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[donlboy]

I have a Media Center playlist of Woodstock videos interspersed with some FLAC audio files of stage announcements. It plays great on my three PCs – a laptop HTPC, an HP desktop and an Acer desktop, all running the latest Win 11 OS running Media Center 33.0.30 64 bit. It also works fine using the HTPC in my theater, running into a Denon X4000 AVR via HDMI. My problem is that I want to use it in my family room setup with my Vizio TV via HDMI and many of the videos will not play there. I get the standard popup message:
     
Something went wrong with playback   
Details:   
   Playback could not be started on the selected audio output
   The audio format may not be supported by your hardware. You can use DSP Studio to change  the output to a compatible format
   Also, make sure your system has a valid playback device and that it is properly configured in Playback Options


I always set 48kHz for the audio output when working with the Vizio. I tried other formats when this problem popped up to no avail. If I play the audio to the HTPC default audio the video plays fine to the TV via the HDMI but the sound of course comes from the PC. Switching the audio to the HDMI/TV output causes the video to not play and gives the above error message.

Formats of working videos include 720P/25, 720P/30, 349P/29, 352P/25, 480P/30, 288P/25 and 480P/25, all MP4 with 44.1 32 bit stereo. Non working examples, also all MP4 with the same audio are 720P/30, 1080P/30, 720P/30, 1080P/24 and 480P/30. Note that one file with 720P/30 works and one in the same format does not.

I thought the problem might be related to video format so I tried converting the format of a few non-working videos to TS video (mpeg2/ac3) and MKV video(h264/aac) with no improvement.

I have done several similar shows on the same Vizio TV using the same HTPC with no problems. I don’t know if something changed in Media Center or windows since my last show in September 2024 or what.

This has me baffled and I hope that someone here can get me going – I have a group coming over for “Woodstock – Far Out” in 10 days and I’m getting nervous.

[donlboy]

Well, no ideas from here but I did find a workaround. VLC plays all of the videos just fine. Maybe there is a clue in that. I'm still hoping to get Media Center working since it's what I use every day, I mainly use VLC on my tablet when I'm away from home.

[Hendrik]

The typical reason is an incompatible sample format or channel count, which you can fix by setting DSP Studio to a fixed format - eg. setting the channels to your actual speaker configuration, and maybe setting any sample rates not supported by your system to resample to something more common.

[donlboy]

Thanks, I had done both of those, setting channels to stereo (2) and resampling all to 48kHz. This did not help, although the same settings worked in the past. I also tried resampling to other rates that I know work with this TV but none worked.

[Hendrik]

Another thing to check would be bitstreaming settings under Audio. And that you got the correct audio device actually selected for output.

If none of that works, maybe post a Log for us to see what it actually complains about
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Logging

[donlboy]

See log.

[Hendrik]

I can see in the log that you are using WASAPI in Shared mode, rather then Exclusive mode. Thats a bit of a iffy configuration to have working reliably for silly Windows audio reasons.

I would recommend either of two options:
- Set WASAPI to Exclusive mode (in Audio -> Device Settings, tick "Open device for exclusive access")
- Or, if you do not desire Exclusive mode, use DirectSound instead

Using DirectSound has no impact on quality over WASAPI Shared, as both would go through the Windows Mixer in this case, but it works much more reliably.

[donlboy]

Thanks again for more ideas. Changing to WASAPI Exclusive mode did not fix the problem but DirectSound did. There is a strange thing happening - when each video starts the audio starts from the PC speaker for a second or so then switches to the TV soundbar. When the FLAC music clips start the audio is immediately from the soundbar. I imagine this is some quirk in Windows and/or the laptop sound card, not Media Center. I hope to get that sorted out soon.