Issue with AAC: Only VLC can playback

[ripp3r07]

I recently bought a DVB-T receiver (which came as a USB device). The software in the package was ArcSoft TotalMedia 3.5, which can easily capture TV channels.

However, only the software itself, as well as VLC, can playback the sound (video is OK). I took a look at VLC's codec info, and noticed that the captured movie uses AAC codec, as shown below:



I tested Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, Zoom Player, etc. but none could play the sound. (Well, the KMPlayer could play the sound, but it uses internal codecs.)

More experiments show that ArcSoft TotalMedia 3.5 didn't transcode the movie; So, it uses the original codec as broadcast. I tried ProgDVB 6 to capture the TV, and it nagged that the audio codec is not available.

What can I do?

PS: K-Light 6.40 Mega is installed on my system.

[poisondeathray]

can you identify the type of aac? use mediainfo view=>text

some commonly used broadcast types like latm/laos aac cannot be decoded with ffdshow or common directshow decoders yet (used in mpc, wmp, zoom , etc..)

[PuzZLeR]

I agree with PDR - it's likely a decoding problem with AAC LATM/LOAS - the newer multiplexed format packaged with Euro broadcasting streams (not necessarily the AAC codec itself).

I've dabbled with several broadcast formats lately (as PDR knows), and from my experience Open Source Software still doesn't have a full solution currently. It's still mostly in the domain of professionalware at this point (Elecard comes to mind). I wish I could help you more, but I'm in Canada and don't have access to the various versions of this format.

Unless someone has a better solution, I'd say stick to the software that came with your purchase for now and hang on to your Source for later.

[ripp3r07]

@poisondeathray @PuzZLeR : Thanks a lot for the quick reply.

Here's the output of MediaInfo.

General
ID                               : 1
Complete name                    : C:\Documents and Settings\Test\Desktop\TV.mp4
Format                           : MPEG-TS
File size                        : 25.3 MiB
Duration                         : 59s 892ms
Overall bit rate                 : 3 535 Kbps

Video
ID                               : 1003 (0x3EB)
Menu ID                          : 3 (0x3)
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format version                   : Version 2
Format profile                   : Main@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Duration                         : 59s 340ms
Maximum bit rate                 : 3 926 Kbps
Width                            : 720 pixels
Height                           : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 4:3
Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Standard                         : PAL
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Color primaries                  : BT.470-6 System B, BT.470-6 System G, BT.601-6 625, BT.1358 625, BT.1700 625 PAL, BT.1700 625 SECAM
Transfer characteristics         : BT.470-6 System B, BT.470-6 System G
Matrix coefficients              : BT.470-6 System B, BT.470-6 System G, BT.601-6 625, BT.1358 625, BT.1700 625 PAL, BT.1700 625 SECAM, IEC 61966-2-4 601

Audio
ID                               : 2003 (0x7D3)
Menu ID                          : 3 (0x3)
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                   : High efficiency AAC v2@L2
Duration                         : 57s 685ms
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Maximum bit rate                 : 36.0 Kbps
Video delay                      : 823ms

Text
ID                               : 3003 (0xBBB)
Menu ID                          : 3 (0x3)
Format                           : Teletext
Maximum bit rate                 : 346 Kbps

As PuzZLeR said, it might be that free software can't handle capturing it, but I want to play it back in the first place. The question is, why VLC can play the audio, while others cannot?

Please note that the bundled ArcSoft TotalMedia 3.5 comes with a lot of codecs, which other programs should be able to use. In addition, ProgDVB 6 is not a free software, and given that it is a very famous DVB-T software, I'm wondering why it does have this problem. (Even when I select TotalMedia's codecs.)

PS: Here's a screenshot of ProgDVB audio codecs:



As you can see, it did not detect codecs for AC3, AAC, and OGG. If I click the drop-down besides AAC codecs, I see a list of possible choices:



among them you can see two ArcSoft codecs: ArcSoft Audio Decoder and ArcSoft RealMedia Audio Decoder. Other codecs are present as well, but I can't get them to work.

[Gavino]

The question is, why VLC can play the audio, while others cannot?

The clue is in the MediaInfo report:

Format profile                   : High efficiency AAC v2@L2

This is not the same as the more usual AAC-LC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Efficiency_Advanced_Audio_Coding
states that this can be played by Winamp and foobar2000 (among others), as well as VLC.

[poisondeathray]

This should be able to be decoded by ffdshow as well. It might be a splitter problem. File name is TV.mp4 but mediainfo reports it's a transport stream. Try renaming extension to .ts or .m2ts and make sure you have haali splitter installed. Render the file in graphstudio to see if the pins connect (helps in diagnosing directshow filter issues)

[ripp3r07]

@Gavino: Neither Winamp nor foobar2000 can play it. Loading the MP4 in Winamp, it simply does nothing. foobar2000 is a little bit more informative, and gives the following error:

Unable to open item for playback (Unsupported format or corrupted file (moov box not found)):
"C:\Documents and Settings\Test\Desktop\TV.mp4"

@poisondeathray: It will be excellent if I can play it with ffdshow. As pointed earlier, I have K-Lite Mega installed, so I have haali splitter as well (I double checked to make sure). I tried renaming the extension to .ts or .m2ts , but it didn't help either. Here's the output of graphstudio (note the extension is changed to .m2ts):



It only shows a video stream in TV.m2ts, which is odd!