[vdr] Re: AC3 over Soundcard (live and replay) (Was: AC3 5.1 - can someone "fix" -a i

["Dr. Werner Fink" <werner@suse.de>]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:24:05AM +0100, Christian Jacobsen wrote:
> Hallo Werner, Hallo @ll,
> 
> yeepee, it works :)
> Live AC3 and recordings :)

Fine :-)

> Suse Linux 8.0 (minimum install w. KDE + needed packeges added afterwards)
> Alsa Driver 0.9.0rc6 (driver/lib/utils/tools) - with alse-patch - see below
> for more
> Acer Mainboard (i815) w. PIII 933
> 1 DVB-S Rev. 1.3
> 1 WinTV Nova model 541 (don't now rev. Drivers says 1.3)
> Nightingale 4.1 Soundcard (CMI8738) with Optical Module
> 
> I Connected the Optical Out from the Soundcard with the Reciver (Sony
> STR-DB870QS) and the Analog Output of DVB-S also with the reciever.
> (I am using the same setup with 1.0.4 and that works very well)
> Normaly I then hear the analog signal - with AC3 Program/recording the
> reciever automatically switches to Optical in :)

You may route the S/P-DIF of pin on J2 of your DVB-S Rev. 1.3 to the
S/P-DIF in of your CMI8738.  Together with mute.sh you should be able
to route normal PCM from the DVB-S card to your STR-DB870QS.

> 
> I had a little trouble getting the plugin running - but that was sort of a
> RTFM ;) - just that no one else has to go through the same problems I'll
> describe it here :
> When using the bitstreamout plugin VDR quit after a few seconds when
> switching to Pro7.
> "Unfortunatly" (for me) I had the -t /dev/tty8 in the vdr start line and the
> error from bitstreamout came on tty8 while I was searching my vdr.log (thats
> where I log messages from vdr) and /var/log/messages and found nothing.
> There was a message on tty8 about pcm_hook.c - don't remeber exact message -
> something was missing. I had to patch my alsa-lib and compile/install it
> again !! That did the trick :)

Hey ... as just mentioned in PROBLEMS you could patch the alsa lib or
do the one line change:
--- plugin.c
+++ plugin.c    Fri Jan 17 11:52:06 2003
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@
      esyslog("attempt to load plugin '%s' twice!", fileName);
      return false;
      }
-  handle = dlopen(fileName, RTLD_NOW);
+  handle = dlopen(fileName, RTLD_NOW|RTLD_GLOBAL);
   const char *error = dlerror();
   if (!error) {
      void *(*creator)(void);
------------------------------------------------------------

:^)

> 
> Question to that : do I have to compile/install the alsa-driver again after
> that ? (didn't do that yet)

NO ... the problem is the version control for the symbols loaded with
dlopen/dlsym by the alsa lib for configuration of the status bit of the S/P-DIF
transfer.  Now the plugin its self is loaded by dlopen which prevent the
version control of the alsa lib.

> I noticed one problem during my tests :
> 
> A couple of times I had no Sound at all on non AC3 channels - which is weard
> because it should be comming from the DVB-S analog out (and there is no
> Soundcard inbetween) !? The reciever was not on Optical Input so that was
> not the problem !

Hmmm ... looks like the VDR mute overall. Do you use the mute.sh script?

> One of the times I had to switch to Pro7 so that the Optical sound was
> activated (that was a live DD 2.0) - after that Analog sound worked again
> when switching to other channels.
> A second time that did not work. I restarted VDR 2 times (killall -9 vdr) -
> the third time I stopped VDR completely, Stopped alsasound
> (/etc/init.d/alsasound stop) and started Sound/VDR again. After that it
> worked again - I am not sure what did it.

... or maybe thats because I'm using digital audio only.  You could try
to comment out the line with Audios.MuteAudio(mute) in cDevice::Play:

void cDevice::Play(void)
{
//  Audios.MuteAudio(mute);      // Play Audio if not mute
}

in device.c.

        Werner


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