[mythtv] Internal DVD Player multichannel support

[matt mead]

Ed W wrote:
>>> mode and be done with it.  Maybe a keystroke in the different playback 
>>> modes to
>>> switch between surround and "bypass" (stereo (front L+R), but with 
>>> intelligence
>>> to steer bass to the LFE channel) would be a good thing to do as well.

> The way it's usually done is to consider 6 channel to be "normal" and 
> downmix from there.

> So what I do in my case is hook up all 6 outputs to my 6 inputs on my 
> amp (conceptually at least) and then when it's a two channel signal all 
> that happens is that the rear speakers are silent. 

This is fine, for stereo content, and what I'd want, though I'd add in bass 
management to push the results of a low-pass-filter to the LFE.

> I don't have any special upmixing which occurs when there is only stereo 
> to make it some kind of pseudo surround signal.  I did play with some 
> matrixing idea to make this happen (do a phase difference and then play 
> it back with delay and attenuation from the surround channels), but it 
> didn't really float my boat...

Well, my point is that some "plain stereo" signals *are* intended to provide 
surround information.  Dolby Pro-Logic pulls 4 channels (Front 
Left/Center/Right, Mono Rear) from two by reversing the matrix encoding done at 
production time.  I don't really want to listen to a "pseudo surround signal" 
either, but there are stereo signals intended to be de-matrixed and played 
across more than two speakers.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to detect 
them automatically - hence my suggestion to have a keystroke for switching 
between "bypass" and "surround."  Surround could simply be all 6 channels from 
AC3/DTS if available or routing of the 4 channels from a de-matrixed stereo 
signal to the 6 physical channels if all that is available is stereo.  Bypass 
would be stereo to the Front Left/Right and LFE given a stereo track, and 
stereo downmix of AC3/DTS routed to Front Left/Right and LFE given AC3/DTS.

> So basically you just leave your amp in 6 channel mode all the time, no 
> need for any special processing

Right - this is what I'd like to do - just have the code and playback-time 
control to switch myth's output modes, leaving the amp alone.

> To downmix we simply steal the mplayer matrixing code...  It's just a 
> case of splitting the signal to the speakers you haven't got, eg if no 
> center then half the center signal and patch it to the two front 
> speakers.  No surround then just patch the surrounds to the front.  No 
> sub then split the sub signal and send it to the front channels.  To be 
> totally correct you should drop 3dB of attenuation if you merge two 
> channels together to avoid clipping
> 
> Bass management is slightly harder, but mplayer uses a fast high quality 
> solution.  Essentially you generate a highpass/lowpass FIR filter and 
> convolve everything with this.  Take the outputs to the respective 
> speakers.  There is a fast convolver in lavc and from memory there is an 
> adequate if not optimal bit of code to generate filter coeffs in 
> mplayer, otherwise there is a slightly nice bit of code in brutefir  (or 
> write our own... *shock*)
> 
> 
> I did all of this in Jack + Brutefir though because I wanted to play 
> with optimising the filters... I have this mad idea that by using some 
> linear phase filters you can get better dispersion control from the 
> mains to the sub, hence run the sub higher.  The effect is dramatic and 
> reduces the work the main speakers are doing and hence drops their 
> distortion dramatically - probably gives a nice boost for folks using 
> standard surround speakers in their setup...

I have played with mplayer using 6 channel output to my alsa device and it 
seems to work just fine given an AC3/DTS soundtrack.  I have not tried it with 
a stereo signal to see how it performs.  I don't know if it does bass 
management as appropriate, nor do I know (but I doubt) if it does a de-matrix 
of DPL/DPLII signals.  Stealing the code would be a great start, though I have 
yet to look specifically into it.

I've got my development machine up and running - I'll have to work on the 
.19-fixes branch for the time-being unless someone has a suggestion for how to 
work against the trunk when your backend remains at .19-fixes.  I should have 
some time in the next couple weeks to start digging into the patch and working 
on the additional support.



-matt

-- 
matt mead

http://collectivity.goof.com/