[vdr] Re: alternative language volume?

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Markus Schorer wrote:
> 
> hi all,
> 
> when switching from german to english (secondary language) it is much
> quieter than the normal soudtrack. i can't adjust the volume to
> a useful level. switching back gives me a quiet german soundtrack
> which i can adjust?
> 
> anybody else?
> an hints?

That's the good old "individual volume for each audio PID" problem.
I haven't done anything in that direction yet because it is not really
essential. You can always adjust your TV's volume accordingly (I don't
assume that your TV's volume is at the top limit, or is it?).

Once I find the time there will be individual volume correction values
for every audio PID. But I'm not yet sure how to do that exactly. The
basic problem is probably to define "what is the *normal* volume level?".
Any channel that has a lower volume than this would have to be made louder,
and every channel that has a higher volume level would have to be made
quieter.

So I guess in addition to the audio PIDs (that's the "normal" PIDs, not
the Dolby Digital PIDs) we'll need an integer value that tells VDR how
to adjust this channel's volume.

I would suggest to introduce values in the range -10...+10, where a
negative value results in a decreased volume, while a positive value
increases the volume. Theses correction values could be stored in channels.conf
right next to the audio PIDs, because they should be the same for everybody
(there's no conceivable need to make these individually configurable
through some "Setup" parameters).

In the end these values should be 0 for most channels (since most channels
have "normal" volume values), so there would be no need to change anything for
them in channels.conf. Only the channels that are too loud or too quiet would
have to get corection values.

One final problem remains: in order to be able to increase the volume of
certain channels, the default volume in VDR wold have to be set to some
value below 255 (otherwise there would be no reserve for increasing the volume).
So first tests should be done to find which default volume value makes sense.
Keep in mind that you will then have to increase the volume on your tv set,
so when switching from VDR to other input sources (like terrestrial tv via
antenna, or an analog video recorder) there might be the need to adjust the
volume then...

Klaus
-- 
_______________________________________________________________

Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10
CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40
Hofmark 2                               Email:   kls@cadsoft.de
D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de
_______________________________________________________________