19-Dec-06 12:13 PM

My father recently downloaded WMP 11 (as it popped up as an update, he went
ahead and clicked it). He complained to me about having no sound, so I went
through the normal routine (make sure it isn't muted, speakers up, etc.). He
said the DVD still had no noise.

Just to be sure, I told him to run it in a normal DVD player (its not a
burnt dvd, but an original) and sure enough, it had sound. I told him then to
throw in a normal music CD - it played well enough, too.

The new update just seems to be affecting DVDs and, while they visually run,
they have no sound playback. They worked fine prior to the update. Besides
simply uninstalling and reverting back to WMP 10, any ideas? Thanks in
advance.

19-Dec-06 05:06 PM

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:13:01 -0800, ~Snivlet


Yup.




Cool - thx for the info. I'll mention for background that DVD disks
can come with one of 2 standard audio formats - PCM and AC3 audio.

Most commercial DVDs use AC3 audio, which can provide dolby decoded
surround and so on - some home DVDs may use AC3 but many use PCM
stereo (so on some peoples machines, home DVDs play OK but commercial
ones don't)

The distinction isn't important unless you've lost the AC3 audio
decoder. It seems to happen mysteriously with some WMP11 installs.

You should be able to install AC3filter from sourceforget and get it
working again :

http://ac3filter.net/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=5


HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

20-Dec-06 01:40 AM

I appreciate the help. It somewhat fixed the problem, though not altogether.
I installed the latest AC3filter from the link and tried it out. I had a
couple DVDs to test. One of them seemed to work just fine - at full volume,
it blasted our ears and we were forced to turn it down (as would be expected).

However, trying a second DVD, the volume was quite low. Even with everything
maxed (WMP, Computer volume settings, speaker volume) it was only barely
'normal' audio. I guess it will work for now, but if you don't remember to
crank everything back down, it will really send you flying when you hear an
incredibly loud 'ding!'.

Not sure what's up. I will try messing around with a bit more, but might
just recommend he reverts back to 10. And to be sure nothing else happened, I
loaded up another player (Nero Showtime!, which he doesn't care for) and it
seemed to run both DVDs at a normal volume, so it is obviously WMP-based.

Anyhow, again, I appreiate the help you gave. Take care, and thanks.

20-Dec-06 06:20 PM

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:40:01 -0800, ~Snivlet



DVD audio can vary greatly between disk manufacturers. I've never seen
a great explanation of why some disks are recorded so quietly, but it
may be something to do with people cranking up their home cinema kit
then getting ear-splitting audio ouf of them.

Always worth checking you initially have stereo speakers setup in WMP
Devices - sometimes 5.1 audio selection without using 5.1 speakers can
cause odd quiet spots in commercial DVDs.

Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

30-Dec-06 04:33 PM

I had the same problem. I installed ffdshow and the sound worked.

01-Jan-07 04:20 AM

Neil's answer for downloading the AC3Filter worked fine.  Microsoft needs to
make sure they get this fixed, because it is not readily apparent what went
wrong and that hopping on the support forum is the place for answers.  Very
thankful that Neil provided what he did from his experience.

I imagine that by now hundreds of thousands of version 11 users have
experienced the same frustration we have.  Too bad Microsoft isn't posting
this fix on their main FAQ site.

Windows 7 - The "fix" only seems applicable to a limited number of cases.

Asked By Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]

01-Jan-07 09:56 AM

The "fix" only seems applicable to a limited number of cases. It seems
related to update of some DVD decoders, where the audio decoder part
of the package

The problem seems to have been present for several versions of WMP,
but the actual fix applies to directshow audio decoders, not
specifically to WMP.

The decoders for DVD audio and video are provided by third parties,
and I suppose some of the installs aren't done to correctly register
the audio part of the playback. It doesn't seem to happen in most
cases, I'm imagining it's a side effect of adding lots of DVD decoder
packages to the system and some overwrite others settings (badly)

As I said it's easily fixed - and it's hard to imagine hundreds of
thousands of cases, or we'd see 500 posts a day about this rather than
the one or two posts ;-)

Cheers - Neil


On Mon, 1 Jan 2007 01:20:00 -0800, Ed T. <Ed

------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs