August 17, 2010 at 8:32 am

Thanks for this, Bekker, I’m sure this will help others with similar issues. Here’s a direct link.
http://www.yamaha.com/yec/products/productdetail.html?CNTID=5028422&CTID=5000300&RLTID=1505&DETYP=RELATION

w123 August 19, 2010 at 4:38 am

And…with bluray’s with PCM audios? I use the drivers that you say, but in the Onkyo didn’t appear “PCM”…with the dts hd and dolby true hd it works, can Ati 5xxx bitstream pcm audios?

tankyou!

Damian August 19, 2010 at 4:49 am

PCM should work as well. Here is an excellent writeup on Doom9 about setting up for PCM as well. You are going to want to use Reclock and set to WASAPI exclusive to ensure that WIndows Mixer doesn’t get its hands on your PCM track:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152520

w123 August 19, 2010 at 5:41 am

mm..ok..I’ll try that guide…..but i don’t undestand why the tmt3 or power dvd works well with dts hd and so…and bitstream pcm as stereo…I didn’t change anything od the config..

if i’ve understood, with haali, and reclock, tmt3 will bitstream pcm as a 5.1?don’t need ffdshow?it’s just for tmt3 or power dvd…

If it’s important, I’m using an ATI 5750 with ATI driver’s,an Onkyo 507 and total media theater 3 (newest release)

thank you!

Damian August 19, 2010 at 5:44 am

OK, wait, so you are using TMT and not MPC HC? You should not need ffdshow, haali, or reclock for TMT I think. I was assuming you were trying to play PCM via MPC

w123 August 19, 2010 at 6:35 am

Yes…it’s just for the TMT3…I’ve look at Onkyo’s specs, and supposely it plays pcm audios, the ati and the tmt3 as well..selecting in tmt the option to bitstreram the audio, the dts hd and true hd, works well, but when it’s a pcm..it bitstreams it as stereo…and the film has a 7.1 pcm…The pc is connected eith the onkyo by hdmi…

thank you!

Damian August 19, 2010 at 6:40 am

@ w123,

Gotcha. To be honest I have never used TMT as this guide just focused on using FFDShow + MPC HC. Best bet would be to ask on the official TMT forum over at AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=981683

Ross August 30, 2010 at 6:27 pm

Thanks for the very helpful guide, Damian. The HD codecs are now bitstreaming perfectly to my Onkyo HT-RC260 when I use MPC-HC. The only remaining issue is playing mkv’s with LPCM tracks. Thanks to the fix to the ACM wrapper error, the sound passes through, however, it is only in stereo. I checked out your link to the reclock guide, and tried to set things up on a backup HTPC, but still couldn’t bitstream LPCM (I may try again, starting with a fresh Win7 install).

With the current setup just using ffdshow (without reclock), should I be able to at least get multichannel LPCM, even if it doesn’t bitstream? Even though I set up the HDMI output to 7.1, the sound still comes through as stereo PCM.

Cheers

Damian September 3, 2010 at 11:51 am

Ross,

Did you have any luck with your problem? So you are only getting 2ch stereo with LPCM? I believe reclock should fix that issue, but for some reason that hasn’t worked for you. I don;t have many LPCM tracks but I may have to test out when I get home to see if I get the same problem. Do you have LPCM checked off in ffdshow audio?

Ross September 3, 2010 at 2:15 pm

Thanks for your reply. No luck so far. I reinstalled Win7-64 thinking that the codecs were completely messed up. After reinstalling (following the guide that you linked to, above) whenever I try to playback an mkv with LPCM as the default track I get a message “The audio device is in use by another application.” Once I click OK, MPC-HC starts the movie using the AC3 track. I keep rereading the guide to make sure I have the settings correct and have tried both WASAPI and Wave-out to play PCM, but no luck. It would be great if ffdshow could bitstream LPCM without having to add another layer of complexity in the form of reclock.

robp September 3, 2010 at 6:31 pm

Have you tried disabling LPCM in ffdshow? Reclock doesn’t need a decoder for LPCM inside an mkv, so no need to have ffdshow getting it’s hands on it.

Ross September 3, 2010 at 11:55 pm

Thanks for the suggestion. I gave it a try, but no change. I think I’ll have to go back to the drawing board again. Thanks to Damian’s clear guide, the bitstreaming of TrueHD and DTS-HD MA worked so easily with ffdshow and MPC-HC, but figuring out LPCM with reclock seems to be a much harder nut to crack.
Cheers

Damian September 4, 2010 at 4:44 am

I didn’t get home until late last night so I didn’t get a chance to try. I should have a few minutes today or tomorrow to test out and will post back, I believe I have a handful on LPCM movies (I don’t have reclock installed)

bmac6996 September 9, 2010 at 8:48 pm

FYI

I have an ATI 5770. If you set Windows 7′s audio properties on the HDMI to 5.1, this will break Windows 7′s Live TV (maybe recorded tv, haven’t tested). The work around is to set Windows 7′s audio properties to 2 channel. Live TV still gets 5.1 (as long as you set that in MCE) as long as your TV show is outputting 5.1. But your general windows sounds will be in 2.0

Not a big deal since I wanted to bit-streaming working on MPC-HC, and it works but not for FLAC audio in an MKV. I converted my LPCM audio tracks to FLAC audio in MKV. FLAC will only output based on what’s set in Windows 7 audio properties. So since it was 2.0.. , I wasn’t getting Full surround sound.

Microsoft must fix!!

Xorlon September 11, 2010 at 5:30 pm

I hope someone have any input or knowledge about the problem I have encountered trying to follow this guide

First off, here’s the setup I’m using

HD5450
ATI 10.8 Catalyst.
Realtek HDMI_R249
ffdshow_rev3562_20100907
MPC-HomeCinema.1.4.2499.0.x64

Installed in that order.

When I’ve configured ffdshow and installed MPC and about to include ffdshow in external filters it’s not listed.
If I browse and try to add one of the dlls in the ffdshow folder they’re not accepted.

I’m totally clueless of what approach I should try to fix this with, took me several hours of googling to even find out that ffdshow is supporting bitstreaming hd audio, had several hours of cursing powerdvd10 freezing when loading Bluray isos before trying to fix MPC / XBMC.

Hoping for your help =)

Damian September 11, 2010 at 5:47 pm

I see you are using MPC HC x64, are you using FFDSHow x64 or x32? If you want to use MPC HC x64 you need ffdshow x64

Xorlon September 11, 2010 at 6:26 pm

Oh, and thanks A LOT for your quick reply, totally made my saturday night a bliss :)

Xorlon September 11, 2010 at 6:25 pm

Ah, yes. I changed to ffdshow_rev3556_20100902_clsid_x64, and all went smooth.
Playback with hardware acceleration and true HD / dts ma now works like a charm.

I don’t suppose you have any suggestions where to look to merge mpc hc with xbmc/tmt or any other more estethically attractive interface?

Damian September 11, 2010 at 6:42 pm

Here is my guide on how to launch MPC HC from XBMC:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/06/04/guide-using-mpc-hc-as-your-video-player-in-xbmc/

Also, if you don’t want to use MPC HC you can use the XBMC DSPlayer version, which replaces the default XBMC internal player with a new DSPlayer version that supports DirectShow filters (for Bitstreaming). You can see my writeup about this here:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/06/25/guide-setting-up-bitstreaming-with-your-windows-7-htpc-xbmc-using-dsplayer/

Xorlon September 11, 2010 at 6:45 pm

Almost too good to be true.
And I’m way to bad at searching/browsing. It was all here on the same site :)
Again, big thanks

Damian September 11, 2010 at 6:48 pm

Glad to be of help. Any other questions or comments you know where to find me :-)

Warwick September 12, 2010 at 8:22 pm

Thanks Damian, exactly what I needed to know & set out very simply. Awesome!! I do have a couple of limitations though I’m hoping you might be able to help with.

I have ATI 5570 with Catalyst 10.7 and latest MPC-HC & FFDshow etc..

TotalMedia Theatre 3 & PowerDVD 10 both happily pass through upto 7.1 TrueHD & Dolby Digital Plus (Dolby Digital Plus did not work until I uninstalled Realtek & went back to ATI Catalyst audio driver) However, neither of them will pass through DTS-HD Master or DTS. I jst get PCM out to my amp (Yamaha RX 565)

If I used MPC-HC I can get TrueHD & DTS-HD Master pass through in all it’s glory, but not Dolby Digital Plus.

Again, thanks heaps for your tutorial. Was very helpul. SAVEd me buying Asus Xonar Slim.
:-)

Damian September 13, 2010 at 3:12 pm

Try the fw update as Bekker mentioned. You may also want to uninstall all drivers, use a program like CCleaner to make sure there are no conflicts, and then just install ATI Catalyst. Worse case I would recommend doing a clean install and set everything up again (installing ATI Catalyst)

Bekker September 12, 2010 at 10:23 pm

@Warwick

Please make sure your amp has the latest firmware? Check out Yamahas website. Before I updated my RX-V765, it was very difficult to get bitstreaming out of the amp, only 2 channels PCM. I needed to restart the HTPC with my TV off to get bitstreaming working. An update solved this issue.

Warwick September 13, 2010 at 12:26 am

Thanks for the reply Bekker. I don’t think the amp is the issue as I get perfect bitstreaming to it fom different applications. The limitation is MPC-HC won’t do Dolby Digital Plus (but TMT & PDVD do) and TMT won’t do DTS-HD MA or normal DTS (but MPC-HC does). PDVD does do DTS (can’t test it with DTS-HD MA yet). I’m currently downloading a BluRay DTS-HD MA clip to try in PDVD as I curretly only have HDDVD rip to try in TMT & PDVD.
I will try updating firmware though to see if it help. Am I able to use the USA firmware, as the Austalian (where I am) web site does not have any update as yet.

Bekker September 13, 2010 at 1:22 am

@Warwick
I used the US version for my european amp. No problem. The US website also has an explanation.
Good luck

Mauricio September 15, 2010 at 11:45 am

Hi, i succesfully did bitstreaming dtsma from my ATI 5750 to my denon 1910 but i have a rear issue, i think is about my video card.
I don’t know why but when i send the movie or anything from the pc to samsung led tv it does not show full screen but smaller, i mean, like a frame, you can see the picture here, please help me with that:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o188/lucalan66/IMG00071-20100915-1233.jpg
[IMG]http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o188/lucalan66/IMG00071-20100915-1233.jpg[/IMG]

Damian September 15, 2010 at 5:19 pm

Hi Mauricio,

Supe nailed it, you just need to set your overscan as he documents below. One other issue though, the new ATI CCC 10.8 resets your overscan settings every time you restart your PC. There is a workaround, I don’t have the exact page but it is in this thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1224697&page=70)

Supe September 15, 2010 at 1:43 pm

@Mauricio,
You have the infamous ATI underscan/overscan problem. That is easily fixed.

1. Right click on your Desktop and choose the Catalyst Control Center
2. In the upper left hand corner click on the Graphics drop down and choose Desktops & Displays
3. Find the display you want to configure (the little one in the lower left corner, not the big one in the middle), right click on it’s icon and choose Configure.
4. Go to the Scaling Options tab and adjust the slider to fit your screen and click Apply. You may have to also go into your TV menu to adjust the screen up/down or left/right. A little tweaking and you are on your way.

Damian September 15, 2010 at 5:20 pm

Thanks Supe, gotta love how ATI hides this setting!

Ross September 15, 2010 at 5:46 pm

ATI has just released a hotfix, to their newly released 10.9 Catalyst driver, that seems to fix the over/underscan error – http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/ATICatalyst109Hotfix.aspx – apparently the official fix won’t come until 10.10 is released.

Mauricio September 15, 2010 at 8:33 pm

Thank you so much @Supe, i did fix over/underscan error with catalyst tool. Now I realize that, when i have my receiver turned on, conected to my ati 5750, if i have my tv off, i can see anything on my pc monitor, so, i have to turn on my tv, even when i am only listen to radio on my denon when i am at pc working…

Did you get it? Please let me know if there’s some fix to this issue.
Now i have to unplug hdmi to my receiver when i need to work at my pc listening to music from my receiver…

Mauricio September 15, 2010 at 8:39 pm

“if i have my tv off, i can’t see anything”

Voider October 6, 2010 at 11:33 am

Hi Damian,

thx for your guide.

Unfortunately I have a problem.

Im using MediaBroser, everything set up, works like a charm.
I have BluRay rips in .iso files, which Media Browser is set up to mount when chosen to play in Media Browser.

If I use PowerDVD as external player, it works fine.

But if I use MPC 64bit version (with your settings for startup command in MediaBrowser configurator) I get the message “failed to render file”.

Any ideas to fix that? Would love to use MPC instead of PowerDVD.

Voider

Damian October 6, 2010 at 11:39 am

Hi Voider,

I have had issues with this as well. If I try to have MPC HC launch for my BluRay folders it cannot play them. I know MPC HC can play them if you do it manually, so I don’t know if it is an issue on Media Browsers side or a setting I am missing. I have been meaning to ask on the Media Browser forum so I may post the question and let you know if I find an answer.

Voider October 6, 2010 at 2:52 pm

Hey Damien,

that would be great… would love to hear from you…

Voider

Damian October 7, 2010 at 6:32 am

Voider,

I responded to your Media Browser post as well, but in order to get MPC HC to play back a BluRay rip from Media Browser you need to have the internal mpeg splitter enabled:

Go to View -> Options -> Internal Filters and make sure “MPEG PS/TS/PVA” is checked off. I just tested and now it launches correctly from MPC HC + Media Browser

Goondog October 13, 2010 at 10:15 pm

Damian
i think i got everything working except…
i have a wmc/mb/mpchc working well together and launching everything to mpc but for some reason i cant get sound on my 2 desktop speakers.
im getting bitstreaming fine via 5850/hdmi/avr to projector, but sometimes id like to just check things with the desktop speakers also. i had the small speakers working at one time but just stopped. they play everything fine via vlc and other players, but in mpchc i get static and sometimes very FF video. i followed the guide here and the ffdshow checks but still nothing. i get test tones fine via setup too. it might be something really stupid but wondering if you have any thoughts.
thanks!

Damian October 18, 2010 at 9:22 am

For your desktop speakers I would think you would need to have the HD Audio options unchecked in the ffdshow audio output

s1d October 15, 2010 at 12:15 am

Hey. Very useful guide, thanks, but is this working with ATI 4890?

Damian October 15, 2010 at 6:09 am

You cannot bitstream HD Audio with the ATI 4890, you would need to upgrade to a ATI 5xxx card

s1d October 16, 2010 at 11:11 am

Hello Damian, so i got an ATI 5670 card, installed Realtek audio driver, but in properties i see only Dolby Digital.

s1d October 18, 2010 at 12:07 am

Damian, sorry to bother with my previous post, the problem solved this way: when receiver is on and i start my PC, in ATI sound settings i got only DD, but if start the receiver after the PC is on everything looks fine, all formats are there and i made the bitsream for True HD and DTS MA, but still got one question: how to bitstream in the same way formats like Dolby Digital, when i choose audio – DD, ffdshow shows at output an SPDIF, while i am using HDMI only, same problem as Radik got, i did not made an EDID override, just clean install on W7, ffdshow and MPCHC. Any suggestions?

Damian October 18, 2010 at 9:13 am

Interesting, does Dolby Digital show on your receiver? I am not sure if it would be an EDID issue as I thought for the most part that shouldn’t be needed anymore.

s1d October 18, 2010 at 11:04 am

Yes, DD shows on my receiver, so maybe there is no problem at all?

Damian October 18, 2010 at 11:05 am

Yes, I would be concerned if DD wasn’t showing, so sounds like everything is fine

s1d October 18, 2010 at 11:38 am

Thank you Damian, tell me please isn’t that easier to use TMT3 for example, it can do bitstream as far as i know. Have you tried it?

Damian October 18, 2010 at 12:09 pm

Depends. For example you cannot bitstream from TMT3 playing back mkvs which is where MPC HC comes into play. For a BluRay folder rip TMT3 works great (I have running on my HTPC)

s1d October 19, 2010 at 5:19 am

Then i’ll try to play with TMT a little. One more question what the advantage / disadvantage of this quide
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152520
its a little bit thicky there, but i try to understand. As i see two quides do just the same, but am i wrong?

Damian October 22, 2010 at 4:43 pm

I think that guide is similar to mine except it also incorporates ReClock. To be honest I don’t have a need for reclock so I cannot comment on how well that guide works (one reason to use Reclock is for PCM/FLAC to ensure the PCM is sent untouched to your AVR via WASAPI exclusive and not messed with by Windows Mixer)

elshagon November 5, 2010 at 11:22 pm

I’m having trouble bitstreaming ac3, dts, mlp and multichannel flac using Foobar on my new htpc, windows7 64bit, ati 5450 using ati hdmi output and ffdshow. The music plays, but the audio doesn’t sound correct, like it’s not mapped to the right speakers and will fluctuate in volume. When I play the dts and ac3 music using mpc-hc it plays correctly and sounds much better. Multichannel flac playback in mpc-hc still sounds off. Any ideas?

Damian November 6, 2010 at 5:45 am

I have never used foobar so can’ say for sure what this issue is. As far as multi channel flac in MPC HC the issue is that Windows Mixer gets its hands on your flac file which is causing the problems you hear. You need to set up WASAPI Exclusive mode using Reclock to ensure tha your flac files bypass Windows Mixer. With foobar I believe you can set up WASAPI exclusive mode as well. Here is a good guide on how to set up Reclock:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152520

elshagon November 6, 2010 at 9:06 am

You my friend are a genius, thanks! The WASAPI did the trick with foobar. Next up I’ll try reclock to enable proper playback with MPC-HC. Thanks again.

s1d November 9, 2010 at 2:56 am

Hello Damian.
Bitstreaming working fine, thank you for the quide, really helpfull. The only problem i got – can’t change the audio track in mpchc while playing mkv, no such problem when playing bdmv folders. Does anyone had such problem?

Damian November 9, 2010 at 7:42 am

I have no issues. If you right click on MPC HC and go to Audio you should see the audio tracks. If nothing shows there try going to Navigate -> Audio Language instead. Let me know if this works. You can also try setting up a key to switch audio

robp November 9, 2010 at 9:23 am

Sounds like you don’t have MPC’s Audio Switcher enabled.

Also, if you are trying to switch streams by using Navigate > Audio Language….. that doesn’t work with mkv files unless you are using the Haali mkv splittter, but using Haali would kill DTS-HD bitstreaming. So just use the MPC Audio Switcher.

s1d November 9, 2010 at 11:48 pm

Thx Damian, Thx robp, now Audio switcher is enabled and it changes the tracks just fine. Thx a lot.

nalawod November 10, 2010 at 9:07 pm

I followed your instructions to the letter and they worked perfectly – with the exception of you have a mistake in your screenshot under the section :
Under “Internal Filters” uncheck “H264/AVC (ffmpeg)” and “VC1 (ffmpeg)”
– if you look at the screenshot, under the ‘Source filters” section you have un-ticked “Matroska” and “Ogg”. Not that ogg made any difference to me, but having Matroska off prevented my audio (and video) playback from working. I noted that when I first looked at the screenshot because I wondered 1) why Matroska was off, and 2) why you didn’t mention anything about it.

I turned it back on and restarted. It worked perfectly. Thanks for getting me 99.999% of the way there!

Damian November 11, 2010 at 5:52 am

Hi nalawod,

Thanks for pointing. I think I was messing around with Haali when I was testing out, so I had shut off the internal mkv splitter at the time. Agreed though, you definitely want to have mkv checked off unless you want to use a separate splitter

nalawod November 11, 2010 at 7:36 am

I assumed that was the case as your dialog was actually mentioning what you needed to do for haali so you were clicking on it as you were documenting.

Man- I just want to say THANKS! Great documentation and awesome that you actually provide the links for the downloads I needed and protected me from getting wrong versions, etc. I really appreciate it and it works flawlessly. Now I’m gonna mess with doing encoding and see if I like the results with smaller file sizes.

Damian November 11, 2010 at 7:39 am

Good stuff, what program are you going to use? I found the best result when encoding was to use CQ=18 with a 4.1 profile (that is what I use with Ripbot, BluRip, Handbrake, or other)

nalawod November 11, 2010 at 8:42 am

Good question. Obviously, I’d rather not re-rip from the bd and instead read my mkv file I already produced and encode it to a new mkv. I’d prefer to install as few other pieces of software as possible – my preference would be a self contained read -> encode -> write that is implemented via a gui (command line would be ok but not preferred).

What’s your recommendation to get as close to “simple” as possible? I’ll certainly use your recommendation of cq=18 and 4.1.

Damian November 11, 2010 at 9:33 am

Many programs require Haali so if you do use make sure you block Haali in MPC HC so it doesn’t much up your bitstreaming.

Right now for BluRays I use Ripbot264 and DVDs I use handbrake. Either should work fine for encoding an mkv (Ripbot264 does not allow you to keep the HD AUdio track though, BluRip and Handbrake do)

nalawod November 11, 2010 at 11:54 am

Two final questions and I’ll leave you alone –
Ripbot264 can read my .mkv but I’ll need to have a non HD Audio Track included in order to get audio?
BluRip looks interesting – but can it use an .mkv as input or do I need to start from scratch and have AnyDVD as well?

Damian November 11, 2010 at 12:30 pm

No, Ripbot will process your HD Audio track but it will convert it into an 5.1 AC3 audio track (so you won’t be able to retain the original HD Audio track).

Yeah, sorry about that, BluRip will only process BR Structures

Ross November 30, 2010 at 3:50 pm

Damian,

Simply put – Awesome!

I’m usually the smart computer guy and this had me stumped. This tut was a snap to follow, give yerself a pat on the back!!

R.

Damian November 30, 2010 at 4:01 pm

Ross,

Great to hear everything worked out for you. Amazing how simple it is, and the beauty with this method is you don’t have to mess around with bloated codec packs. I have rebuilt my HTPCs several times and each time it takes me no more then 5 minutes to get hd audio support working :-)

TheTinRam December 15, 2010 at 8:03 am

First of all, I wanted to thank you for posting this tutorial. You have no idea how helpful it is. I am an IT infrastructure architect, PC enthusiast and all round technology lover but I would not be able to figure this out without you! You should really set up a donation button or something because you should be greatly rewarded for this!

My goal is get audio bit streaming from MKVs working in W7MC. I have yet to work through part II of you post but will definitely try it.

My setup:
Yamaha RX-V667 receiver
Saphire Radeon HD 5750 graphics card
Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600)
Windows 7 Pro 32 bit

Following this tutorial, I had bitstreaming working on the first try. I did not need to do step 4.

One problem I am having is that some movies (not all) become very choppy and even freeze. I have been reading about this and it is usually caused by the CPU being swamped, but mine is not. It is at around 30 or 40% when playing. When the picture freezes, the CPU drops to basically zero. I am starting to think that it is something with the motherboard or its drivers. The board is a Asrock Penryn1600SLI-110dB. Asrock does not have Windows 7 drivers so I am running the built in Windows drivers.

The choppiness is usually when there is a lot of motion on the screen. The opening scene in “Star Trek” is a good example. When you see the starship from behind, the sun on the right and the storm on the left the picture just freezes.

Do you have any ideas about the choppiness? Is there anything I should try before I decide to buy a new mobo?

Thanks again the great site and tutorial.

TheTinRam December 16, 2010 at 4:23 am

Solved! I was right that it is a hardware issue, but it is not the mobo, the data drive in the HTPC is failing and is very very slow. When I moved the movie to the OS drive and ran it from there, it worked just fine!

After I get a new drive I will give Part II a try to get this working within W7MC.

Thanks again for the post!

TheTinRam December 21, 2010 at 6:46 pm

Next step done! As opposed to doing part II to try to bitstream directly from WMC I configured MPC as an external player from Media Browser. This works very well and its great that you don’t have to mess around with codecs or codec packs.

Again, thanks for these great posts. I could not have done this without you!

Jim Slater January 8, 2011 at 2:22 pm

Damian, I’m having a problem with Step 7 where I press “External Filters” and then “Add Filter” in MPC-HC – the next screen does not contain any of the ffdshow decoders for me to select?! I’ve uninstalled and re-installed ffdshow but these decoders still do not show up for me. Did I do something wrong?

I’m running windows 7 64-bit and I’ve downloaded the latest MPC-HC. The only step I didn’t follow was to install the Realtek driver. I have an ATI 5450 vid card and have CCC 10.11 installed. I’ve been using the ATI HDMI driver with no issues and it’s been working fine in XBMC.

Thanks for this and your other tutorials – they’re great!

Damian January 8, 2011 at 2:38 pm

If you don’t see FFDShow it means your MPC HC version and FFDShow version don’t match. Make sure both are either x32 or x64 (sounds like you are using x32 for one of the software and x64 for the other). Even though your PC is x64 you can use either the x32 or x64 versions

daroga January 16, 2011 at 10:15 pm

Just wanted to say thank you for this guide.

I was getting great sound on my Blu-Rays, but anything I had ripped was not be pushed as surround despite being encoded as such. You pointed me in the direction of passing that data through. Thanks!

Pouzo January 19, 2011 at 1:18 am

hello, To begin my config here: CM: Asus p5ql pro CG: hd 5450 OS: W7 32 I leave in HDMI the PC direction the AV (Onkyo 606) before to go to the plasma (pz81) I wish to leave the PC in bitstream. i’had install the last Catalyst (10.11 or 10.12) then the pilot Realtek HDMi (2.55 I believe) The problem is that in my sound icon, control panel its, I see activated exit HDMI well (i have sound) but level supported formats, I am limited has 44.1 Khz (not 96,192) and for the encoded formats, I n’ have anything (whereas I should have the dts-hd, dolby true hd, …..) On my AV, the sound is in PCM.
thank you for your assistance.
Pouzo

Fab January 28, 2011 at 11:29 am

Ok, so I followed all the steps until the “output” part in ffdshow. I only have DTS and AC3 options. I have a HD 5450 video card and DTS HD and True HD appear in the Encoded Formats box. I aslo installed Realtek HDMI driver 2.49. What is to be done?
Thanks

Damian January 28, 2011 at 11:56 am

Can you confirm which version of FFDShow you are using?

Fab January 28, 2011 at 12:29 pm

My bad that I didn’t download latest version of ffdshow and MPC-HC. I now have all formats available at output menu in ffdshow config. But there’s another problem now… I added ffdshow audio decoder, set it to prefered and blocked Microsoft Audio Decoder. When I play a video with DTS-HD audio, the HDMI light on my receiver starts flickering and I hear no sound. The ffdshow icon in the toolbar confirms me that i have DTS-HD audio. My receiver is an Onkyo TX-SR 608.
Help!!

Fab January 28, 2011 at 1:26 pm

I worked it out! Installed the EDID mod for Onkyo 607 and DTS HD now works. Congratulations Damian for this wonderful guide!!!

Damian January 28, 2011 at 3:38 pm

Awesome!!! Also, make sure you don’t have Haali installed or if it is installed it is blocked in MPC HC. Now go enjoy some HD Audio and keep the neighbors up :-)

DavidM February 7, 2011 at 7:19 am

Thx for this guide!

In addition i needed to install an EDID override inf driver and got it finally working :)

My Setup: Win7 x64, XFX HD5450 and Onkyo TX-SR308.

I installed this EDID fix “(*) Samsung LN-S4095D – SONY STR-DA5300ES” from this forum post: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1227161

nemesi54 February 8, 2011 at 10:37 am

After 1 year of successful bitstreaming got myself a problem from nowhere..!!

My Denon 1910 stopped to decode the audio stream and sends it directly to the TV. I cant hear from my speakers but the TV speakers only…

I refreshed the EDID override but the problem persists…

The “solution” that i found to get it all back as before is to UNHOOK the hdmi cable that goes to the TV from the AV and RE-HOOK it again!!!

When i do that all goes back to normal…The audio is decoded from the AV !!!

Why is that happening??
Whats wrong??

I cant find a proper solution myself…

Please help me…

nemesi54 February 8, 2011 at 10:42 am

forgot to say

Win7 ultimate – Mpc HC-ATI 5770-Catalyst 10.1
my TV is Samsung LE40B650

robp February 8, 2011 at 10:57 am

Double check the HDMI Audio Out setting on your Denon (under HDMI Setup Options in your on-screen menu) – It should be set to AMP, but i sounds like you have it set to TV.

nemesi54 February 8, 2011 at 11:07 am

Nope its not that i checked it and it is set to AMP.

nemesi54 February 8, 2011 at 12:08 pm

News on my problem….

I tried a different HDMI IN port on the TV and it worked ok !!!

I changed it again and connect it to the HDMI IN port where i had the problem and…….IT WORKS NOW !!!!!

WTF…..

Anyway thanks guys for your help, hope everything goes ok from now on.

GG February 9, 2011 at 6:10 am

Hi Damian – just setup a new pc and after installing win 7 64 bit and the latest mpc/hc and ffdshow for 64 bit windows, I can’t seem to see dts-hd or truehd as options to tick/untick in the ffdshow audio decoder config area > output – all i see is dts and ac3 available for passthrough – could you help? thanks!

Damian Perez February 9, 2011 at 6:39 am

It doesn’t sound like you are using the latest ffdshow. The latest is here for x64:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/files/SVN%20builds%20by%20XhmikosR/MSVC2010%20×64%20builds/

GG February 9, 2011 at 11:48 am

That did it, thanks a lot Damian! dunno why I thought I had the latest build :-s, sorry about that

TheTinRam February 9, 2011 at 6:14 am

I am a huge fan of x64 and use it on most of my machines. But I really can’t understand why people keep trying to use x64 on a HTPC. Unless perhaps its not a dedicated HTPC and is shared with other tasks?

You should always try to minimize the amount of “crap” on a PC and that goes double for a HTPC. Therefore running Windows 7 with 4 GIG of ram (probably 3 usable out of that) will be way more than enough. 32 bit is the way to go in my opinion.

Perhaps I am missing something?

Damian Perez February 9, 2011 at 6:42 am

I completely agree. However, this is assuming someone is building their HTPC and have control over the O/S. Many prebuilt PCs only come with x64. For example my laptop which is my portable HTPC is x64, which is what it came preinstalled with. I ran my HTPCs with Vista using x64, but once I moved over to W7 I moved back to x32 as there is zero benefit to x64 and additional headaches

GG February 9, 2011 at 11:54 am

Couldn’t agree with you more, though, in my case this pc I just built with win x64 was intended for other uses (work related) – but I won’t be using it there now for various reasons – so I thought I’d just stick it into my tv/avr and see what happens – never had a pseudo- htpc before :-)

Dejan Ribic February 9, 2011 at 9:08 am

Hey!

I’ve been reading through your guide just now as I will be setting up my HT tommorow, and I’m trying to do as much work as possible now. I seem to be having trouble with my HDMI output. I am using an XFX HD5870 GPU and in the “Supported Formats” tab I’m only getting Dolby Digital instead of all these you listed here: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Sound-HDMI-2.jpg…any clue as to whats going on? I am using:

Win7 Ultimate x64
Catalyst Control Center Version 2011.0104.2155.39304

Dejan Ribic February 9, 2011 at 9:14 am

One further note, I have it right now hooked up straight to my TV (LG 47LD420), could the problem be caused by the TV’s 2 channel’s, because Windows does correctly see it as 2 channels and not 5.1 and says under “Supported Formats”: Max number of channels: 2

goondog February 10, 2011 at 12:16 am

Hey Damian
just updated my mpchc to version 1.5.0.2827 and updated ffdshow as well.
i went and checked my previous settings and everything was the same as in your guide. The only thing different was in the external filters in mpchc the ffdshow audio decoder has a “” next to it and i couldnt find any of the ffdshow items in the add list.
Now when playing DTSHD tracks im not getting the ffdshow icon popup when mpchc starts. I check my AVR and it does show multichanel pcm 7.1 but it used to show DTS-HD. I am now only getting stereo sound and no sounds out of other speakers. I checked the hdmi configuration for sound and all speakers test ok.
Any ideas? it seems everytime I try to upgrade it backfires!?aaargh…

DamianP February 10, 2011 at 6:40 am

Posted to your AVSForum question which I will copy/paste here:

Couple things guys:

- Make sure you are downloading the latest SVNs (MPC HC – http://www.xvidvideo.ru/media-player-classic-home-cinema-x86-x64/) and FFDShow (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/files/SVN%20builds%20by%20XhmikosR/)

- Also, make sure you are downloading the correct version of both (i.e. if you plan on using MPC HC x64 then make sure you also install FFDShow x64).

Any reason why you guys decided to switch from x32 to x64, there is zero reason to do so…

Dejan Ribic February 10, 2011 at 7:04 am

Any chance you might have an answer to my above question as well? Just so I don’t worry needlessly, IS IT in fact because of being hooked up to a 2 channel sound output device instead of a 5.1 or more?

TheTinRam February 10, 2011 at 7:08 am

Since HDMI is digital, the source sound device can detect what kind of output is a the end of that HDMI cable. So its likely that the reason you can’t see the 5.1 is because you are not hooked up to that equipment.

Thats just my “calculated guess”. Damian is the expert around here.

Dejan Ribic February 10, 2011 at 7:09 am

Thought that was it. Thanks. Still hoping for a confirmation from Damian!

Damian February 10, 2011 at 7:42 am

Sorry I haven’t been responding much, just got back from an industry conference.

TheTinRam is correct, the HDMI properties is detecting the device that you are connected to, In this case it is your TV which is only 2ch

nemesi54 February 10, 2011 at 7:25 pm

I thought i have solved the problem i had yesterday but i was wrong..
So i bunp it again guys…. :/

My Denon 1910 all the sudden stopped to decode the audio stream and sends it directly to the TV. I cant hear from my speakers but the TV speakers only…

Also the FFdshow is NOT present !!

I refreshed the EDID override but the problem persists…

The “solution” that i found to get it all back as before is to UNHOOK the hdmi cable that goes to the TV from the AV or the TV side and RE-HOOK it again!!!

When i do that all goes back to normal…The audio is decoded from the AV and the FFdshow is also working !!

Win7 ultimate – Mpc HC-ATI 5770-Catalyst 10.1
my TV is Samsung LE40B650

Why is that happening??
Whats wrong??

nemesi54 February 11, 2011 at 7:45 am

After making hundreds of tests (changing HDMI cables-making diff settings) i contacted the Denon Service in my Country (Greece)..

The technician told me to ” Reset the microprocessor of the AV “….

I did it and everything is OK now….Thank god….

The technician told me that its the first step to do when all the others work fine…After that comes the opening of the AV by them…

So keep that in mind whoever has a Denon.

Damian February 11, 2011 at 8:22 am

Interesting, I wonder what would have happened on the Denon side that would require a reset?

Aigars February 15, 2011 at 11:52 pm

Thanks for great article! Next day odered form on-line shop AtI HD5570 :)
Setup was worked with first time when tried bitsream audio to my receiver. I’m using Yamaha receiver+ATI HD5570+latest drivers and MPC player.
Thanks a lot! :)))) I was waiting long time for this solution because my mobo Intel G45 has only capablity to output 5.1 DD or DTS.

GG February 22, 2011 at 8:58 pm

Hi all – Damian, I have used your guide to bitstream dts-hd ma and dolby truehd through my pc>avr setup and it works perfectly on my core i3 setup with win7 x64 and mpc-hc/ffdshow, so thanks!

One question, I have an m2ts file with a 6 channel (5.1) lpcm 16bit 4600kbps audio track (or so mediainfo tells me), but when I play the file with mpc-hc, my avr shows it as 2.0 pcm – I have no software like Haali installed, only mpc-hc/ffdshow 64 bit and all my settings are as per your bitstreaming guide…my question is, shouldnt my avr show it as pcm/6 channels? do i need reclock or something else like that?

robp February 22, 2011 at 10:38 pm

Sounds like you have either:
A) Windows set to stereo (in the playback devices configuration), or
B) ffdshow’s mixer set to stereo.

Also, you don’t need Reclock to get 6 channel LPCM, but it’s probably the only way to get bit-for-bit LPCM to your AVR. Having the movie in an mkv is even better still, since you can take ffdshow out of the equation as well (plus giving you the option of compressing LPCM to flac.)

Marek February 28, 2011 at 7:37 am

Hi Damian,

I used your guide to setup MPC HC alone for bitstreaming HD audio and that works and I am able to see DTS HD MA light up on my Denon reciever which is awesome!

However, I now would like to incorporate the MPC HC into XBMC and use it as an external player that can be invoked with “play using..” menu option. And that where I run into issues. I read your guides and went through every step and it is not working :(.

I have 2 HTPCs – one is a laptop with ATI Radeon 5730 which is the one I have been able to successfully bit stream with MPC HC. I don’t have XBMC installed there as of yet but would like to eventually ? What do you recommend I do i.e. what are the steps as I don’t want to break the MPC HC bit streaming capabilities on this one and I am affraid to install XBMC because it will break something ie. ffdshow conflicts etc..

Second computer is running XBMC Dharma 10 and it has been solid with everything using default player minus the bit streaming of HD audio of course :( Of course I would like to add that and use the MPC HC as an external player – what are the steps for this setup ? Once again, I don’t want to run into any issues with conflicts that impact my XBMC install as this has been solid. This desktop has i5 with integrated HD graphics and audio.

Can you please help! I wisj XBMC just supported HD audio bit streaming natively, it would have been much much easier for everyone :)

Thanks for your help,
Marek

Damian February 28, 2011 at 7:50 am

Marek,

OK, there are a couple of items worth mentioning.

- Native HD Audio support for XBMC is coming. It is still a work in progress so not sure how much further it will be before it makes its way out to public consumption

- Here is my guide on launching MPC HC from XBMC – http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/06/04/guide-using-mpc-hc-as-your-video-player-in-xbmc/

- Installing XBMC will not break anything on your HTPCs, so no need to worry about that. XBMC uses it own internal filters/decoders so no conflicts with FFDSHow

- As far as your core i5 HTPC keep in mind that the integrated graphics don’t play nice with MPC HC. Here is my guide on how I set up my core i5 HTPC to work with MPC HC – http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/01/07/guide-using-the-arcsoft-video-decoder-with-an-intel-gpu/

Cheers
Damian

Marek February 28, 2011 at 9:06 am

Thanks Damian!

“Installing XBMC will not break anything on your HTPCs, so no need to worry about that. XBMC uses it own internal filters/decoders so no conflicts with FFDSHow” – does this mean that XBMC installs 32 bit version of FFDSHOW instead of 64bit I have already installed with MPC HC ? I just hope that they don’t conflict if this is the case. If I am reading correctly, you are recomending that I install XBMC on the system that I have MPC HT already working and it should be fine to use it within XBMC with play using option – is that correct ?

As far as your statement goes ” As far as your core i5 HTPC keep in mind that the integrated graphics don’t play nice with MPC HC.” – Is there a way to use DSPlayer within XBMC (or any other player) to bitstream HD audio within XBMC ?

Thanks,
Marek

Damian February 28, 2011 at 10:44 am

XBMC does not install FFDShow, it does not even use it (the whole reason why you want to use MPC HC so you can get bitstreaming). That is why you don’t have to worry about any sort of conflicts

I would not recommend DSPlayer. Development has stopped (also, keep in mind that even if you used DSPlayer instead of MPC HC on y our core i5 HTPC you would still run into the same issue)

Cheers
Damian

Marek February 28, 2011 at 11:39 am

Thanks again Damian !

So just to confirm, since I already have MPC HC installed and configured to bit stream HD audio and is working nicely! Could I just then install XBMC Dharma release and proceed with either a) or b) steps from your guide called: ” Using MPC HC As Your Video Player In XBMC” ?

Essentially there are 2 options: one involves tweaking “AdvancedSettings.xml” and other involves tweaking “Playercorefactory.xml ” – correct ? And everything that I tweaked already with MPC HC will stay intact ?

Sorry to be a pain but I don’t want to break something that is working already :)

Thanks,
Marek

Damian February 28, 2011 at 11:45 am

Correct. Installing XBMC has zero affect on your already working MPC HC + FFDShow install. Also, tweaking the xml files does not in any way affect MPC HC, it is simply telling XBMC to launch MPC HC. Use the playercorefactory option as I think the latest XBMC builds look at that.

Marek March 1, 2011 at 12:15 pm

Hi Damian,

I installed XBMC Dharma with MPC HC already installed and pre-configured for bitstreaming playback and I used the following playercorefactory.html saved into my your Userdata folder (Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\)

C:\Program Files\MPC HomeCinema\mpc-hc.exe
“{1}” /fullscreen /close
false
false
none

I cannot get the “play using” option no matter what I do – can you help ?
Do you actually get “play using” option at all ?

It appears that I have 2 versions of playercorefactory.html on my system – one in C:\Program Files (86)\XBMC\System folder and the other one in
I have no idea what’s happening. I really want to make this work please ?

Help anyone ?

Thanks,
Marek

Damian March 1, 2011 at 12:24 pm

Is your MPC HC version x32 or x64 that you installed on your HTPC?

Marek March 1, 2011 at 12:33 pm

It is x64

Marek March 1, 2011 at 12:42 pm

I think I got to work (somewhat) i.e. now when I play any movie from within XBMC – MPC HC starts and plays movie. There is no “play using” option though and when playing any movies using MPC HC from within XBMC movies stutter which does not happen when I play the same movie outside XBMC using MPC HC.

There is something werid happening….I feel I am so close yet distant to solving this :)

Thanks,
Marek

Damian March 1, 2011 at 1:14 pm

That is odd, unless there is some process running in the background for you with XBMC that is causing issues? If I have some time I will update to the latest XBMC/MPC and see if I get the same issue

Marek March 1, 2011 at 1:43 pm

Hi Damian,

Thanks Damian for looking into these issues.

One other thing to note is that even though that MPC HC seems to decode the HD Audio bitstream, I believe that is only decoding core from DTS HD MA at 1,536kbps (sometimes reported as 1,509kbps.

If that’s the case then this is not lossless and much lower quality than full DTS-HD Master Audio signal you will find on Blu-Ray discs :)

Can you please confirm or deny this ? Have I gotten this wrong ?

DTS-HD Master Audio carries a DTS core. In every case I have looked at so far, the DTS core is a high bitrate core at 1,536kbps (sometimes reported as 1,509kbps.

Thanks,
Marek

PS. By the way my gpu is ati 5730 mobile which is capable of btstreaming.

Damian March 1, 2011 at 1:57 pm

What does your Receiver show? Always trust your receiver, if TrueHD or DTS(MA) lights up on your AVR then you know you are getting the full HD Audio

Marek March 1, 2011 at 3:27 pm

Even though it shows on the receiver as DTS HD MA it is only core DTS I am afraid :) Much lower resolution audio i.e. defeats the purpose of ripping Blurys to mkv :(

Marek

Damian March 1, 2011 at 3:31 pm

WHat are you sad about, you are getting the DTS HD MA (as I mentioned, trust your receiver, MPC HC /FFDShow is known for reporting this, most likely because it sees there is the core track as well). Like I said, your receiver WOULD NOT be showing DTS HD MA if it was only getting the DTS core ;-)

Marek March 1, 2011 at 4:00 pm

I think it would be but I am going to test some more – I need to see higher bit rates to trully believe it ;)

Thanks

Marek

Ross March 2, 2011 at 6:01 pm

I’m having an issue with MPC-HC. I reinstalled Win7 64 on my HTPC and used the guide to set up ffdshow (build 3760) and MPC-HC (build 2959) (both 32bit). The video driver is Catalyst 11.2. Once it was set up, the HD codecs were bitstreamed perfectly to my Onkyo HT-RC260. Then I installed PowerDVD 10 (ver. 2429) to play blu-ray ISO’s, which worked fine. Unfortunately, after installing PowerDVD, MPC-HC now no longer works. When I try and play something, MPC-HC freezes, and the computer bogs down and has to be restarted. It’s odd because I have used this combination of programs before with no problem (of course I can’t remember the combination of versions!). So I guess one of the new builds is causing a problem. Damian, if you have a suggestion of where to start to find the issue, it would be much appreciated.
Cheers

Ross March 2, 2011 at 6:22 pm

I forgot to mention that once I uninstalled PowerDVD, MPC-HC worked properly again. Strange…

Damian March 3, 2011 at 4:32 am

That is odd. I wonder if you could have kept PDVD installed and just blocked it in MPC?

Ross March 3, 2011 at 9:13 am

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried blocking both the Cyberlink audio and video decoders in the external filters area of MPC-HC, but it still froze. Is that what you meant by blocking? Also, I set up the same software configuration on a backup HTPC, with a similar AMD 5000 series video card, and had the same results. Very puzzling.

Damian March 3, 2011 at 9:15 am

Yeah, that is what I was talking about with blocking. Very strange, I have PDVD8 installed on my Laptop (came default) and have no issues with MPC HC (it is a core i5 laptop)

Ross March 3, 2011 at 9:23 am

I think I’ll try using an earlier revision of PDVD 10 and see if that helps. Thanks again for your assistance.

Rob N. March 11, 2011 at 5:09 pm

Found this guide and was pretty excited, unfortunately for me I couldn’t get it to work properly, just me luck.

I have a radeon 5450 and have the latest ati drivers/software, 11.xx I believe.

Anyways, when I go to play a video file with loseless audio, my receiver (denon 3311ci), shows the dtsma or truehd (forget which I was trying to playback), but the video playback is very slow. The picture just kind of freezes and the same like 10 seconds of audio keeps looping. Any ideas? Also anyone have a advanced guide on configuring media player classic home cinema and registering the proper codecs? I may have some setting not properly set but all non loseless videos playback fine so who knows.

robp March 13, 2011 at 5:05 pm

At Rob N:

What type of container is your movie in, and what program was used to create it? mkv, m2ts, etc

Is Haali installed?

What filters are in use? (right click on screen in MPC-HC, hover over “Filters”)

For registering codecs, one of the beauties of MPC-HC is that you usually don’t need any. The built in codecs, along with ffdshow are all that is needed for 99% of the BluRays I’ve come across. However, any external codec installed should be available via MPC-HC’s External Filters list – assuming the codec is set as “preferred”, MPC-HC will attempt to load the higher ones on the list first.

Rob N. March 13, 2011 at 7:46 pm

Looks like I got it working, I think I had a video issue, nothing at all related to the audio. Guess I had the wrong internal filters selected/unselected in mpchc, unchecked a bunch and removed a bunch of external filters from the list and everything seems to be working fine now. thanks!

Stiwi March 18, 2011 at 1:12 pm

Thanks for great guide.
I didn’t have any codecs before, as MPC-HC worked very well with all the codecs built in. As I bought the home theater, I wanted to be able to bitstream DTS from mkv files.

Setting it up based on your guide was very easy, however it seems that I lost GPU acceleration somehow. I don’t know if it is because of ffdshow tryouts beta (3771) or it has something to do with the DTS audio setup above but.

Any ideas?

Damian March 18, 2011 at 1:17 pm

What Graphics does your HTPC use? So DXVA was working before and then suddenly stopped? Did you make any other changes in MPC HC (such as assigning FFDSHow Video Decoder)?

Stiwi March 18, 2011 at 1:29 pm

It uses Nvidia ION. Yes, DXVA stopped all of sudden after installing either ffdshow or one of the recent MPC-HC beta (but I updated today to the newest one and still the same).

I did try to assign ffdshow as video decoder in external filters, disabling h264 dvxa and enabling it in ffdshow video config tool. But nothing works.

CPU is Intel Atom 1.6 GHz (dual core), before I had CPU load at 15-20% while playing 720p mkv, now it jumps between 65% and 90%.

Problem is I have no idea what could have gone wrong…

Damian March 18, 2011 at 2:50 pm

Hmmm…not sure what could have happened. The FFDShow Video decoder does not support DXVA (you need to use the FFDShow DXVA Video Decoder for that). I don’t have any NVidia GPUs so I can’t help test here. I would remove FFDShow Video Decoder from your external filters and try going back to just using the stock MPC HC filters. If that doesn’t work it may be work doing a clean reinstall or if yu have a restore point that you can go to from right before you started having the issues

Rob N. March 18, 2011 at 3:13 pm

Same thing happened to me. I made a post just above yours, I thought my problem was the HD audio, ends up it was the video went crappy after installing ffdshow, seems it somehow took over video duty and wasn’t working properly. I’m not 100% sure what I did, i’ll try and check my htpc a little later, but I remember going into the ffdshow video options and under one of the tabs setting the video to “use hardware acceleration”. After that i added one of the ffdshow video decoders to my external filters, figured it would load that filter and point it straight into hardware acceleration, it ended up working and I haven’t messed with it since. All my videos that started skipping after following this guide once again work perfect (well not perfect, but good enough).

robp March 18, 2011 at 5:55 pm

If you lose DXVA after installing ffdshow, I’d bet that ffdshow video decoder has taken priority (it seems to do this by default sometimes).

The easiest way to fix it is to open the ffdshow video decoder’s configuration (NOT the ffdshow DXVA decoder), and go to the codecs; then, set H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2 to “disabled”.

Another option is to add ffdshow video decoder to MPC-HC’s external filters, and set the merit as “blocked”.

Stiwi March 18, 2011 at 11:41 pm

Thanks a lot, it helped.
By the way, is it normal that MPC-HC drops few frames during the entire movie?

robp March 19, 2011 at 12:33 am

It depends. A few frames when the player first opens isn’t unusual, and neither is after seeking.

But here’s where it can be misleading; some ways of checking for dropped frames can cause dropped frames. Such as, right clicking and going to the renderer properties, or bringing up the seekbar while statistics are enabled under “View”. If I open the renderer properties, it might show 4 dropped frames. Immediately open it again, and it shows 8. Check again an hour later, and it’ll show 12. So it’s dropping 4 frames when I open the properties box.

But dropped frames while playing and doing nothing else, no, that’s not normal.

Stiwi March 19, 2011 at 12:51 am

It explains where those few skipped frames came from then (seeking + options). Thanks.

Rob N. March 19, 2011 at 12:57 pm

This is slightly off the topic of this HOWTO, but since we are talking video setup I had a few quesions. Is there any guide on how to setup MPCHC to play .iso and other disc images? There has to be a way to set it up to automatically mount it in daemon tools and play that file.
Also what is the best way to play .m2ts files in MPCHC or bluray rom images with multiple m2ts video files?

Thanks

Damian March 19, 2011 at 1:04 pm

I don’t use ISOs but I think it is possible t o have it mount and play in MPC HC without issue, using a mounting program like Virtual CloneDrive. Here is a thread a found (geared towards XBMC put same concept with MPC HC and ISOs) – http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1185529

As far as BluRay Rom images, are you talking about BluRay folder/disc rips? If so MPC HC can play automatically as well, but it can only play the main movie

robp March 19, 2011 at 5:13 pm

MPC-HC can also play BluRay discs from the play list files by navigating through the BluRay folders. If you know the correct file, you can play the special features and alternate editions as well.

john c March 21, 2011 at 6:19 pm

hello followed your guide have a new gtx465 graphics card and an i7. got to the last part and i can add external filter from microsoft but the ffdshow is not listed in mpc. i downloaded rev 3771 when i clicked the link at tje top of the beta page it said would you like to try the new version… i did. is that my problem? why can i not prefer the ffdshow they are simply not there

please help im confused

robp March 21, 2011 at 6:25 pm

You probably don’t have the correct ffdshow. Make sure you have 32bit ffdshow and MPC-HC.

john c March 21, 2011 at 6:36 pm

i have win 7 64 bit. can you html link the version i need rob. there are multiple versions. of it if that is asking too much just the name of the file will work. really anxious to get it to work less than 2 days old!!

john c March 21, 2011 at 6:40 pm

the only 32bit i see on sourceforge.com is from the user xxl is that correct?

robp March 21, 2011 at 6:49 pm

On that same page, you’ll see builds from clsid (his are the most popular, as you can see by the graph to the right of the links). The latest generic build should do just fine.

john c March 21, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Damian March 21, 2011 at 6:53 pm
john c March 21, 2011 at 6:55 pm

yes i downloaded rev 3771 from him and still not working rev 3771 is popular i saw from graph. still no ffdshow to tick. cant figure out the conflict here

Damian March 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm
john c March 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm

it works now that u l7nked that too me thanks bunches. baby jesus loves you.

robp March 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm

Are you using 32bit or 64bit MPC-HC? If MPC-HC is 64bit, then ffdshow needs to be 64bit. If MPC-HC is 32bit, then ffdshow needs to be 32bit.

john c March 22, 2011 at 6:38 pm

so which video decoder does mediaportal use by default it uses microsoft h264 dvd decoder. i have mpc as the external player does this override that setting.

have ffdshow linked to mpc as shown

Damian March 23, 2011 at 6:30 am

I don’t use MediaPortal so I cannot comment on what video decoders work.

The only thing I can think of that doing this would affect your MediaPortal setup is if somehow installing FFDShow sets the FFDShow Video Decoder at a higher priority then the MS DVD Decoder.

If MediaPortal is a DirectShow player (which I think it might be) then you should be able to use GraphStudio to confirm what video decoder it is using

Ben Ogilvie March 23, 2011 at 11:50 am

I use media portal extensively, one of it’s best features is that with hoborg’s SAF5 it ( you will have to get the unlocked version ) it natively uses MPC-HC as a player and utilizes ffdshow to obtain HD audio bitstreaming.
With win7 you can use the MS codecs, but I get great results with XP and Coreavc.
I find it easier to setup than XBMC, and it will play bluray ISO’s.

john c March 23, 2011 at 4:12 pm

hello,

having issues with codecs still. i caved in and downloaded shark oo7 pack. i ticked recommended settings but do not have access to ffd audio configure as shown in guide. i cannot block microsoft or prefer ffd audio as shown.

does me losing the control over ffd configure section negate my burning desire for ability to bitstream dts ma?

john c March 23, 2011 at 4:22 pm

scratch that last post.

my desire to bitstream remains strong however my last post contained errors. disregard.

ive read success stories using shark recommended settings with passthru selected. should i leave his settings alone, use yours and not his, or combine the two. im perplexed b/c both you and him advertise bitstream results however both use varying settings in setup.

please advise. thank you in advance to all who shared input.

Damian March 23, 2011 at 5:17 pm

I would recommend using Sharks default settings and see what the results are. From there you can then work to make any adjustments needed

john c March 23, 2011 at 4:28 pm

question 2;

can i take your 007 settings in guide 2 for wmp11 and use them as displayed for mpc hc?

would this be appropriate

Damian March 23, 2011 at 5:18 pm

What settings are you referring to?

john c March 23, 2011 at 6:11 pm

the settings for ffd show x64.

letters b-f

if i combined those settings you have listed for wmp and tried to integrate them for my use in mpc hc, would this be a proper thing to do to achieve my MA/true HD.

i think of this option because i did not see anything listed on the use of mpchc with the shark configuration pack. i am doing something from the first guide and something from the second as well. so im trying to find a way to seamlessly integrate the two approaches into a common goal.

currently i have shark configured according to this blog

http://thedigitallifestyle.com/csnew/tdl/b/stuart/archive/2010/10/15/my-new-shark007-x64-codec-configuration.aspx

Damian March 24, 2011 at 6:28 am

Gotcha, b-f are sharks settings, not ffdshow.

The shark configurations per the TDL blog you linked to may have issues with HD Audio (the editor was not bitstreaming HD Audio). Also, I see he is using Haali which may cause additional issues.

I would just use Sharks recommended settings to see if that does the trick. Afterwards with MPC HC just add FFDSHow Audio Decoder as mentioned in this guide and test out the results.

john c March 23, 2011 at 4:49 pm

saf5 doesnt support vc1 interlaced. my colossus card is interlaced we cant have that!

i did read about saf5 before tho the only draw back it seems is what i just mentioned.

appreciate ur info tho

John C March 24, 2011 at 9:12 am

hey damien,

thanks for the reply i will change my setting from the digital lifestyle settings. i remember he was not using an AVR to decode his settings. I will use recdommended shark007 settings as mentioned.

one question about using those settings:

in order to run shark007 with the proper version of the UAC enabled how does one do this. i see the administrator icon at the recommended settings tab you mentioned to use. by clicking this what happens? does it log me in as admin? or is that icon next to settings advising me to run the program as administrator before i make necessary changes?

do i need to run program as administrator and as a user? i recall shark mentioning something about using 2 different profiles on a computer and having to tick boxes for both to enable.

please advise.

John

Damian March 24, 2011 at 12:09 pm

John,

Your best bet would be to ask that question on Sharks forum. I have UAC disabled and I don’t use Sharks codec pack anymore, so I am probably not in the best position to answer that question.

Cheers
Damian

john c March 24, 2011 at 5:17 pm

yes uac is a pita more than anything. i just disabled mine. i will ask on sharks forum.

its such a funny thing that i try real hard to get this setup to work..for 4 days now afterwork i mess with these programs. am finally close after learning graph studio and not to use halli. but today i had another setback : (

blue screen when i connect brand new onkyo 608. connected via mini hdmi adapter evga gtx 465 gfx card —> 608 pc input (hdmi 1)—>
hdmi output to tv hdmi 1 =’s blue screen.
tv also says game mode 60 hz 720 X 468 resolution.
why am i being scaled down?
i had enough of a hard time managing hdmi bitstreaming. . . now my receiver decides to be a sob and not work. i swear the law of diminishing returns is really about to catch up with me.
computer has bd plyr i plug into hdmi 5 608 (bd plyr)—> hdmi 1 tv=’s blue screen.
i try above settings on hdmi input 2 on tv. =’s blue screen.
608 set proper on passthru. computer is nvidia i7 960 with resolution scaled proper to 1024 X 768. per 608 manual.

called onkyo tech support told me they guaranteed vga cable will work w/ toslink cable. i have B3 binary cables all around its not my cables thats the problem. tech told me “ive seen gfx cards not work with 608 before. investigate that. how can it be gfx card when plugged pc—>tv works perfect.

i really wish papa smurf would pack his stuff up and go home and leave me and my receiver alone!!

if it aint one thing its another…: /

Damian March 26, 2011 at 4:22 am

Are you still having issues with your Onkyo 608? I have the same exact Receiver in my bedroom (Purchased about 2 months ago) and so far I have had no issues with HD Audio

Ben Ogilvie March 24, 2011 at 4:19 pm

John c,
The most recent versions of saf5 (rc2 ) do support vc1 interlaced, with the unlocked you may want to try the pdvd 10 codec.
Problems will get less difficult when lavf splitter is fully implemented in saf6.

john c March 24, 2011 at 5:29 pm

p.s. damian, i did not do edid. i thot about disabling osd … if i disable avr internal processing and osd then i thot one less conflicting video source the better right?. then i think about it more… and if avr is set passthru. it shouldnt make .02 cents difference.

Rob N. March 24, 2011 at 7:45 pm

Hey guys, slightly off topic yet again, but i’m looking at getting a nvidia gtx 460, is it as easy to setup for bitstreaming as the radeon 5xxx and 6xxx cards?
Will I be able to get bitstreaming with the 460 under mpchc? Will it show up as dtsma on my receiver or does it just pass it as lpcm?

john c March 24, 2011 at 8:05 pm

rob,

i have 465. price from 460 to 465 is marginal. and im in no place to talk atm, bc im having problems of my own.but its what they advertise. so it SHOULD i got nvidia after reading countless thread over problems with lpcm in ati. from what i hear lots have it working. just dont be like me and buy a onkyo avr. maybe an integra would merit better results?

and dont feel bad about being off topic. i was in my last post as well. noone seems to mind. and if they did theyd say something

wish i could tell you if my settings worked , bc im 85 % done. so close!

Rob N. March 24, 2011 at 8:22 pm

you have any links to setting up bitstreaming with the nvidia cards? When I do google searches all I get is old threads from before the card was released, mainly people discussing that these “new” cards will be able to bitstream, haven’t been able to find any discussions on how to set it up or people who have it working. I want to make sure it will work with my denon AVR before purchasing it over a radeon 5770 or similar.

Damian March 25, 2011 at 6:15 am

Setting up bitstreaming with the NVidia card should be no different then with ATI or Intel. The NVidia drivers should have support set up, and then the software is the same (i.e. MPC HC + FFDShow Audio)

john c March 24, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Ben Ogilvie March 25, 2011 at 11:55 am

Unluckily, the grail remains elusive, no dts-ma or thd bitstreaming with that card.

Damian March 25, 2011 at 12:05 pm

The NVIdia 460 supports bitstreaming of DTS(MA) and TrueHD. The cards that support are:

Every GeForce GT 430/440/GTS 450/GTX 550 Ti/GTX 460/GTX 560 Ti graphics card

Joakim ALPIUS March 25, 2011 at 4:56 pm

Hello Damien!
I have followed your guide as good as I could. I have a Nvidea 425M card so I wasn’t able to follow every step along the way. My htpc is an ASRock 3D Vision, with an Intel i3 370M processor.

I use a Pioneer LX-83 receiver and a Samsung PS63C7705 Plasma TV. all are connected with 4K compatible HDMI cables.

When ripping Blurays to MKVs and playing them using MPC HC! my receiver lits up perfectly with both DTS-HD MA and Dolby True HD/

Dolby True HD plays fine both from an audio and video perspective but when playing DTS-HD MA material video is great but sound chops every 2 or 3 second. It is like if it was silent for about 10ms and then comes back again.
Unfortunately this ruins the whole experience and I have to tick the “non HD” alternative when using Bluray Ripper from DVDFab in order to rip the movies with DTS Core and then the choppy sound is not there anymore. It just feels so sad not to be able to utilize the full potential of HD sound. After all it seems that 9 out of 10 HD soundtracks use DTS and not Dolby.

Please if you have any ideas how to help me out here. I relly would like to lovalize the problem. Receiver, audio driver or something else…

I have the HD audio formats available in ffdshow but not in PowerDVD Ultra II which I also bought…

Are there any log files I can provide for you to se my set up and settings?

Regards,
Joakim Alpius

Damian March 26, 2011 at 4:24 am

Joakim,

Take a look at robp’s questions right below as this may explain your issues. Can you confirm how you are creating your mkv and if you have haali installed. It sounds like you are using DVDFab to create your mkvs, correct?

Can you do a test for me, take one of your BluRays that is causing issues, and use MakeMKV to create the mkv. When you play back do you get the same stuttering?

Joakim Alpius March 26, 2011 at 4:59 pm

Damian,
Thanks a lot for quick response.
I have never installed Haali and yes I am using DvdFab to make my MKVs.
I have never used MakeMKV before but just downloaded a 30 day trial version and are ripping one of my DTS HD MA Blurays right now. Couldn’t find many settings to make in that software. I see that the MKV resulting from the rip will total 33gb which is bigger than from DvdFab.

I will let you know of the result of this test in the morning!
Thanks so far!
//Joakim

Damian March 27, 2011 at 4:39 am

MakeMKV creates an uncompressed mkv (lossless) whereas my guess you are using DVDFab to create an encoded mkv, that is the reason why the MakeMKV filesize would be bigger. Let me know how the test goes.

Joakim Alpius March 28, 2011 at 12:14 am

Ok, then I understand why the file is bigger!
When playing the MKV created by MakeMKV my receiver displays DTS so there is now only DTS Core audio available. Do you know if there are any alternative setting used to get MakeMKV so output HD audio? Or is it because I’m using a 30 day evaluation copy?
I live in Sweden, that’s why I’m posting in the middle of the night your time..
Regards
Joakim

Damian March 28, 2011 at 6:41 am

@ Jaokim,

See robp’s post at the bottom. You need to expand the track in MakeMKV and make sure that the DTS(MA) track is selected

robp March 25, 2011 at 6:54 pm

Joakim, are you using mkvmerge to create the mkv’s after you rip them? (sorry if that’s a dumb question, I don’t know how DVDFAb works)

And are you also using Haali?

Rob N. March 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Hey guys, need some help (again off topic).

Ended up buying the 460gtx I mentioned above, only problem is that it does not have a hdmi out on it, just 2 DVI and a display port. Thankfully it came with a dvi->hdmi adapter so I used that, plugged my hdmi to my tv in installed nvidia drivers and everything was good so far. Then I noticed that my denon receiver was no longer doing on screen display when adjusting my volume. I then fired up a game and I was getting no sound, strange, I exited, went to windows playback devices, nvidia HD hdmi was listed there, set it to default, configured it and all the sounds were working through all my speakers when doing the test. Switch back to the game, and still no sound.
I’m confused, can you pass audio through a DVI port with hdmi adapter? Also why is my on screen display no longer working??

john c March 25, 2011 at 8:22 pm

yes you need toslink cable with dvi.

does anyone have support with oknyo tech support? my receiver issue i mentioned a few replies back is worse than i thought. i plugged it into a buddies integra 3.2 and works right away. i was furious. same company and i get blue screens. the real kicker is a blu ray works thru receiver but not hdmi pc. ive gotta return it to them, its not broken. because it does everything its supposed to do but one thing. and that one thing is the corner stone of my (seemingly) botched operation. so now i sit and wait.

robp March 25, 2011 at 7:35 pm

I don’t have any experience with DVI > HDMI, but I do know that Denon’s (at least all the one’s I’ve seen) on-screen display does not work when using HDMI – the GUI still works, but no overlay for volume etc.

Rob N. March 25, 2011 at 7:40 pm

The on screen display, or volume overlay, was working just fine on my radeon 5450. I’m going to see if the menu come up though, that’s a good test. I’m an idiot for not checking what connectors are on this card but I just don’t understand why asus wouldn’t put a hdmi out on a card that is capable of passing audio and doing bitstreaming, it makes absolutely no sense.

Rob N. March 25, 2011 at 8:13 pm

well I guess the problem is sort of resolved. I had no sound whatsoever in the game I was in but figured i’d mess around with the in game setting anyways. by default video resolution was set to 1280xwhatever, I switched it to 1920×1080 and magically the audio started working. Not sure what the reason for that is but it kind of bothers me, won’t be able to do any gaming at lower resolutions.

Rob N. March 26, 2011 at 3:23 pm

Well, i’m a bit of a idiot, I just realized that the third port on the asus card is a mini hdmi, not a display port like I previously thought. Just need to find a mini->regular hdmi adapter to see if this card will work as good as my 5450 was for htpc duty.

OP March 28, 2011 at 12:22 am

Hi,

1st of all, tq for sharing this wonderful piece of information. I have followed each and every step in this page except the EDID part but I could not get my receiver to light up the DTS HD MA or TruHD.

I am using laptop (i5/480) with intel HD onboard graphic. I connect my laptop to my receiver using HDMI out, I even try using reclock as a renderer and it wont help either. I have block haali as well.

I have download splashpro 30days trial, it works fine, I can get both DTS HD & Dolby TruHD.. Can you assist me where is the possibility that I went wrong?

Damian March 28, 2011 at 7:37 am

I have a core i5 Laptop and had no issues getting HD Audio to bitstream to my receiver via MPC HC (no EDID needed, I believe this only applies to ATI).

The only thing I can think of is that you have some sort of codec conflict. Are you using the latest SVN versions of MPC HC and FFDShow?

robp March 28, 2011 at 1:10 am

@Joakim Alpius:

In MakeMKV, you can expand the list for each title to show all the streams – there you’ll have the option to keep lossless tracks, or keep only the core (or keep both). Check the box for the lossless track, and clear the box for the core if you don’t need it. For DTS Master Audio, there’s never a need to extract the core, since it’s part of Master Audio and is backwards compatible. For TrueHD, you need to keep the core only if you plan to play the movie on a system that doesn’t support TrueHD (in mkv, TrueHD and standard Dolby Digital are muxed as two separate streams).

Joakim Alpius March 29, 2011 at 2:49 pm

Thanks a lot both of you for your tip!
I will try to rip a movie once more and try it again tomorrow and see if the choppy sound is gone!
//Joakim

Joakim Alpius March 29, 2011 at 11:14 pm

Robp and Damian!
Using MakeMKV has now solved my problem with choppy sound when bitstreaming DTS HD MA and playing through MPC HC.
You are simply the best!
Do you know if there is a way to pre define audio and subtitle defaults in MakeMKV? It took me a couple of minutes to uncheck all subtitles that I didn’t want yesterday..
Again thanks a lot!
I can now start ripping all my Blurays to MKV and finally get organized!
Regards,
Joakim

OP March 28, 2011 at 9:19 am

Hi Damien,

Tks for you prompt reply, i have dowloaded the latest mpc hc and ffdshow.. at the same time I also install K-lite codec pack..

I also unable to play m2ts file using mpc hc.. no audio come out.

Damian March 28, 2011 at 9:26 am

I would definitely not install K-Lite codec pack. That is most likely causing all the issues you are having

OP March 28, 2011 at 9:30 am

I see.. without K-lite initially i dont see mpc hc could play mkv file if im not mistaken..

I will uninstall K-Lite and see what happened.

Damian March 28, 2011 at 9:32 am

MPC HC has its own filters (i.e. that is the beauty of it, it can play just about any file, including mkvs, without having to install any additional codecs). Something was wrong with your system if MPC HC could not play mkvs natively.

OP March 28, 2011 at 10:28 am

Damien,

after uninstall K-Lite and reinstall back ffdshow I managed to get everything in order. tq very much foe your assistance.

one more thing I noticed I cannot select the audio type in mpc hc.. let say the file contains dolby, dts and pcm.. mpc hc only detect pcm unlike splash pro we can select the audio type.

Damian March 28, 2011 at 12:14 pm

If you right click in MPC HC while the video is playing and go to Audio you don’t see your multiple audio tracks? I just reconfirmed that this works for me (you can also assign a key for changing audio tracks)

robp March 28, 2011 at 1:37 pm

If you don’t see the audio tracks when you right click > Audio, make sure you have MPC’s audio switcher turned on.

Damian March 28, 2011 at 1:40 pm

Hey robp,

Been meaning to say thanks for helping answering questions here. We are actually at nearly 500 comments since I published this!!!

Cheers
Damian

OP March 28, 2011 at 8:42 pm

tq very much both of you.. when I right click at the audio there is no option to select, anyway I will try to on the MPC audio switcher as per robp reccomended when I back home tonight.

robp March 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm

No problem at all Damian. If anything, I was worried I might be stepping on your toes, so to speak.

This guide is what got me started – until I found it, I didn’t know it was possible to bitstream the HD audio codecs. It’s now led to playing with my HTPC being my primary hobby, so thanks to you for that.

BTW, out of curiosity, (and maybe a suggestion) do you still use the Realtek driver? It seems that since 10.4, all current ATI drivers work fine and with no EDID over-ride necessary. Just seems you still get a lot of EDID questions, so maybe it might be easier to just leave all that out of the guide.

Damian March 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm

Trust, any help in answering comments is welcomed :-)

Good point, I stopped using the Realtek drivers. Maybe I will keep that info up but put a strikethrough through it so hopefully the user will ignore. I do know a handful of people still run into EDID issues (the AVSForum thread is still active).

I also need to add a quick update or put in huge bold letters about using the correct MPC HC and FFDShow version (x32 vs x64) since that is another common issue we seem to run across. I should also add a quick note about Haali and avoiding codec packs. Actually, now that I think of it, I will just add a “Common Problems” section at the bottom of the post listing out the common issues we see. Any other common issues you see (I have x32 vs x64, haali, codec packs installed)?

robp March 28, 2011 at 4:08 pm

The one’s you mentioned are indeed the most common – if I think of any others I’ll let you know.

Besides the now-fixed DTS-HD/mkvmerge bug (which, imo, was an mkvmerge bug), what other problems do you see with Haali? I use it, mainly because it’s the only splitter with ordered chapter/linked files support, and I never have any problems. But once the LAV splitter gets support for ordered chapters, and gets incorporated into MPC, I doubt I’ll use Haali anymore (LAV splitter will eventually get bitstream added too, which will eliminate the need for ffdshow).

However, I do agree that for most users, it’s probably best to avoid Haali. Most people don’t even know what ordered chapters are, and if they have any mkvs made with older versions of mkvmerge, it’s just going to lead to stuttering problems.

Damian March 29, 2011 at 7:44 am

Since most people have mkvs created with mkvmerge prior to when mkvmerge fixed the issue, that is generally the reason why I still recommend to avoid Haali (since most people probably don’t want to spend the time dropping their affected mkvs into mkvmerge to fix). It will definitely be nice once LAV splitter gets up and running with MPC HC and HD Audio support, can’t get any more minimalistic then just having to install MPC HC and be done with!

Ross May 7, 2011 at 1:01 am

A new version the LAV splitter was released that bitstreams all HD audio codecs. I installed it and found that it works great with MPC-HC.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191

Damian May 9, 2011 at 2:56 pm

Hey Ross,

Yeah, I have installed as well but haven’t had a chance to test on my desktop PC. Really the only item I want to confirm that works is forced subtitle support since for me this is the only thing that would differentiate from my current MPC HC + FFDShow setup

Ross May 9, 2011 at 3:17 pm

Just checked to confirm – forced subtitles work for me on my HTPC with LAV.

robp May 9, 2011 at 3:26 pm

Yeah, the forced subs work very well.

Bitstreaming with LAVAudio seems to all work fine, as long as you use LAVSplitter – it’s still not working with TrueHD+Haail for me.

Ross May 9, 2011 at 4:34 pm

TrueHD initially didn’t work for me until I experimented with unchecking the Matroska filter in MPC-HC and then it worked.

john c March 28, 2011 at 6:25 pm

hello all,

john c here. my receiver is broken. well its not broken. but it doesnt know how to input a pc signal thru. onkyo has told me they must speak to management regarding my issue. the odd this is the integra receiver works fine with my i7/465 gtx.

my question is i had issues with getting the codecs set up. i had been using shark codec pack and in media portal i was not able to see the ffdshow and the mpc hc as preferrable boxes to select. they were indeed found on my system but were not being recognized. i spoke to the gentleman who custom built my pc and he found a guide that was linked in this thread i believe a pdf file on how to set up via ati. he created a bat file and installed the standalone filters via run and made the ending .ax as shown in pdf.

my question is the shark setup is one way of doing it, but i am afraid that the shark pack and the mpc hc standalone filters will conflict with each other. my computer guy said no not at all.

but i know ive had codec issues in the past. is this true having both installed is no big deal>

Damian March 29, 2011 at 7:41 am

It should not conflict, but when you install a codec pack to be honest there is no guarantee. I believe that Shark installs Haali so that is the only item I could see possibly conflicting. I would install Shark and test to see if MPC HC still works as expected. Worse case if it causes an issue uninstall Shark (make sure you do through his UI and not from the Control Panel). If you do install Shark let us know how it goes.

OP March 29, 2011 at 10:20 am

hi guys,

I have switched on the audio swither seems like nothing happened, I could not select any audio type, only one is visible in mpc audio type.

OP March 29, 2011 at 10:26 am

I think the MPC could not play normal dolby digital and DTS track (lossy) any reason that caused this?

OP March 29, 2011 at 10:40 am

my mistake, I think only dolby digital (lossy) or file that contain multiple track..

OP March 29, 2011 at 10:47 am

this is getting more confusing, when I right click the track shows dolby digital, but my receiver light up as DTS, I check on ffdshow also DTS.

Damian March 29, 2011 at 10:52 am

Can you use MediaInfo to confirm the exact details of the file you are trying to play

OP March 29, 2011 at 11:09 am

General
ID : 1 (0×1)
Complete name : I:\Pearl.Harbor.珍珠港(Bluray.MPEG2.DTS.LPCM.DD51)(带MTV)\Pearl.Harbor.Blu-Ray.Remux.MPEG2.1080P.DTS.LPCM.DD51.Fanxy@Silu.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 39.1 GiB
Duration : 3h 3mn
Overall bit rate : 30.5 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0×1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0×1)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Codec ID : 2
Duration : 3h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 20.2 Mbps
Nominal bit rate : 40.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.407
Stream size : 25.9 GiB (66%)

Audio #1
ID : 4352 (0×1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0×1)
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Codec ID : 130
Duration : 3h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 755 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 989 MiB (2%)
Language : English

Audio #2
ID : 4353 (0×1101)
Menu ID : 1 (0×1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 3h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 838 MiB (2%)
Language : English

Audio #3
ID : 4354 (0×1102)
Menu ID : 1 (0×1)
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Muxing mode : Blu-ray
Codec ID : 128
Duration : 3h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 6 912 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Stream size : 8.84 GiB (23%)
Language : English

Audio #4
ID : 4355 (0×1103)
Menu ID : 1 (0×1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 3h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 503 MiB (1%)
Language : Chinese

This is one of the example that hv multiple audio track, mpc only detect as LPCM, VLC could not open the file.. only splash able to open and select audio track accordingly

Damian March 31, 2011 at 8:47 am

Nothing is sticking out that could be causing the issue. The fact that MPC cannot switch audio and VLC won’t play at all indicates there could be a possible issue with the file itself. You could trying dumping the contents of that m2ts into an mkv and see if you get the same problems.

Joshua April 3, 2011 at 11:21 pm

Hi Damian,
Great article, I’m currently using MediaBrowser and MPC with bitstreaming following your guides. I have one question. I installed AutoFrequency which switches the refresh rate of my video card to match the frame rate of my mkv’s and my TV can handle the 24Hz of my blu ray mkv’s. Are you doing something similar or are you playing at 60Hz? When I use EVR Custom Renderer at 24Hz I get audio/video sync issues. When I use EVR regular I get perfect playback but then I can’t get subtitles. Any ideas?

robp April 3, 2011 at 11:38 pm

When you change refresh rates immediately before opening a file, you can get some playback issues. Right-click, and opening the options menu for some reason alleviates the problem. MPC’s internal frame rate switcher gets around it by briefly opening the options menu automatically. You could try opening the menu manually (sometimes seeking might be necessary too), or just letting MPC’s internal switcher do it for you might help.

Also, if your Blurays are from the US, they are probably all actually 23.976fps, so make sure you are switching to 23Hz if that’s the case. If you’re using an ATI card, you’ll probably need to modify one of your Profile files to force 23Hz (even if you set a profile at 23Hz, it gets saved at 24, but it’s easily fixed).

Joshua April 3, 2011 at 11:49 pm

I have it set to 23Hz on my GT430 card. I’ll try your suggestion. Do you use MPC-HC’s internal refresh rate switcher?

robp April 4, 2011 at 12:45 am

No, I change it manually via an icon on my task bar. I was using Autofrequency for a while, but for various reasons (mostly related to TV recordings) it wasn’t very practical for me.

Have you tried changing any of EVR Customs settings? Maybe even just try the “reset to default renderer settings” or “reset to optimal renderer settings”. Or, you could use madVR – It just recently added support for MPC’s internal subtitle renderer, and it’s the highest quality video renderer available. The downside is that you lose DXVA, which may be a problem if your CPU isn’t fast enough.

Joshua April 4, 2011 at 1:33 am

Where are those options at? I’m currently using an old PC to test my GT430 with until I finish building my HTPC so for now DXVA is a must. Do you have Aero turned on or off? And do you use D3D fullscreen? Thanks for the help.

gelu April 9, 2011 at 4:07 am

hello,
i have on this moment a sistem with a DH55TC mainboard+i5-661 proc.

Now i want to add a Sapphire HD5670 low profile to my sistem and to be able to play games on a acceptable conditions.My question is,if i will mount Sapphire 5670 i will be able to passtrough the DTS-HD and True-HD sound to my Onkyo TX-SR 507.
Thanks!

Damian April 9, 2011 at 4:57 am

Hello. The 5670 is fully capable of bitstreaming HD Audio (I have two of them)

gelu April 9, 2011 at 12:34 pm

Thanks for your answer.

My “problem” is :because i5-661 decode sound and graphics i dont know if i mount HD 5670 can decode be himself the sound also.
I ask to intel about procesors and mainboard DH55TC and they told me ;if i will mount a PCIe device the capability of procesors and motherboard for HD graphics and HD sound(dts-hd and true-hd) will cutt off.The HDMI output from mainboard will be blocked.
Now,to understand better:HD5670 can make by himself the “collection” of DTS-HD and True-HD and passtrough to my receiver.

Because if the mainboard sound Realtek will not work on HDMI output how will be passtrough the sound to my receiver?

Thanks!

Damian April 9, 2011 at 1:44 pm

Hi gelu,

I see you got an answer from Andy over on AVS :-)

gelu April 9, 2011 at 2:09 pm

i saw!

Thanks for you answer too!

Russ May 14, 2011 at 7:04 pm

Damian,
What an incredible guide! I am up and bitstreaming now in under 10 minutes thanks to this guide… absolutely amazing. Thank you so much!

john c June 3, 2011 at 8:13 am

been considering dropping mpchc+ffd+shark

in favor of pot player+lav+madvr

which sites guide should i use

http://imouto.my/configuring-potplayer-for-gpu-accelerated-video-playback-with-dxva-or-cuda-and-also-high-performance-software-decoding/#tutorial

http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-using-compute-unified-device-architecture-cuda/

http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191&highlight=lav

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=160290&highlight=lav

as you can see two seperate download locations. multiple revisions of same program. which do i download?

i run i7 960 with evga 560ti crysis edition.

thank you!

Damian June 3, 2011 at 8:44 am

With regards to LAV I would definitely go by the Doom9 threads, as Nev is the developer.

As far as madvr and pot player I honestly can’t give any guidance as I have never used (and I don’t have an NVidia GPU which I believe madvr + lav works best with)., At some point I may pick up a NVidia GPU on the cheap to test.

I know others are using JRiverMC + lav + madvr + nvidia with success

Russ June 14, 2011 at 4:10 am

Tried some test files that were TrueHD and had no luck getting my receiver to light up (Denon avr-790). All my files (mkv) that have DTS-MA light up fine. Both mpc-hc and ffdshow show that it is TrueHD audio, but receiver remains “Multi In”. Any ideas?

Russ June 15, 2011 at 1:12 am

Nevermind used an EDID override (link below) provided by Tulli and all is well now. I am able to bitstream TrueHD, Masters Audio, and DTS HD using the exact methods in the tutorial.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17746750#post17746750

Damian said it best to try out your setup without the EDID override then if all is not well give it a shot. ( I was able to get everything but TrueHD to work before EDID override)

PC and A/V components:
Windows 7 x64
Radeon HD 6450
Denon AVR-790
6 year old projection TV

Damian June 15, 2011 at 4:02 am

Great to hear. It is a shame that EDID issues still do exist

Damian June 30, 2011 at 2:44 pm

Just a quick message, I recently published a guide on using LAV Filters with MPC HC which can serve as an alternative for FFDShow for bitstreaming HD Audio:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/06/30/guide-setting-up-lav-filters-mpc-hc-for-all-your-splitter-and-audio-needs/

Nathan July 5, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Any idea why I can’t bitstream TrueHD through my Radeon HD 6310? During playback, ffdshow says:

“Input: TrueHD, 5.1, 48000 Hz, 3267kbps (libavcodec)
Output: PCM, 5.1, 48000 Hz, 16-bit Integer”

My Denon picks it up as Stereo. DTS-HD works perfectly.

Russ July 5, 2011 at 10:44 pm

Nathan,
Did you try doing the EDID override (step 4) for the denon receiver? I had the same exact issue with my denon receiver as you are having, after I did the override everything worked fine. Hope that works out for ya.

Nathan July 6, 2011 at 9:51 pm

Russ,
I just tried that and it didn’t work. I keep pointing it to the unzipped folder and for some reason it just keeps kicking me back to Generic PnP Monitor using the MS Driver. Saying that the Best Driver for my Device is already installed. Any other ideas? I tried uninstalling, but as soon as I scan for hardware changes, it installs the MS driver again.

Nathan July 6, 2011 at 9:57 pm

Russ, After a little more work, I was able to force the installation. Unfortunatley it still shows “Output: PCM, 5.1, 48000 Hz, 16-bit Integer”

Mondo July 8, 2011 at 5:26 pm

Hi D:

When I download ffdshow and MPC-HC, and attempt to select my filters (Select “ffdshow Audio Decoder” and click OK) I dont have any ffshow filters showing in the pop-up.

Did I miss something in the download?

Thanks for the great guides.

Damian July 8, 2011 at 5:33 pm

It sounds like you did not download the corresponding versions. If you download mpc hc x32 you must use ffdshow 32. Same goes for x64. You probably downloaded MPC HC x64 with FFDShow x32 or vice versa.

Mondo July 8, 2011 at 11:14 pm

Yes – my bad. I was using x64 MPC and 32 ffdshow. Downloaded x64.

I have followed your instructions and have significant stutter/chopiness playing my MKVs. Any suggestions?

Also, your instructions mention “Under “Internal Filters” uncheck “H264/AVC (ffmpeg)” and “VC1 (ffmpeg)” … do I have to uncheck Matroska?

Im using a i3 Sandy Bridge CPU on an ASUS LGA 1155 mobo. Ive tried LAV filters and I still have significant stutter/chopiness.

Thanks again.

Damian July 9, 2011 at 4:48 am

It is most likely because open sources decoders/filters (such as MPC and FFDShow) don’t play nice with Intel GPUs. Try using MS Video Decoder for H264 and Arcsoft Video decoder for VC-1 (or you can use the MS Video Decoder for both, you will just lose DXVA for VC-1). The guide is in the other post you commented on about unregistering

Russ July 8, 2011 at 5:38 pm

Natahan,
At this point it may be a little out of my league and a question for Damian. However I would double check all the settings are correct in both ffdshow and mpc-hc and to update to the latest versions of both. Damian also put up another way to get things to work using LAV Filters in place of ffdshow a few posts up, you might check that out too.

Alex September 16, 2011 at 7:03 am

Hi,

Very nice writeup, thankyou.

I am having one issue however and thought I would share. All audio is sent to my amp via HDMI. DTS-HD etc is passed through, WMC TV is PCM.

I have my speaker configuration set to 2 channel (step 3). I’ll explain…

If I set my speaker configuration to 5.1, everything is great, PCM is 5.1 (while watching the movie 300 for example) and TV audio via WMC is also 5.1.
The issue comes about when watching TV in WMC which has DD Plus audio, weird issues start to occur, random audio and video stuttering and some recording have no sound. Also he audio in 300 is only 2 channel. All this is corrected when the speaker configuration is returned to 5.1.

I have an i3Core and use the intel gpu, windows 7. WMC codecs are default. Use MPC-HC for for mkv and BD.

Anyone else experienced this this?

john September 16, 2011 at 8:22 pm

alex,

i have wm7, i7 gpu. i have natively set to 2.1 in sound properties (ill explain)
it is often convenient to keep Windows set to 2-channel stereo while running a HDMI output. That’s because Windows sends the all 6 channels of audio for all system output then, even if the channels are blank. For stereo sound, like for most applications (Flash in a web browser, for example), this means your receiver gets a “multi-in” PCM 6 channel stream, with 4 blank streams, and can’t expand the stereo to surround. Only applications that specifically output surround give you surround with Windows set that way (like games and MC). That would be fine if you never fired up Chrome or Firefox to watch an episode of The Daily Show or a stupid video on YouTube, but… Come on. Wink

This setup is annoying in its own way, because you need to remember to switch it back to 5.1 if you do actually want to run a game that has a real multichannel out, or else you’ll be stuck there with stereo expansion. But, there is a way to make a hotkey to quickly switch between the two setups, so … Tolerable if you use the Home Theater PC for web video (or other “dumb” sound applications) more often than gaming.
that program is http://blog.contriving.net/2009/05/04/a-hotkey-to-switch-between-headphones-and-speakers-soundswitch/

i use 3.0 beta and ive never had a problem. my onkyo amp switches on its own with the audio in sync.

john

Alex September 17, 2011 at 12:53 am

Soundswitch can “Switch between two speaker configurations for your current active playback device”. Looks interesting, and you are right, it’s a good workaround.

I’m going to look into changing the default WMC codec for TV and TV recording….

john September 16, 2011 at 8:38 pm

also you might want to consider alternative means if that doesnt work. if above solution doesnt get it working its your wmc codecs. they can be volatile if under mitigating circumstances, see http://www.homecinema-hd.com/lav-filters-0-35_news-285.html

note the dts revision for support when switching streams automatically. wink.

john

KrazeyKami October 3, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Hi all…

The problem in a nuttshell: I can’t get TrueHD bitstreaming working. FFdshow will pick up the stream as TrueHD, but keeps making the output PCM 5.1 48khz / 32-bit integer.

First, my setup:

APU: [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103942"]AMD A8 3850 / 2.9 GHz – Socket FM1 – L2 4 MB – Box [/URL]
Mobo: [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128511"]Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H (rev. 1.0)[/URL]
Receiver: [URL="http://www.retrevo.com/search?q=Samsung+HT-D6500&rt=sp&modelid=23883754"]Samsung HTD6500 [/URL]

As you can see, all of these components must be well-capable of playing TrueHD content.

I’ve connected my HTPC to my receiver with an HDMI cable.

Now, for the problem:

I can play back 5.1 sound, no problem. It plays DTS like a charm, i have absolutely no problems with playback whatsoever, except for this:

[IMG]http://www.krazeykami.com/images/0.jpg[/IMG]

I can’t get it to bitstream in TrueHD.

First, i thought it was the settings in FFdShow, and MPC-HC. I’ve checked all guides, settings, etc. Even had a collegue take a look at it, who has this working at home;

All settings in FFDshow and MPC-HC should be fine.
I can post em if people are interested.

Then, i noticed something:
When i open the audio output device (The AMD HDMI Output) and i check supported formats -> Encoded Formats list, i see only the following 2 codecs:

[IMG]http://www.krazeykami.com/images/1.jpg[/IMG]

Also, the samplefrequency is 96.0 khz max.

What the f? Shouldn’t this be up to 192 khz, and at least look something similair to this:

[IMG]http://www.krazeykami.com/images/2.jpg[/IMG]

I’ve tried different drivers, both from AMD, Realtek, ATI, etc, but to no avail.

My 2 questions are:

1. Could this be the reason that i can’t get bitstreaming to work (that it is making the output PCM 5.1, no matter what i try)?

2. Where is the problem residing here? The mobo should be well-capable of playing TrueHD formats, and my receiver is capable of decoding it.

I’m totally lost here. Where should i turn to get my encoded formats list like the one in the last picture? Is it a driver? If so, is it AMD / ATI / Realtek? Or is it hardware related? Etc.

I’m totally lost here, so if any1 have seen this problem before, or God willingly knows the answer to this, i’d be forever grateful.

Thanks in advance,
Kami.

Damian October 3, 2011 at 2:19 pm

Did you by chance try the EDID override, it still applies for some people’s setups

KrazeyKami October 3, 2011 at 2:27 pm

Hi Damian,

Thx 4 your reply and your excellent guide btw!

I haven’t tried the EDID override, because:

- I currently don’t have a monitor / TV hooked up (still need to buy it), so i wouldn’t know to what type i should make the hack;
- I am using RDP to take control of my Media Center atm, so i can’t properly edit Monitor Drivers (since its an RDP mirror driver that’s kicking in);
- I really fail to see what my monitor has got to do with my Sound output. I am not connecting my HTPC to my monitor, but to my receiver on the HDMI in port…. From my receiver’s HDMI out port, i will connect to my TV in the near future.

Or am i missing something here (probably ;))?

Damian October 3, 2011 at 2:31 pm

The EDID is not necessarily for a direct connection to a monitor per se. My HTPCs have always been connected to a receiver and the EDID was necessary until AMD released a fix (although it does still affect some people). Not sure how you would go about doing though without a monitor connected so you could get out of RDP mode. You don’t have a spare TV/monitor that you could test off of

KrazeyKami October 3, 2011 at 2:39 pm

Ye, i can connect a monitor to it for testing, ofc.

I’m still a bit confused on how to make the right EDID edit tho, since i am using a Samsung HTD6500 receiver, with (my testing monitor) a Sony HS95P monitor.

Ill have a good look at your (or Tulli’s) EDID guide, and see what it comes up with.

Btw,
over at Overclock.net, a person claims that my rig is not capable of bitstreaming TrueHD (http://www.overclock.net/htpc/1131964-help-totally-lost-my-truehd-bitstreaming.html#post15161640).

What is your opinion on this? Cause i think since it’s brandnew stuff, made specially for HTPC’s, i’d say it be more then capable of TrueHD?

Damian October 3, 2011 at 2:44 pm

The AMD APU most definitely supports TrueHD from my understanding. Best bet try asking on the AMD Llano thread on AVSForum (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1333378). I haven’t gotten my hands on an AMD APU yet so I can’t give you a definite. Bitstreaming HD Audio should be working though (I do know from the past that trying to do so via RDP caused all kinds of audio issues for me so I would recommend at a minimum trying to test with an actual monitor without worrying about the EDID first)

fokko October 9, 2011 at 5:05 pm

Hi, I have been following your guide and redone it many times without success to get my setup to bitstream HD-audio to my AVR, please help.

my setup:
Windows 7 64bit
Asus P6T SE
ATI RADEON HD6870, just upgraded recently from HD4670
Onkyo HT-R548 AVR
LG 47LW550

[GPU]–HDMI 1.4–>[AVR]–HDMI 1.4–>[TV]

software side:
latest MPC-HC 64bit
latest ffdshow 64bit
using AMD HDMI AUDIO driver, with support up to 6 channels and all HD-audio format in Properties.
and everything set exactly like screenshots and descriptions above.

Result:
with DTS-HDMA
Input: DTS, 7.1, 96000 Hz, 1536 kbps (bitstream)
Output: S/PDIF (1401)

with TrueHD
Input: TrueHD, 7.1, 48000 Hz, 6048 kbps (libavcodec)
Output: PCM, 7.1, 48000 Hz, 16-bit Integer

I have tried everything I could find on the internet but without better result, also tried LAV setup but all I could get is PCM out.

Damian October 11, 2011 at 6:00 am

Are the results what the ffdshow audio decoder is showing you on your PC? If so what does your Onkyo AVR show you, the same? I just want to confirm that it isn’t just an issue with how ffdshow is reporting, which ultimately I always rely on the AVR to report properly.

fokko October 11, 2011 at 6:36 am

hi, my AVR show exactly what ffdshow outputs.

with DTS-HDMA
-DTS

with TrueHD
-PCM

If this help, I also have issue with PowerDVD that let’s me choose “Non encoded HD-Audio” but when I try to play a Bluray, it changes to only two options:
- decoded PCM
- DTS/DD only mode

Damian October 11, 2011 at 6:43 am

What does your RealTek HDMI Output -> Supported Formats tab show (you should see all supported formats, including DTS-HD and TrueHD).

fokko October 11, 2011 at 1:05 pm

Yes, under AMD HDMI Output Properties

Max Number of Channels: 6
HDCP: Not Supported (?)
Bit Depths: 16-bit, 20-bit,24-bit
Sample Rates: 32,48,96,192,4.1,88.2,176.4 kHz

Encoded Formats:
DTS Audio
Dolby Digital Plus
DTS-HD
Dolby TrueHD
Dolby Digital

faysal October 11, 2011 at 5:56 am

i have a denon 2808 and my HTPC works perfect for dts-hd and the amp also shows dts-hd on the display however, i am not getting the true-hd signal on my amp and it shows mutli channel on the display each time i play a true hd mkv or a bluray file.
I assume that if dts-hd is working perfect so should true hd. Dts and Dolby Digital work perfect too. I use mpc and ffdaudio show. ffdaudio has all audio format ticked. my gpu is ati 6750 through which the hdmi is connected to the amp and the gpu hdmi configuration shows dts-hd and tru hd working perfectly. Can any one help and what should i check, where should i start from. (i have followed your instructions on the setup but still no luck on getting the true hd signal).

Damian October 11, 2011 at 6:10 am

I don’t know what it is but seems that TrueHD is giving people issues of late. I wonder if it could be an EDID issue? Also, do you by chance have Haali installed on your PC?

faysal October 11, 2011 at 6:52 am

yes, i think Haali is installed.

Damian October 11, 2011 at 6:53 am

Can you try either uninstalling Haali or actually just simply block in the External Filters section of MPC HC and see if that fixes the problem

faysal October 11, 2011 at 6:56 am

ok, will do that and will get back to you. thanks.

faysal October 11, 2011 at 7:25 am

actually i also use TMT (full version) and it has the same problem. DTS-HD works fine and True HD doesnt.

Damian October 11, 2011 at 7:35 am

Does TrueHD show in your RealTek HDMI Output -> Supported Formats tab? My guess it is either a driver or EDID issue (unless Haali is the culprit, but you would at least know this in MPC HC)

faysal October 11, 2011 at 7:43 am

yes it does. all formats are shown in realtek.

faysal October 11, 2011 at 7:49 am

plus i have followed the instructions you have mentioned in the setting pictures. In the external filters i only have ffdaudio show with “prefer” checked and microsoft DT DVD with “blocked” checked as you have shown in the picture

Damian October 11, 2011 at 7:54 am

Yeah, I am thinking it is either a driver issue or an EDID issue. It may be worth trying the EDID override for whatever your setup is and hopefully that will solve the issue. Otherwise it may be best to do a clean reinstall of W7 (I know not ideal)

faysal October 12, 2011 at 12:14 am

since i am not that PC friendly so please let me know how to handle this part ” It may be worth trying the EDID override ” ?
i tried uinstalling the MPC and FFAudio show and reinstalling it but the result was the same. No True HD signal seen on amp :(
…DTS-HD works perfect :))

Damian October 12, 2011 at 3:36 am

Read point #4 under setup which talks about the EDID

Rob October 22, 2011 at 2:01 pm

Hoping somebody can help me out.
I have a bdrom image of a movie on my computer and am trying to figure out how to switch audio tracks in MPCHC.
The movie is 7.1 DTSHD MA and also has a seperate audio track in french which is just regular dolby digital.
When I go play the movie which I do by browsing to /bdmv/stream/ and picking the largest .m2ts files (it is 35gigs), the movie will play but it is in french and regular DD. How do I change audio tracks in MPCHC?

Damian October 22, 2011 at 2:07 pm

Try:

Right Click – Navigate – Audio Language

Rob October 22, 2011 at 3:19 pm

Thanks.

Well I tried it on my personal computer (which automatically defaults to the dtshdma track), and it shows all the appropriate languages and bitrate/Hz. I only have 2 speakers on this computer so I have mpchc defaulted to stereo so it wasn’t actually playing the dtshdma track but regardless it showed up.

I went back to my htpc and again it defaulted to french. Did what you said but it doesn’t show the tracks like it did on my PC.

I get weird stuff like

A: pid4353 (unknown)(unresolved)1
A: pid4354 (unknown)(unresolved)2
etc. up to 5

All 5 are just dolby audio. 3 foreign languages, english, director commentary.

I don’t know if it makes a difference but i’m using ffdshow+reclock.

Strange thing is i’ve watched many movies that are in the bdrom format and have never had any issue playing back dtshdma.

Nick October 23, 2011 at 8:47 am

Damian, I’m having trouble with the encoded formats in the sound properties. I have the latest Catalyst drivers installed along with the AMD HDMI driver. When I look at the supported formats tab, where it says “Which of the following formats is your Digital Receiver able to decode?”, only DTS Audio, Dolby Digital, and Microsoft WMA Pro Audio boxes are available to be checked. It does not show TrueHD or DTS-HD. I have Vista 32 bit, Radeon 6770 connected to Integra DHC-9.9 pre/pro. I’ve tried the Realtek ATI HDMI drivers as well and same result. I’ve also tried the EDID override. Please help thanks.

Nick October 30, 2011 at 7:48 pm

Nevermind. I decided to install Windows 7 and that fixed the problem.

TheTinRam November 5, 2011 at 7:24 pm

Can anybody think of why all of a sudden some movies have choppy audio?

I have been running this setup for almost a year (since Dec 2010) and it was all been running like a dream. Its my pride and joy. However, lately some movies have choppy audio, it cut out for a half second or so.

This only happens with some movies. “Captain America” and “On stranger tides” is an example. Others are working fine. It also only happens when I do bitstreaming. If I load the movie via VLC (and get regular DTS) the sound is fine.

What do I check? Where do I start?

I have a Radeon HD 5700 series graphics card
Proc is a Q6600 Core 2
4 gigs of ram
Receiver is a Yamaha RX-V667

I would appreciate any tips on where to look.

Thanks

Damian November 8, 2011 at 11:58 am

Have you updated any of the software or install new software? Any possible Windows Updates go through?

TheTinRam November 8, 2011 at 12:26 pm

I have been doing Windows Updates. Should I have not does so? Thats all that has been coming in. IE was also updated along with that.

Do you think I should re-build?

Thanks

Damian November 8, 2011 at 12:28 pm

I would definitely keep windows updates shut off, they tend to do more harm then good with an HTPC.

If you can’t resolve the issue I would just go with a clean reinstall

faysal November 10, 2011 at 12:56 am

Reference point 4 update:
the latest version of ATI CCC is 11.1.. of 6 series ati gpu. i assume that this latest version has EDID issue fixed.
I posted few weeks ago. i was not able to have the true-hd signal on my amp whereas dts-hd is working fine. U recommeded to re install EDID.

Damian November 10, 2011 at 6:34 am

The EDID issue was supposedly fixed a while back but for whatever reason some people sill suffer issues. I would definitely give the EDID fix a try if you are having issues.

Noah December 6, 2011 at 12:13 pm

Hi

Lately, I have experienced the same random ½ sek cut’s in HD audio – DTS HD MA and TrueHD. In my example it occurs in PowerDVD 11(v2211). Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 5 (v5.0.1.80) works fine. I have resently updated Catalyst Mobility to version 11.11. Unfortunately I have had Microsoft Windows update activated as well. It has performed some Visual C++ updates etc.

Mobility Radeon HD 5830 (ATI HDMI driver)
1.6GHz Core i7
500GB 7200RPM HDD
4GB RAM
WIN7 64

robp December 6, 2011 at 8:40 pm

Unless you use your machine for gaming, I’d start by going back to any driver pre-10.12 (10.11 seems to be fine). Apparently, the 10.12 and up drivers have some issues with 5000 series cards. Most, if not all, of the updates since then apply to gaming issues, so there’s no need for them on an HTPC anyway.

Also, I use the audio driver from 10.4 (the first since the EDID issue was sorted). With the newer audio drivers, my Denon AVR shows 3/3/.1 with a “Matrixed” flag on 5.1 PCM. Not sure if it has any effect on bitstreaming, but it’s not right so I don’t use it.

TheTinRam December 9, 2011 at 8:32 pm

I re-built the PC and I am still having the choppy sound. I am baffled, and quite crushed. This is going to be really hard to figure out.

TheTinRam December 10, 2011 at 8:56 am

SOLVED!!! Believe it or not it was by main PC that I use for encoding MKVs. I just tried encoding one of my problem movies on my laptop and it no longer skips! I am going to re-build my main PC and that should be that.

This brings up an interesting topic, what do you guys use to convert your Blu-Ray to MKV? I have been using DVDfab. The “Blu Ray ripper” part of it is great, especially that all I want to do is a re-mux. When doing a re-mux its really fast. 10 to 20 minutes to make the MKV.

Damian December 10, 2011 at 9:24 am

OK, my only recommendation, DO NOT use DVDFab for mkvs. I have heard nothing but issues, just leave DVDFab for folder/ISO rips.

Here are various guides I have put together on mkvs:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/tag/mkv/

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Damian

TheTinRam December 10, 2011 at 9:44 am

Thanks Damian…

What problems did you hear about with DVDfab? Its what I have been using exclusively since I first started with MKVs, around the time this guide came out. Since I just do a re-mux into MKV I found it very useful.

This “BlueRip” you talk about needs all this extra software, even Java (bla).

What would you say is the best tool for re-muxing Blue Rays into MKV? I don’t mind paying for something if its good.

Thanks!

Damian December 10, 2011 at 9:46 am

Either mkvs not rmuxing correctly, stuttering, a/v sync issues, etc…

Are you looking to encode or keep lossless?

TheTinRam December 10, 2011 at 9:54 am

Definitely lossless. Thats what I meant by “re-mux” its what DVDfab calls it.

Damian December 10, 2011 at 12:17 pm

Yeah, just wasn’t sure because I thought with mkv DVDFab was doing some encoding, even if it was minimal.

I prefer my good old mthod of AnyDVD + Clown_BD + mkvmerge. A solid one click choice is MakeMKV

TheTinRam December 10, 2011 at 1:04 pm

MakeMKV looks pretty good. DVDfab is more feature rich as it lets you batch several movies and also automatically names the folder and file.

Using DVDfab in lossless (they call it remux) has always worked well for me. You need to keep updating it though. I don’t know if they do it purposely to prevent people from pirating their software or what. It is fairly pricey too.

Then again, I am having problems with it now aren’t I? But it looks like I just need to re-build the PC.

John-Type December 17, 2011 at 2:32 pm

Thanks ALOT! It worked for me! Finally! Thanks again!

TheTinRam December 17, 2011 at 10:04 pm

What did? Rebuilding your HTPC or updating the PC you use to encode?

Nihilator December 18, 2011 at 4:34 am

Damian,

What are you using for a remote control (to control your HTPC)?

Have you ever tried a Logitech or Universal Remote Contyrol (URC) to control your HTPC.

The reason I ask:

I don’t want to have to get up to play a movie on my HTPC. I would rather not get up and have heart disease (from not moving around).

Damian December 18, 2011 at 8:20 am

I use a Harmony Remote, with a USB IR Receiver attached to my HTPC. Works great controlling WMC and/or MPC HC (when launching from WMC). I also have a Logitech DiNovo Mini that I will use from time to time when I need keyboard/mouse access

Cheers
Damian

Nihilator December 18, 2011 at 9:52 am

Damian,

Could you tell me the exact USB IR receiver that you are using?

Do you find that Logitech has done a good job with their remotes and keyboard (in regards to WMC) or are there some areas where you wish it was better?

Damian December 18, 2011 at 10:22 am

I can’t find t eh exact USB IR Receiver, I just bought some cheap MCE remote that comes with the IR Receiver (similar to this – http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Certified-Infrared-Receiver-Ultimate/dp/B000ST7QPA/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1324228849&sr=8-9)

Logitech has done a good job. Don’t forget, with Logitech you can customize what the buttons do (Which I think I did for a few of the options).

Rob January 14, 2012 at 7:21 pm

Any updates or improvements for using MPCHC for playback? Specifically any way to play back BDROM images with menus or even simpler, to just playback the main movie without having to browse to /bdmv/stream/pick_the_proper.m2ts.

Also couple issues. First Dolby TrueHD gives me a small issue, I get a slight blip in the audio probably every 2-5 minutes in a movie. It’s not a huge stutter or anything but cuts out for a slight second. I’ve played some loseless truehd intros and it will blip/skip probably every 10-15 seconds.

And lastly, i’ve had a few movies that when played back in mpchc are unwatchable, everything is red with yellow grain, it is really odd. You can see outlines of people and stuff but most stuff is red or red with a yellowish grain. Video files playback fine in other media players.

And for anyone who wants to take a stab at trying to figure out my issues, running win7 x64, radeon 6870 hdmi out to a denon 3311ci.

Thanks

Damian January 17, 2012 at 3:24 am

Rob,

Currently you will not get full menus for Blu-ray unless you use pay software (such as TMT or PDVD).

Also, MPC HC does play back Blu-ray rips without having to navigate to the m2ts file, it has actually been doing this for a while.

Not sure of TrueHD. Try switching to LAV Audio filters and see if you get the same problem.

For the unwatchable movies, anything in common with them (i.e. are they 1080i, etc…)?

Rob January 17, 2012 at 1:08 pm

how exactly do I play bdrom images without navigating to the m2ts file?

Not sure of any commonalities between the “red” movies, i’ll still see if I have them and run the mediainfo on them.

Thanks

Damian January 18, 2012 at 4:32 am

I am not sure about ISOs and I don’t use. I rip all my Blu-rays to Blu-ray folder rips. I just simply point MPC at the folder and it automatically launches the main movie (i.e. it just looks at the playlist for the longest one which is usually the main movie)

Ladik February 20, 2012 at 4:02 am

Hi
i have still problems with DTS-HD of TrueHD playback, i do everything i see in this post but with no success, my only success is that i can see DTS-HD MSTR in my reciever but no sound and video is jerky :(

Damian February 21, 2012 at 8:38 am

Do you have anything additional installed on your PC (such as Haali or other codecs that could be interfering)? It may be worth doing a clean install

Ladik February 25, 2012 at 3:41 am

yes, ive made a clean new installation of win 7, ffdshow, mpc

ive try this before when i had old win and i cant playbeck DTS or DD either

i have onkyo htx-22hdx and Ati 5670, newest catylist and realtek

powerdvd 10,11 even 12 not play HD audio, TMT5 no HD audio

i am desperate, please heeeelp :(

Damian March 5, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Still having issues? Something doesn’t sound right as your 5670 should be capable of easily handling

Ladik March 9, 2012 at 10:37 am

yes still not working :(

Wildturkey February 22, 2012 at 5:43 pm

Does this guide only work for HTPC which is permitently connected to the receiver. I have a laptop which i use and when i want to watch movies i connect it to the receiver. I just followed your guide but now there is no sound when playing HD movies without connecting to the receiver.

Damian March 5, 2012 at 1:29 pm

I used this guide for my laptop as well (Core i5) and it worked without issue

solip March 10, 2012 at 5:01 pm

setting the speaker configuration to 5.1 in windows audio control has a side effect:

in the very common thing of playing music (which will run as PCM 2.0 stream), you would send a 5.1 steam to your AVR. this limits the ways it can process the stream drastically. it also might confuse your display, depending on what you have set for it: input channels or output channels.

if you use your HTPC for music purposes, I find it much better to set it to 2.0.

robp March 10, 2012 at 6:55 pm

For pure audio quality, it’s even better to use Reclock for PCM – regardless of whether or not you want to bitstream DTS and Dolby.

Damian, I don’t think you have a guide for that – do you ever think of adding one?

Damian March 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm

Hey Rob,

So far I haven’t used Reclock since I bitstream (and just about all my library is HD Audio). I was tempted to set up Reclock anymore but was worried that it would just be one more thing that could go wrong (as you know, the more you tinker with an HTPC the odds of something braking increases greatly)! My HTPC that I used more for testing I ended up converting over to a test server (for WHS 2011), but at some point I need to start tinkering around with my other HTPC

levian71 March 30, 2013 at 6:09 am

Hi Damien,
i followed your procedure and it works perfectly when i connected my HTPC to my Sony Bravia TV. However when i connect my LG projector (CF181D) to it (and switch the TV off) i am getting only following supported audio formats:

DTS Audio
Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby Digital

No DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD formats are listed.

When starting up and having the Sony TV connected i am receiving following formats:

DTS Audio
Dolby Digital Plus
DTS-HD
Dolby TrueHD
Dolby Digital

I followed Tulli’s procedure and extracted my EDID to an .inf file while connected to the Sony TV.
When connected to the LG projector i imported the .inf file to the display driver.
Hovever it doesn’t overide and only shows the audio formats without DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD.

My setup is following:
OS: Windows 7
mainboard; Asrock H67M with Intel HD Graphics 2000/3000
processor: core i3
receiver: Denon AVR 2313

Do you have any idea ?

Thanks for any help,
levian71

Thomas March 31, 2013 at 6:32 am

Hey guys,

First of all – thanks a ton to all you guys here, terrific work and finally got my Receiver (Onkyo) to play DTS.

Unfortunately it is only DTS and not DTS-HD – when sliding over ffdshow it says Output S/PDIF but my PC is connected to the AVR with HDMI.

I really don’t know what to do.

I have the latest AMD Vision Engine Control Center installed. Should I install something else? ( for my HD6550D graphic card)

Do I need to do the EDID overwrite?

Would be great if someone can give me a small hint :-)

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