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Extension of the disable audio/video functions


zeflash

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Hi

 

I read that AV would be disabled now when minimizing the app (or it will be an option). It's great, I assume it will help people with "complex" setups a lot. I already made my own small program to call the disableaudiovideo COM function myself when switching to zoomplayer for movie playback.

 

BUT, I have one major issue; Let me explain my setup.

 

I use FFDshow for MPEG2 / audio output in DVBViewer; it enables me to output AC3 directly to my AV amplifier.

Trouble is, when I start zoomplayer to see a movie in 5.1, ffdshow is already "taken" by DVBViewer and I won't get any sound.

A (bad) work around is to set ffdshow to output 16 bit stereo only; in that case, I assume it's going through the directsound layer of windows and it takes care of the mixing of both sources; but the downside is that my movie will only be played in stereo - bad.

The other work around is to close DVBViewer every time I want to see a movie; it's not cool because if a recording is scheduled while I'm watching the movie it won't record.

 

So, I was hoping the DVBViewer team would enhance the disable audio part so that DVBViewer releases the codec / sound output used for audio... As far as I can tell, it would solve my problem.

Could it be done in the next releases?

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DVBViewer does TV well but I think feature set should be kept to a minimum; I don't like the way movies or such things are handled in DVBViewer and I use meedio instead, for its perfect handling of movies & tvshows description thanks to its tremendous plugin base.

And for playback I use zoomplayer because it has a lot of control features on the image. One tool for one task :)

 

So I take from your answer it's difficult to do?

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I asked for this feature before and was recommended using -c command line option when starting DVBViewer. This way you can create a new shortcut to DVBViewer that releases the graph when started but doesn't force you to exit DVBViewer. I have used this a few times, and only once had a problem with it. That time it for some reason didn't recognize that DVBViewer was already running and started a new instance and messed up with the ongoing recordings. Otherwise, this does what you requested.

 

I still would like to see this feature implemented in the program itself, similar to the option of rebuilding the graph, but releasing it instead.

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Ok so I just tested it out to try to understand the purpose of this command line switch; it does releases the graph, but sadly it also seems to stop the network interface, nothing's broadcasted anymore; that is a problem.

 

I assume that the graph isn't needed at all in order to just receive data from the sat card & route it through the network, right?

 

Just confirmed; I programmed a recording in DVBViewer, and used the -c to stop it. In the meantime, I started a movie playback using the AC3 output (only one allowed throughout the system). When the recording kicked in, DVBViewer gave an error because it tried to instanciate a graph and it wasn't possible given that the audio was already in use.

So I can't record something in DVBViewer if I'm watching a 5.1 movie.

 

So, the question is, why is the graph necessary to do basic recording & network broadcasting, and could it be possible to do without it?

Edited by zeflash
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So, the question is, why is the graph necessary to do basic recording & network broadcasting, and could it be possible to do without it?

This is something I have wondered myself. I use DVBViewer mainly for recording so I close it after every recording and start it with sound and video disabled. This in mind, it seems unnecessary for DVBViewer to build playback graph when it starts recording.

 

I don't suffer from the same problems as you do since I don't use network broadcast and do not have a digital output soundcard. The problem with beginning recordings was new to me, I can verify that ongoing recordings do not suffer from the procedure I explained, although this might be related to the ac3 playpack, which is not a problem for me currently. I haven't tried this with current betaversions though, so there might have been some changes there too.

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Guest Lars_MQ

It might be a surprise to you but there are actually people who watch TV with the viewer, that's what it is for :)

 

If you want network streaming use the dvbserver. It doesn't use a graph.

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I can feel your taking my posts the wrong way.

 

I only wanted some technical feedback, to know if releasing the graph when not actually "viewing" the TV was technically possible or not. It sounded sensible to me, given that the graph (in my view of things, that's where you can intervene if I'm wrong) is only supposed to be used to actually decode the MPG2 streams.

When recording or broadcasting, I don't see the point of using them.

 

Instead, you make fun of me. :)

Edited by zeflash
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  • 2 weeks later...

Using the -c commandline parameter effectively kills the graph; but in that case if a recording starts while the audio output is used by another program, it will fail (I tested it). It's also not broadcasting the stream on the network anymore.

So, I don't see the point of using -c compared to just shutting down the application.

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if a recording starts while the audio output is used by another program, it will fail

How does it fail? Recording and playback are different matters. Particularly when the graph has been removed, no interference is possible within DVBViewer. Data coming from the DVB card is processed and written to disk in a separate thread. There is no point where it touches playback. Maybe due to driver conflicts... don't know.

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Hi Griga, thanks for the answer.

 

After looking a bit more into it, it seems that even though I'm getting the error "Cannot render mediafile, error 0x80040256 (cannot play back the audio stream: no audio)" displayed when the recording starts (and that is either if I check the AV disabled or not) it still records fine, but only after the error message is hidden (around 20 seconds after the start time).

 

So if I understand what you are saying correctly, when using the -c commandline, DVBViewer is still listening & processing to the data coming from the DVB card?

I can feel it's correct, since the CPU usage even in -c mode is still not completely flat.

 

So I can see 2 different issues now;

1) when a recording starts it seems to me it's always reenabling the AV no matter the setting. I haven't try to use a record plugin yet

So it would be great to keep track of the current state of the app when a recording starts; if in -c mode, stays that way, and if showing the AV then stays that way too. And of course, going into -c mode or back shouldn't disrupt the recording (ideally; I don't know how difficult it would be)

 

2) the network broadcast shouldn't be disabled by the -c commandline, while it is now.

 

so basically -c should only clear the graph and not touch any other areas. Maybe that's conflicting with other uses of -c I'm not aware of. It would be really cool to have another commandline that just does the graph clearing in that case.

 

Oh and finally, is there another command line flag to come back from the -c mode? because it seems that the only to get back a channel is first to select another transponder and come back to the previous one.

Maybe it would be even better to clear the graph when changing the AV mode (disable audio, disable video, both)?

Edited by zeflash
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