[mythtv] Transcoding AC3/5ch and video sync

[Jesse Crews]

Quoting Mark Spieth <mark at dclabs.com.au>:

>> Hi,
>>
>> I've been working on an AC3/5ch -> stereo transcoding issue on and off
>> for a while, and I'm trying to find some advice on where to focus my
>> efforts.
>>
>> Here's what's happening:
>> I transcode an ATSC recording with AC3/5ch audio to MPEG4, mp3 2ch.
>> The resulting file has video that is about 300ms early, or, audio that
>> is 300ms late, whichever way you like to look at it. This offset is
>> constant, and only happens when a recording with 5 channels is
>> transcoded. AC3/2ch does not create this effect at all. This may be
>> difficult to notice at first, but I see it easily and it is distracting.
>
> if you are using my patch then Im not surprised it doesnt work. only 2ch and
> 6ch are curretnly supported.

Using .20 11197, clarificaiton - I meant 5.1 (6ch) audio.

> 5ch will generate the wrong data format and the audiooutputbase doesnt cope
> with it.
> it will periodically starve and do funny things.
> need to fix up audiooutputalsa to cope with the 5ch format or change the AC3
> decoder to generate 6ch format even though 5ch are only found. see a52dec in
> lac.
> in 2 ch mode, a52dec is always in 2ch format so should not have a problem.
> transcoding is a completely different issue and is totally unsupported for
>  >2ch if you are using internal mythtranscode support. if you are using

Using internal, input format to mythtranscode looks to be 2ch MP3. It  
spits out a "Copying Audio and transcoding Video" which is why I think  
that it's being fed MP3 (the driving conditional statment says so).  
Just to make sure, I actually want the output to have 2 channels, so  
I'm not saying this is undesirable.

I don't think I've seen the entire audio transcoding pipe, mostly  
because it's a little difficult to follow. I see lavc is being given  
audio samples and the codec for whatever is in the source, and it's  
spitting out the 2ch format that nvr/mythtranscode wants. I initally  
thought the MP3 was done elsewhere, but it looks like lavc is being  
given MP3/stereo as the requested output format/code, right?

So, with this in mind, how are the timecodes controlled and kept  
synchronous after lavc has done its magic with the 6->2 channel downmix?

More generally, how (abstractly) are the audio and video kept  
synchronous during this process? The timecodes on the -v playback  
appear to move around quite a bit in relationship to each other. How  
about those last_apts values?

I hope that helps clarify what I'm looking at.
Please bear with me, I'm not familiar with the finer points of a/v processing.

Regards,
Jesse

> external programs, then its a different question.
> cheers
> mark
>
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