Mercurial > mplayer.hg
annotate DOCS/tech/hwac3.txt @ 33389:2672587086ad
Add MNG output support.
Patch by Stefan Schuermans, stefan blinkenarea dot org.
author | cboesch |
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date | Sat, 21 May 2011 15:04:50 +0000 |
parents | 0ad2da052b2e |
children |
rev | line source |
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4778 | 1 mails by A'rpi and Marcus Blomenkamp <Marcus.Blomenkamp@epost.de> |
2 describing how this ac3-passtrough hack work under linux and mplayer... | |
3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
4 Hi, | |
5 | |
6 > I received the following patch from Steven Brookes <stevenjb@mda.co.uk>. | |
7 > He is working on fixing the digital audio output of the dxr3 driver and | |
8 > told me he fixed some bugs in mplayer along the way. I don't know shit | |
9 > about hwac3 output so all I did was to make sure the patch applied | |
10 > against latest cvs. | |
11 > This is from his e-mail to me: | |
12 > | |
13 > "Secondly there is a patch to dec_audio.c and | |
14 > ac3-iec958 to fix the -ac hwac3 codec stuff and to use liba52 to sync it. | |
15 | |
16 > Seems to work for everything I've thrown at and maintains sync for all audio | |
17 > types through the DXR3." | |
18 | |
19 patch applied (with some comments added and an unwanted change (in software | |
20 a52 decoder) removed) | |
21 | |
22 now i understand how this whole hwac3 mess work. | |
23 it's very very tricky. it virtually decodes ac3 to LPCM packets, but really | |
24 it keeps the original compressed data padded by zeros. this way it's | |
25 constant bitrate, and sync is calculated just like for stereo PCM. | |
26 (so it bypass LPCM-capable media converters...) | |
27 | |
28 so, every ac3 frame is translated to 6144 byte long tricky LPCM packet. | |
29 6144 = 4*(6*256) = 4 * samples_per_ac3_frame = LPCM size of uncompressed ac3 | |
30 frame. | |
31 | |
32 i wanna know if it works for sblive and other ac3-capable cards too? | |
33 (i can't test it, lack of ac3 decoder) | |
34 | |
35 A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team | |
36 | |
37 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
38 Hi folks. | |
39 I spend some time fiddling with ac3 passthrough in mplayer. The | |
40 traditional way of setting the output format to AFMT_AC3 was no ideal | |
41 solution since not all digital io cards/drivers supported this format or | |
42 honoured it to set the spdif non-audio bit. To make it short, it only | |
43 worked with oss sblive driver IIRC. | |
44 | |
45 Inspired by alsa's ac3dec program I found an alternative way by | |
46 inspecting to which format the alsa device had been set. Suprise: it was | |
47 simple 16bit_le 2_channel pcm. So setting the non-audio bit doesn't | |
48 necessarily mean the point. The only important thing seems to be | |
49 bit-identical output at the correct samplerate. Modern AV-Receivers seem | |
50 to be quite tolerant/compatible. | |
51 | |
52 So I changed the output format of hwac3 from | |
53 | |
54 AFMT_AC3 channels=1 | |
55 to | |
56 AFMT_S16_LE channels=2 | |
57 | |
58 and corrected the absolute time calculation. That was all to get it | |
59 running for me. | |
60 | |
61 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
62 Hi there. | |
63 | |
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64 Perhaps I can clear up some mystification about AC3 passthrough in |
4778 | 65 general and mplayer in special: |
66 | |
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67 To get the external decoder solution working, it must be fed with data |
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68 which is bitidentical to the chunks in the source ac3 file (compressed |
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69 data is very picky about bit errors). Additionally - or better to say |
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70 'historically' - the non-audio bit should be set in the spdif status |
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71 fields to prevent old spdif hardware from reproducing ugly scratchy |
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72 noise. Note: for current decoders (probably those with DTS capability) |
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73 this safety bit isn't needed anymore. At least I can state that for my |
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74 Sherwood RVD-6095RDS. I think it is due to DTS because DTS sound can |
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75 reside on a ordinary AudioCD and an ordinary AudioCD-Player will always |
4778 | 76 have it's audio-bit set. |
77 | |
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78 The sample format of the data must be 2channel 16bit (little endian |
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79 IIRC). Samplerates are 48kHz - although my receiver also accepts |
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80 44100Hz. I do not know if this is due to an over-compatability of my |
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81 receiver or if 44100 is also possible in the ac3 specs. For safety's |
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82 sake lets keep this at 48000Hz. AC3 data chunks are inserted into the |
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83 stream every 0x1600 bytes (don't bite me on that, look into |
4778 | 84 'ac3-iec958.c': 'ac3_iec958_build_burst'). |
85 | |
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86 To come back to the problem: data must be played bit-identically through |
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87 the soundcard at the correct samplerate and should optionally have it's |
4778 | 88 non-audio bit set. There are two ways to accomplish this: |
89 | |
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90 1) Some OSS guy invented the format AFMT_AC3. Soundcard drivers |
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91 implementing this format should therefore adjust it's mixers and |
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92 switches to produce the desired output. Unfortunately some soundcard |
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93 drivers do not support this format correctly and most do not even |
4778 | 94 support it at all (including ALSA). |
95 | |
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96 2) The alternative approach currently in mplayer CVS is to simply set |
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97 the output format to 48kHz16bitLE and rely on the user to have the |
4778 | 98 soundcard mixers adjusted properly. |
99 | |
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100 I do have two soundcards with digital IO facilities (CMI8738 and |
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101 Trident4DWaveNX based) plus the mentioned decoder. I'm currently running |
4778 | 102 Linux-2.4.17. Following configurations are happily running here: |
103 | |
104 1. Trident with ALSA drivers (OSS does not support Hoontech's dig. IO) | |
105 2. CMI with ALSA drivers | |
106 3. CMI with OSS drivers | |
107 | |
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108 For Linux I'd suggest using ALSA because of it's cleaner architecture |
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109 and more consitent user interface. Not to mention that it'll be the |
4778 | 110 standard sound support in Linux soon. |
111 | |
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112 For those who want to stick to OSS drivers: The CMI8738 drivers works |
4778 | 113 out-of-the-box, if the PCM/Wave mixer is set to 100%. |
114 | |
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115 For ALSA I'd suggest using its OSS emulation. More on that later. |
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116 ALSA-0.9 invented the idea of cards, devices and dubdevices. You can |
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117 reach the digital interface of all supported cards consitently by using |
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118 the device 'hw:x,2' (x counting from 0 is the number of your soundcard). |
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119 So most people would end up at 'hw:0,2'. This device can only be opened |
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120 in sample formats and rates which are directly supported in hardware |
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121 hence no samplerate conversion is done keeping the stream as-is. However |
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122 most consumer soundcards do not support 44kHz so it would definitively |
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123 be a bad idea to use this as your standard device if you wanted to |
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124 listen to some mp3s (most of them are 44kHz due to CD source). Here the |
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125 OSS comes to play again. You can configure which OSS device (/dev/dsp |
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126 and /dev/adsp) uses which ALSA device. So I'd suggest pointing the |
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127 standard '/dev/dsp' to standard 'hw:0,0' which suports mixing and |
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128 samplerate conversion. No further reconfiguration would be needed for |
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129 your sound apps. For movies I'd point '/dev/adsp' to 'hw:0,2' and |
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130 configure mplayer to use adsp instead of dsp. The samplerate constrain |
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131 is no big deal here since movies usually are in 48Khz anyway. The |
4778 | 132 configuration in '/etc/modules.conf' is no big deal also: |
133 | |
30990 | 134 alias snd-card-0 snd-card-cmipci # insert your card here |
135 alias snd-card-1 snd-pcm-oss # load OSS emulation | |
136 options snd-pcm-oss snd_dsp_map=0 snd_adsp_map=2 # do the mapping | |
4778 | 137 |
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138 This works flawlessly in combination with alsa's native |
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139 SysVrc-init-script 'alsasound'. Be sure to disable any distribution |
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140 dependent script (e.g. Mandrake-8.1 has an 'alsa' script which depends |
4778 | 141 on ALSA-0.5). |
142 | |
143 Sorry for you *BSD'lers out there. I have no grasp on sound support there. | |
144 | |
145 HTH Marcus |