[MPlayer-users] No AC3 or DTS passthrough over HDMI (was : Can't get English audio track to play from a Blu-Ray)

[Jonathan Busby]

I now know why I couldn't play the English audio track of "Star Trek" over
SPDIF. The reason is simply that it is encoded in Dolby TrueHD and that can
only be losslessly output over HDMI.

I have two NVIDIA GTX 580s and I got HDMI audio working by following the
instructions provided here :

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1435094&postcount=4

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/no-audio-with-nvidia-gts-450-a-852626/#post4209297


The problem is that my receiver displays its current audio decoder as "PCM"
because mplayer is doing the decoding
itself in software and then sending it over the HDMI link. This is in turn
due to the following error :

mplayer br:// -bluray-device ./tmp -fs -afm hwac3,hwdts
MPlayer 1.0rc4-4.5.2 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote
control.

Playing br://.
TS file format detected.
VIDEO H264(pid=4113) AUDIO A52(pid=4354) NO SUBS (yet)!  PROGRAM N. 1
FPS seems to be: 23.976025
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
[VO_TDFXFB] Can't open /dev/fb0: Permission denied.
[VO_3DFX] Unable to open /dev/3dfx.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Trying to force audio codec driver family hwac3...
Opening audio decoder: [hwac3] AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF
hwac3: switched to AC3, 640000 bps, 48000 Hz
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, ac3be, 640.0 kbit/41.67% (ratio: 80000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [hwac3] afm: hwac3 (AC3 through S/PDIF)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
[format] Sample format big-endian AC3 not yet supported
[libaf] Reinitialization did not work, audio filter 'format' returned error
code -2
[libaf] Unable to setup filter system can not meet sound-card demands,
please send bugreport.
Couldn't find matching filter/ao format!
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [vdpau] 1920x1080 => 1920x1080 Planar YV12  [fs]
[ASPECT] Warning: No suitable new res found!
[ASPECT] Warning: No suitable new res found!
==========================================================================
Trying to force audio codec driver family hwac3...
Trying to force audio codec driver family hwdts...
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s32le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->384000)
Selected audio codec: [fftruehd] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg TrueHD)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s32le (4 bytes per sample)
A:  20.3 V:  20.2 A-V:  0.046 ct: -0.613 207/207 59%  7%  1.1% 0 0
Exiting... (Quit)


or specifically :

[format] Sample format big-endian AC3 not yet supported
[libaf] Reinitialization did not work, audio filter 'format' returned error
code -2
[libaf] Unable to setup filter system can not meet sound-card demands,
please send bugreport.
Couldn't find matching filter/ao format!


Does anyone know how to fix this?

Jonathan