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[bmc]

How do you turn off the audio commentary of a TV channel.

SBS HD (Australia) is playing a commentary.

I found this post but it does not explain how to do it.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,103656.msg720437.html#msg720437

Thanks

[RoderickGI]

It does explain it.

Try right click and see if you can find a menu for stream selection.

Commentary, when it exists, is just another audio stream available in the broadcast.

Play the channel.
Right-click on the video.
Select "Streams", and if there is something in there, select a different stream and see if that is the correct audio.

If there is only one stream that menu will say "n/a", and you can't change audio. I was pretty sure that SBS HD only had one audio stream, but maybe for certain programs it has two.

As Yaobing continued to explain, if one particular PID is always correct for audio, make that the default by editing the channel details in Channel Manager.

[Yaobing]

It does explain it.

Commentary, when it exists, is just another audio stream available in the broadcast.

Play the channel.
Right-click on the video.
Select "Streams", and if there is something in there, select a different stream and see if that is the correct audio.

"Audio Programs" instead of "Streams".

As Yaobing continued to explain, if one particular PID is always correct for audio, make that the default by editing the channel details in Channel Manager.

Alternative (and equivalent) to running Manage Channels, you can use the same "Audio Programs" menu while the channel is playing.  After making sure the correct stream is selected, choose "Use current audio stream as default".  That will update the channel's default audio PID and the next time you run the channel the same audio program will be used.

[RoderickGI]

Ah. Shows you how often I deal with multiple audio streams in live TV. Never.

But now I see there are two audio streams under "Audio Programs" for SBS, when playing Italian News. Unfortunately, I couldn't switch audio program on my MC Client. The video just broke up and MC started buffering. It didn't recover. Changing the default audio program didn't work from the Client either, but maybe I needed to sync changes back to the server? Nope, that didn't work either. Oh well, just change it on the Server, save the default (or change it in Manage Channels), then play on the Client.

It did work on the HTPC MC Server though, but I didn't get the new audio until I saved it as default, then stopped playback and restarted it. I saw a little bit of video breakup when switching audio, but nothing serious.

So I learned something new. 

[Yaobing]

Thanks for testing and reporting.  I remember working on audio stream change on clients.  I will have to double check on Monday Tuesday.

[Yaobing]

I did some testing.  Audio program switching does work on clients, but is subject to buffering, which may or may not be an issue with doing it on client.  Maybe there is an issue finding the new audio stream right after the switch.  No sure.

"Use current audio program as default" definitely does not work on a client.  I will need to figure out why.

[RoderickGI]

I tried playing SBS HD from my MC Server, which has the tuners in it, to my MC Client again, and got the same result. I left it locked up with the "Buffering" message at the bottom for about ten minutes. It never came back. I checked the MC Server and it was functional, with no onscreen message to indicate there was a problem.

I tried with another SBS channel that had two Audio Programs. Same result. I couldn't find any other channels with two Audio Programs, so SBS was the only broadcaster I could check. My Client was running MC26.0.57 so I updated to MC26.0.84 to match the Server, but no change.

I did notice that all my channels showed the "Buffering" message at the bottom of the screen on the Client. I don't think I used to have that, but I don't play live TV on the Client very often, so can't be sure when that started.

[Yaobing]

You probably can get out of the Buffering situation by pressing Play/Pause button, repeat if necessary.  Not saying it's normal.  Something is not right.

[RoderickGI]

I tried that.

Actually the Play/Pause button switches from the Pause icon to the Play icon when I switch Audio Program and the video pauses. Clicking the Play icon results in the video progressing a few frames or seconds, and if I waited long enough the icon even turned back to the Pause icon while the video crept forward, but then when the video stopped switched back to the Play icon.

It could be my environment. I made a log of the issue. Lots of stuff in there I don't understand, such as "0029468: 30320: TV: CTSFileReader::GetStreamNeedsBuffering: returning false for local streaming", which looks a bit suspicious. It's not too big so I'll attach it. Take a look if interested.

[RoderickGI]

Yaobing, the Live TV buffering issues leaves MC in an unusable state, requiring a restart of MC.

After doing the testing above and stopping the playback, I was later streaming audio from my phone to my Workstation and had playback problems, with the buffering message being displayed, as reported here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,125447.msg869363.html#msg869363

A reboot of the PC fixed the issue, whatever it was, but I was able to reproduce it again today just by playing Live TV to the Client. I tried just a restart of MC and that fixed the problem without a reboot.

So the Buffering issue and message wasn't caused by network bandwidth, but something broken in MC by the Live TV issue. I expected stopping playback of Live TV to clear any issue in MC, but it didn't. Maybe the Log above can shed some light.

[Yaobing]

"0029468: 30320: TV: CTSFileReader::GetStreamNeedsBuffering: returning false for local streaming",

What this is saying is that we skipped buffering.  But we clearly see buffering was happening 

I initially had three different modes for time-shifting files - local, internet streaming, and library server streaming.  For playing live TV from a server, we ended up just using local mode because sometimes the server is already running the channel locally, and serving a client will just tag onto the same files, thus there is no way of making it in a different mode.  So I would expect "skipping" happening all the time, unless we also send buffering notification without the check.  Scratching my head...

On Audio program switching, do different audio streams have different format (MPEG vs. AC3 for example) on this particular channel?  I wonder if the audio format is the issue, however if it were, we would see the same problem when playing on the server too.

Your logging verbosity was set at 1, right?  Try setting it at 2 and see what we can get.  The log file will be large.  Also, it would be good to have both server and client logs.  Thanks.

[Yaobing]

OK, now I see how buffering was triggered.

Code: [Select]

0031546: 31572: TV: CTSFileReader::ReadCurrentSample: It took 1010.3793000000000575 ms to get audio sample data.  Flag set 1
There was a delay for the server to supply the new audio data.  But I now I have to figure out why it was not recovered.

[Yaobing]

Weird.  We try to pause the playback for lack of data, but the DirectShow graph was not actually paused in your case.  Thus we kept trying to get data, and kept hitting the wall, and kept issuing Pause command...

I wonder whether WASAPI event style has anything to do with that...

[RoderickGI]

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this. I updated to MC26.0.88 today to get this change:

26.0.88 (6/3/2020)
10. Fixed: Setting current audio program as default when playing live TV on a client did not work.

That works now. I played Live TV on the Client, changed from PID 103 to 104, the MC Client locked up with the Buffering message,  I selected "Use current audio stream as default", then stopped Live TV playback, restarted it, and PID 104 was correctly selected. The channel and new Audio Program played as well, but I had the "Buffering" message on the screen. So I stopped playback on the Client, closed MC on the Client, waited a while. When I reopened MC on the Client and then connected to the MC Server the Live TV started to play immediately! PID 104 was still selected, but I didn't select Play on the channel. It was obviously still playing on the Server and just continued when the Client reconnected. But at least the "Buffering" message was gone.

Unfortunately, I didn't log that event.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand; The freezing on the Client when the Audio Program is changed. I changed the Television log verbosity to 2 as requested.

This time, I already had PID 104 selected as the default Audio Program, so I selected PID 103. The video didn't lock up with the "Buffering" message this time, but no audio played. So I saved PID 103 as the default Audio Program again, to replicate the tests I had done before exactly.

I will attach the Server and Client logs from this test here and post the second test separately.

[RoderickGI]

Okay, so I ran the test again changing from PID 103 to 104. This time I got the "Buffering" message and the video locked up after a short time. The Pause button changed to Play, and clicking Play played a few seconds before the video locked up again. So the same as the original problem. I saved the logs after stopping playback on the Client.

It is probably in the logs but PID 103 is "MPEG-1 Audio", PID 104 is "Australian languages, AAC LATM Audio". See first image. Although interestingly, Manage Channels for SBS ONE HD Details shows PID 103, while editing the channel shows PID 104 is selected. Oh wait. Once I clicked OK on the edit dialogue, PID 104 was shown in the channel Details, as it should be. Could that be an issue?

Logs attached.

I didn't try to close the Client, reopen and reconnect to the Server, to see if the channel was still playing. If you want logs of that full sequence let me know.

[RoderickGI]

Okay, my images for the previous post failed the security check. Trying again...

"Your attachment has failed security checks and cannot be uploaded. Please consult the forum administrator."
Grrr. They are just images.

[Yaobing]

Thanks!

[RoderickGI]

All fixed.

The "Use current audio stream as default" which was fixed earlier was a bit slow on the first attempt and didn't seem to work once after this change. But it worked in the following tests. I might just have been a bit quick in restarting playback. I assume that the change must be synced back to the MC Server, so waiting a moment between saving the change, stopping playback and restarting makes sense.

[Yaobing]

Thanks.