Are Quicktime HD trailers in 5.1? (1 Viewer)

[Paul D G]

Here's why I ask:

I just deleted my long winded explanation of why so let me sum it up by saying I'm testing a new 5.1 optical out soundcard in a HTPC I'm building and it doesn't seem to be outputting 5.1. There's not a DVD drive hooked up yet so I can't test that until I rip something and feed it over thru the network.

But Quicktime trailers are only coming up as LPCM 2ch on my receiver. I thought they were 5.1.

-paul

 

[Ken Chan]

Some are. If you use the Movie Inspector (under the Windows menu on the PC?), the Format will say Stereo or 5.1.

Note that this is discrete 5.1, like most PC games. When you're playing a DVD, that's 5.1 encoded as a single bitstream using DD or DTS. That gets passed through unchanged, and your receiver does the work.

For PC games and six-channel movies, you either need:
- six-channel analog: separate L/R, surround, and C/LFE pairs
- six-channel digital: a tiny number of PC speaker systems can take a single cable from a card's proprietary digital out. I've seen them from Creative/SoundBlaster/Cambridge Soundworks.
- on-the-fly Dolby Digital or DTS encoding: some sound cards will mix multi-channel audio into a home-theater-friendly format and output it through optical or coax.

As I recall, you also need to set one of the Preferences on the QuickTime Player to make sure it does not down-convert.

 

[Paul D G]

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't aware QuickTime had an output choice. I found it but have not tested it yet.

BTW I wound up replacing the card as I couldn't get anything to out to 5.1. The new soundcard does, and fortunately or unfortunately, mixes to 5.1 on the fly so even regular CDs come out through all speakers. Makes it hard to tell if a source is really 5.1 or not!

-paul

 

[Ken Chan]

Doesn't the sound card come with some control software? This would be in addition to the drivers; some program that puts something in the "tray". You should be able to disable the DTS Interactive or Dolby Digital Live that is doing that.

 

[Paul D G]

I didn't want to make a lengthy post, but yes it does. My complaint is that it won't feed the stream based on the source. If I'm listening to a stereo CD then decide to pop in a DVD I have to turn on the 5.1. So if I have a file, like a QT clip and I don't know what the audio is (2.0 or 5.1)...

If there's a way of disabling the DD Live I have not found it, but I can't say I've done a lot of research on it yet. The only setting I saw in the control panel was how I wanted to output the sound: 2.0, 5.1 analog, 5.1 SPDIF, etc. I'll take a closer look in the documentation.

-paul