[vlc-devel] Re: [MOD] Mac OSX multichannel patch

[Matthew Romaine]

Hi Jean-Alexis and others,

I did a fairly thorough search for "HALAudioOutputUnit" on my system 
but was not able to find what you mention.  I couldn't find it in any 
of the CoreAudio documentation either... where should I be looking?

What are VLC developer's thoughts on integrating OS-specific features?  
While it's true using AudioUnits would make implementing many features 
(such as filters, etc.) easier, if it's just support for multichannel 
that is needed, then I think doing it directly with CoreAudio is best.

The original patch allowed selecting a different stream, which was nice 
if there was a single stream to handle all channels.  Unfortunately, 
device manufacturers don't like to work together sometimes :)  Thus, 
there are some devices that require multiple streams being used at 
once.

As such, I'm not aware of any simple function that will return a list 
of streams to accommodate a certain channel setting.  For example, the 
RME Hammerfall supports 18 channels, but all streams are mono (thus, 18 
streams).  If a user wants to output 5.1, I don't think there is a 
function call that will return a pointer to just 6 mono streams.  
Likewise, the MOTU 896 has stream 1 supporting 2 channels, and stream 2 
supporting 8 channels.  If a user wants to output 5.1, there are at 
least two ways -- use the first two channels of stream 1 and 4 channels 
from stream 2, or use 6 channels from the 8 in stream 2.  Generally, 
the latter approach is preferred in most scenarios since stream 1 is 
usually the main outs, and oftentimes devices will mix down to the main 
outs anyways.

Like Jean-Alexis points out, VLC-OSX apparently doesn't allow a user to 
change which channel-setup to use.  My patch basically chose whatever 
stream(s) held the most options. (actually, I was testing 5.1 and 
forgot to un-comment the 8ch support; sorry).  My thinking is that a 
simple drop-down on the pane where it currently only says "Audio 
Device: -1 (under preferences->modules->audio_output->coreaudio) would 
be a nice for now.  This would require obtaining a list of options from 
the coreaudio.c audio_output module.  I would be happy to create said 
access function, but I'm not sure if the interface between the UI and 
the module exists...

thanks,
matt

On 2004/06/04, at 19:03, Jean-Alexis Montignies wrote:

> Hi Matt (and all folks),
>
> I think I'm the last one to have patched coreaudio.c. I've just 
> changed the code so that it works with other streams than the first 
> one. In my idea, it was a quick patch.
>
> There is a right and easiest solution for making it work in all cases 
> (at least for a single interface) and have the user being able to map 
> the channels.
> It is to use the HALAudioOutputUnit of core audio which does all 
> conversion/mapping/interleaving for you.
>
> Now, another problem of VLC is that it decides which kind of surround 
> to use depending on the number of channels you have on the interface. 
> So if you have a 20 channels interface, it could be lost or output to 
> 8 channels, even if you have less speakers (let's say 4 or 5 for 
> instance) connected.
>
> Any idea on where to select the surround setup.
>
> I've tried in the audio-channels menu, but my code just don't work for 
> ouputs with more than 2 channels (even the left/right selection in the 
> repository code doesn't work on more than stereo interfaces). Any 
> ideas why?
>
> Jean-Alexis Montignies
> http://www.sente.ch/

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