Toff integrated a packet decoder in foo_ac3 so you can now playback ac3 streams in the matroska container (.mka/.mkv) with foobar2000.

Here is the archive with the modified foo_ac3.dll and the latest foo_matroska.

Here are the sources.

Have fun!

The Link

NO replies ? So, this is either a very good sign ( = no bugs ) or a very bad one ( = no interest ) ....

I'm still waiting for it to be modified to support S/PDIF passthrough.

Well, how many people do use foobar2000? How many of those ac3? How many of those matroska? My guess would be that the user base in question is indeed not particularly big..

I will give it a shot, but I didn't see it before. This could indeed be useful for concert DVDs.

tiki4

Well, I tested it now a little bit. So far I didn't find any obvious problems. Btw, sorry, for the delay, I had not much time yet.

tiki4

This foo_matroska messed up my mka tags created by mkvmerge v0.9.4 built on Jul 28 2004 21:18:12

The original foo_matroska was writting unofficial matroska tags, this version is translating official tag to foobar2k tags, so it's probably why your tags are messed up on display.
Don't modify them yet.
The official tags has been finalized lately, so with the new mkvmerge out, foo_matroska need to be updated to match the last changes.

whats the benefit of using the matroska container?
ich have MANY AC3 files and they are all tagged with ape2 and have replaygain info. what can do matroska better?

Tagged and replaygained ac3 files work in foobar2000 but I don't think that it works in other apps. The matroska container has tags and replaygain support in the specs so these files should work in all players that can playback matroska files. Furthermore there is chapter support which is nice if you have the ac3/pcm file of a concert dvd which you can mux into mka together with the chapter file.

Regards,
The Link

I think the main benefits is that you can read directly your video music in fb2k, for example concert, musical...
Better seeking is another benefit.
And some other stuff that are not yet widely supported like different editions.
Not talking about the wide range of codec support in matroska.

Personally i cant think of any possible use for storing AC3 alone in MKA, maybe besides the better seeking and the future tagging.

What i like the most about this plugin, is that i am more and more using fb2k as a powerful audio converter for my movie editing. Using this plugin, i cant directly open any MKV with AC3 sound and extract the audio either into WAV/PCM, or convert into Ogg or FLAC. So, for me this plugin is the main reason to more and more stop using BeSweet, and use fb2k instead ......

I found a little problem with the latest foo_matroska:

Just for fun I made some mka's containing AAC encoded by Real Producer 10. I used the MKV writer 0.03 to directly encode to Matroska from foobar2000. The resulting files cannot be played in fb2k. They play fine in Media Player Classic with Gabest's latest MatroskaSplitter (1.0.2.4).

Regards,

tiki4

Any news about the new foo_matroska?

tiki4

Any progress being made on this? Currently i have to resort to using powerdvd to play DD in 5.1 through SPDIF.

the ac3 plugin WORKS like a charm !! Thanks! Exactly what I needed!

Hi,
Cool plugin works great with 5.1. I tried playing a mono AC3 file and it only played silence. Is this an issue with the plugin or just a channel mixing problem?

bitrate = 192
codec = ATSC A/52
channels = 1
samplerate = 48000
----------
5522488 samples @ 48000Hz
File size: 2 761 244 bytes

What version of foobar are you using? Since this plugin was created in 2004...

Thanks for the reply.

Just did some tests.

Verson 0.6 in Foobar 8.3 plays mono AC3's.
Verson 0.7 in 9.2 plays mono AC3 as silence, even with dobly headphones plugin.

Indeed, there seems to be an issue with the AC3 component, regarding mono files.
I've got the same problem as tacitus10 in foobar2000 0.9.

I doesn't work for me
File infos:
bitrate= 192
codec = ATSC A/52
channels = 3
samplerate = 48000

Latest foo_ac3 from kode54 has a packet decoder integrated. So there's no need to use outdated versions.

Sorry I used the version from kode54 but it doesn't work
I don't know what is the problem