Voice sync out

[Damob9k]

Hi All,

Just like to say that I have been trawling this site for a while now and thought it is about time I registered

My problem is with my HTPC which I have been running for many years now.
I have recently upgraded it with a new MB, CPU, Ram, graphics card and TV card, and since that all went in I first installed Vista (which was on before the hardware upgrade), I then have gone though a few versions of 7, before ending up with 7 32 bit build 7600.

On all versions of 7 I have had a problem with the sound being out of sync, this is with live TV (digital - via a Black Gold BGT 3510) , recorded TV and DVD films in vob format on one of my 1Tb drives.

It's very difficult to tell but I would say that the sound is coming in before the video.

I have no codec packs installed (just done a clean reinstall).
I have a trust SC7100 sound card installed that I bought because I couldn't get the onboard via HD audio to install, but now Via has released 7 drivers I have disabled the trust card and re-enable the Via audio in the BIOS and installed the new driver, which seems to work well now.
The audio is set to spdif - outputting to my Cambridge Audio 540R AV amp (which I had the decoder board replaced as it was playing up)

I have tried every thing that I can think of, tried every different driver out there, but can't get a good result, which is sort of spoiling the whole experience

Is there any way that anyone knows to tweak the audio output to bring it back into line ?

Or any thing else that I could try ?

Any help would be gratefully received

Many thanks

Damian

 

[iseeuu]

Hi All,

Just like to say that I have been trawling this site for a while now and thought it is about time I registered

My problem is with my HTPC which I have been running for many years now.
I have recently upgraded it with a new MB, CPU, Ram, graphics card and TV card, and since that all went in I first installed Vista (which was on before the hardware upgrade), I then have gone though a few versions of 7, before ending up with 7 32 bit build 7600.

On all versions of 7 I have had a problem with the sound being out of sync, this is with live TV (digital - via a Black Gold BGT 3510) , recorded TV and DVD films in vob format on one of my 1Tb drives.

It's very difficult to tell but I would say that the sound is coming in before the video.

I have no codec packs installed (just done a clean reinstall).
I have a trust SC7100 sound card installed that I bought because I couldn't get the onboard via HD audio to install, but now Via has released 7 drivers I have disabled the trust card and re-enable the Via audio in the BIOS and installed the new driver, which seems to work well now.
The audio is set to spdif - outputting to my Cambridge Audio 540R AV amp (which I had the decoder board replaced as it was playing up)

I have tried every thing that I can think of, tried every different driver out there, but can't get a good result, which is sort of spoiling the whole experience

Is there any way that anyone knows to tweak the audio output to bring it back into line ?

Or any thing else that I could try ?

Any help would be gratefully received

Many thanks

Damian

Damian; Please allow me to welcome you to Windows Seven Forums. I have found this forum to be very helpful and professional and I also waited quite awhile before I started posting.

WMC is the only TV recorder I have ever used that actually played back in sync. I am sure you read this in the other thread you posted in, but I also recommend Sharks codex, plus the 64 bit add on. I wish I could be more help on this issue, sorry.

Welcome aboard!

Robert

 

[Damob9k]

Thanks Robert for the kind welcome

A couple other details that I had previously left out (thought the post was big enough) !!

When I was running on XP MCE 2005 I didn't have an AV amp, just outputted to my hifi via RCA and sound was OK (sometime out in DVD's, but generally OK)

I then switched from my analogue Haupage TV card to a Pinnacle 3010iX hybrid card and switched over to digital.
I then started to use a Panasonic AV amp which came with my Panasonic TV (donated by a friend who left the country) but it didn't have a spdif input so was I using the RCA to 3.5mm jack cable as before.
I then switched to Vista MCE and every thing was still ok.

Realising that the Panasonic AV amp was a pile of poop, I got a Cambridge Audio 540R amp, and started to use the spdiff, It was at this point that I started to notice the voice being out of sync.

Since then I replaced the Pinnacle card with a BlackGold card as I was getting reception problems, and have re installed vista 32bit vista 64 bit and 7 64 and 32, ending up with 7 32bit 7600 !

But all of these combinations have resulted in voice sync issues of varying degrees.
It would seem that the PC is processing the digital audio signal faster than the visual side of things ?

I did try ACfilter which has a delay function, but I couldn't get it to have any affect.

What does my nut in is that I have seen VMC and 7MC running on much lower spec PC's with cheap TV cards and gfx cards with good results, but I have tried to buy the best bits available and can't get the same results, and I’ve been in IT for 15 years !!! .. It’s flipping frustrating

I have tried a few codec packs, and shark007 pack does seem to be the best, but this time round I have kept it as minimalist as possible and not installed anything other than what is necessary.

If you or anyone else thinks it might be better if I used 64bit then I might give it a try again, but I have not seen any evidence that 64bit is better for media centre, only that is more hassle with drivers and codec’s

Any other pointers happily received as I am getting desperate !!!

 

[CBers]

Hi Damo.

I don't think I can be much help, but WMC on my (ASRock ION) setup has the media files streaming from my main PC via Gb connection and I don't get the lip-sync problem, so I doubt it's Windows 7.

Have you tried GSpot (it's a nice little tool that allows you to see what audio and video codec the video file uses in order to determine what you need to install on your system to watch it.) to see if there is any software delay ??

As you've already read in my DOLBY post, I don't have any codecs installed, only filters/splitters.

I hope you sort it out, as lip-sync is one of the most annoying problems in this world !!

I've been in IT over 30 years

 

[Damob9k]

Hi CBers,

I only have DVD5 and DVD9 vob files in my media library , either ripped off the actual retail dvd or high quality downloads (I don't see the point in watching films that are dvd's made from xvids or avi's on a large screen)
And I know that the films played ok before, so it's not the encoding that's the problem.

And it is the same on live TV, which makes me think it's either the decoding of the audio or video that is at fault.
I have read that some people use power DVD and set that to decode the audio and let MS do the video, but as yet I haven't tried that combination.
I have used nvidia's pure dvd decoder (used to use it on vista) but it is not reconmended to be used on 7 by nvidia !

I am going to pull out my HTPC and amp from the cabinet and try going back to analogue as a source and see if the sync improves, at least that will tell me if the problem is with the spdif proccessing or not.

Will update in a day or 2 .

Cheers

Damo

 

[mtp]

sync problems with media center

I have had a number of sync problems with media center just like the ones that you describe. (also some stuttering problems).

The first time was on a Vista machine. I spend days playing with drivers and codec packs to no avail. I resolved the problem by turning of AHCI for disk access (trying to troublehoot another problem) and the probem went away.

The second and third times this happened was with w7 (RC). I installed it and had problems with sync. I reinstalled (because due to a known sata issue, the system, boot, and OS were on different physical disks due to a pNp enumeration issue) and the problem went away.

A third time with one of the leaked builds 7229?, it happened so I reinstalled and it went away.....

My suggestion, try turning off raid or AHCI. Then if that does not work, reinstall ...

Good luck

 

[Damob9k]

Hi mtp,

Sorry I have been away for a while, just got back and checked what you suggested.

My drives are currently set to SATA mode already, so that's not the problem

Any other suggestions ?

Cheers

Damob

 

[mtp]

sata & ahci are different

If you can, as it depends on your bios, set it to use ide (but you can (should) leave native sata commands active). I have had lots of problems (apart from media center) with the current version of the ahci drivers and am running happily (apart from not being able to hot swap hard drives) in ide mode with sata command enabled.

NB. With ahci & native sata commands i get a WE of 5.7. with ide and native sata commands i get a WE of 5.9. go figure....

Mark

 

[Damob9k]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately my BIOS only has SATA, AHCI and RAID as options

This is on an Asus M2N68 with the latest BIOS.

I have also experimented with turning off the Cache on the drives but this made no difference.

I will keep digging

Cheers

Damob