TrueHD - Is there a codec for this?

[Asterra]

I'm in the process of remaking a few MKVs to improve their playback. They each have a 5.1 TrueHD and a 2.0 AC3 channel. I have come to realize that when I try to play any of these videos with TrueHD as the default channel, things go wrong.

KM Player outright freezes, as does WMP. MPC-HC displays the first frame and permanently freezes unless I drag the timeline forward a bit. Then it plays intermittently, but with no audio. Switching to the 2.0-channel audio track causes playback to proceed normally, with said audio.

Here is my specific difficulty. I am not using either of the two best-known codec packs (CCCP or K-Lite). Because video is beginning to shift beyond 8-bit color (chiefly in order to eliminate the banding that always results from multiple encoding), one needs to be able to play the new videos which feature "Hi10p" color. The CCCP package enables the playback of Hi10p but its solution is a bit of a kludge which does not offer the best quality. In order to achieve maximum quality, I followed this guide:

http://haruhichan.com/wpblog/?p=205#guide

Ironically, Windows 7 (or my video card, or whatever) once again failed me, and perfect v-sync could not be achieved without once again settling upon VMR-9 (renderless) and specifically selecting "Alternative VSync".

The point is this: It seems as though the LAV Audio package does not include any means of decoding TrueHD, hence my playback issues. So I need to know what I should try installing in order to correct this lack. ;p

In the meantime, I have been constructing my MKV files with the 2.0-channel audio tracks set as the default, which is definitely not how I'd prefer it, but which happens to be the only way to ensure the videos will play at all. (Incidentally, it'd be great to know how I can change which audio tracks play by default, without having to remux the entire file. These are ~8GB video files and it takes an age.)

[poisondeathray]

Both lav and ffdshow can decode truehd if they are enabled in the configuration and your filter chain . So you probably have other problems like splitter issues. Try haali or lav, or uninstalling/reinstalling

[Asterra]

Reinstalling was what I did. This time I skipped the Haali splitter and went with the splitter that came as part of the LAV filters. I'm betting that fixed things.

Word of caution: The latest MPC-HC (1.5.3.3963) seems to have an odd bug, at least in my case. It failed to give the correct path to itself in the registry. This resulted in file association shenenigans. Basically, file associations failed, for a start. And then when I tried forcing Windows to associate MKV or whatever with MPC-HC, the program didn't show up as an option, even after I specifically browsed to the executable. I was forced to fix this with Regedit.

About the only thing left to do is figure out whether I can tell MPC-HC to prefer one type of audio track (5.1) over another (2.0) when both are present, bypassing any default track flags.