Lack of DTS problem in 0.8.0

[Jbox]

This is my first post in these forums and I would like to say first off that I think VLC is one of the best programs ever. Having said that I would like to report a problem that I have with the latest release, 0.8.0 in Mac OS 10.3.6. I have a number of .VOB files that all came from the same disk. They all play fine in 0.7.2. However, I was puzzled when some of them played correctly and some didn’t in 0.8.0. Version 0.8.0 will not play the audio on some of the files and displays the following error message:

main: couldn't find a filter for the first part of the conversion
main: couldn't set an input pipeline

After a closer inspection, I found that the problem was that it was trying to play a DTS audio track that, as we know, 0.8.0 can not play. The odd part is that in some of the files, the DTS is the first audio track while in others the track that appears as the first audio track is AC3. This seems odd to me since they are all from the same disk. However, this would not be a problem if VLC could play the DTS but it can’t and it always selects the DTS on some of the files as the default so it will always give you an error after opening these files. My suggestion is that, as long as you do not have permission to use the DTS decoder, you should make VLC automatically select a non-DTS track as the default audio track. I believe that 0.7.2 does this (although it does not need to since it can play DTS). Of course, the best solution would be to bring back the DTS decoder. (By the way, the other audio tracks of these files play fine in 0.8.0 but I must stop the playback, dismiss the error, and change the audio track to finally get audio. This gets old fast.)

It is interesting to note that VLC was, I believe, the only player of DTS audio on the Mac for a while (please correct me if I am wrong here). It would be nice if you could bring DTS back but I am holding onto my copy of 0.7.2!

Computer info:

eMac 1Ghz G4
ATI Radeon 7500
640MB of RAM
Mac OS 10.3.6
VLC 0.8.0

[Sigmund]

The answer to this is written in big black letters in the 0.8.0 releasenotes.

[The DJ]

News


Release: VLC 0.8.0 (3 November 2004) It has been a long wait, but it is finally there. A plethora of new features for everyones enjoyment. They include: faster and more flexible input layer, improved transcoding, a plugins cache to speedup VLC startup time, vastly improved subtitles, OSD and DVD support, Windows Media Video 3 support under Windows, Multipart JPEG webcam support, an audio equalizer and so much, much more.
Look here for a complete list of changes. To download the sources or the binary package of this new version, go to the VLC download page and click on your OS logo!
Only source, Win32 and Mac OS X package are available at the moment, others will follow soon.
NOTE: This release doesn't include DTS audio decoding support. DTS Inc. claims that distributing this software with DTS decoding capabilities is a violation of their patent EP 864 146. At DTS Inc. request, we decided, as a precautionary measure, to provisionally suspend the distribution of VLC with DTS decoding capabilities while reviewing DTS Inc. claim. This is not an acknowledgement of the validity of the claim.

[Jbox]

It appears that nether one of you has carefully read my initial post. I already know why 0.8.0 does not play DTS! What I am trying to say is that there needs to be a work around for this lack. I do not want to completely restate my case, so please reread my initial post (the third paragraph in particular).

[Sigmund]

sorry. Your post is just too long, and I'm too lazy. Perhaps I'll try to read it more thouroughly later.

[dfeuer]

sorry. Your post is just too long, and I'm too lazy. Perhaps I'll try to read it more thouroughly later.

His post is actually worth reading. The non-DTS track should be selected by default until DTS becomes available again.

[Sigmund]

I see. I'll look into this

[Jbox]

After looking at some other .VOB files I have, I found that VLC 0.8.0 will sometimes even play commentary audio tracks by default. However, 0.7.2 always plays one of the primary audio tracks in all of these files by default. (To be more specific, 0.7.2 plays a primary AC3 audio track by default.) It seems that whatever method was used to select the default audio track in 0.7.2 has gone missing in 0.8.0. In its place there seems to be a random selection of the audio track which, when it selects a DTS track, can be very annoying (selecting a commentary is also quite annoying). Just to be clear on terminology, when I say "default audio track," I mean the audio track that plays when you first open a file and it starts playing.

I realize now that I should have titled this thread differently, but at the point when I started it, I didn’t realize that this was a general audio track selection problem.