I've already posted this on the relevant forums, but the empeg brain trust is probably more likely to be able to help. As you know, I've been ripping my DVDs to digital storage. I've been stripping out the menus, trailers, etc. Beyond that, I've not transcoded anything.

Now, when I play the DVDs back on Windows Media Center 7, I get unpleasant "auto-gain" effects. That is: if there's a loud noise (explosion, gunshot) the volume drops and then slowly ramps back up. For example, it's particularly noticable in the title sequence to Casino Royale (2006), and in The Fifth Element (1997), in the scene where Zorg is demonstrating the ZF-1.

I am using the HDMI output from an ATI Radeon HD 4350 for both video and audio. The HDMI cable is plugged into a relatively cheap (and relatively dumb) HDMI switch, and from there into the TV (a Samsung LE32R41BD). Listening is through the stereo speakers on the TV. The TV is configured with auto-gain off, and the "Standard" EQ option.

Other sources, such as recorded TV, don't exhibit this problem.

Any ideas?

Are you attempting to bitstream the output i.e. WMC7 is just supposed to send the raw data for the TV to decode it? If you're fairly positive the TV isn't doing it, are you sure WMC7 or Windows isn't decoding it and then re-encoding it? i.e. There's a codec on the Windows machine doing it. Have you installed something like the K-lite codec pack?

Sounds suspiciously like Loudness Leveling. The Realtek audio control panel has a check box for that.

To the best of my knowledge, I'm not using the Realtek output. I'm using the HDMI on the video card. Oh, and I can't find the Realtek control panel. Where should it be?

No idea. What does WMC7 do with MPEG-2 and (I assume) AAC when sending it over HDMI?



I did have a couple of codec packs installed, but I removed them. How do I find out which codecs WMC7 is using? Since it doesn't use DirectSound any more (it uses the new Media Foundation stuff), I think that the DX graph display tool is irrelevant.