Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3) w/ Kodi not working

Hello,

I recently purchased a Z9X as an upgrade to my Z9S. With my Z9S, I was able to play Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC3) files with Kodi, but this seems to have stopped working with the Z9X. I am on firmware version 6.0.90, with all the passthrough settings in Kodi enabled. If I play the same file with Media Player it seems to work, but my receiver gets no audio stream when I play it through Kodi. Has anyone else had this bug and been able to fix it?

Thanks in advance!

-- Zach

 

I was able to fix this by upgrading to the Kodi 19 Pre-release(/beta) for anyone else experiencing this issue.

 

Is there is specific reason why you are not using ZDMC?

 

Yes -- I find the player on Kodi much more feature rich than the one built in (i.e. the one that ZDMC uses). Things that were missing the last time I tried the system player:

• Non-BD/DVD chapters -- Kodi has a very clean UI for switching between chapters and even has the chapter names. I couldn't find anything like this on the X9S player.
• Exponential skipping -- On Kodi, if you click the right button to "nudge" playback forward once, it skips by 10s, twice by 30s, etc. The Zidoo player does a uniform amount every time, which makes it much harder to skip through long files.

There are more, but those are the main ones I feel like are missing from the HT4.0/whatever player.

 

I also prefer Kodi, but I’m using ZDMC (with Zidoo’s player). You can use Kodi’s native app by turning off external player in the settings.

But by not using Zidoo’s player, you will not get Dolby Vision. In this case you’re not using the feature that is the main reason people buying Z9X, any android box will do.

 

Is it possible to install standard Kodi, and then setup the external player XML to call the Zidoo player? Anyone done it this way?

ZDMC integration with Zidoo player is kind of half baked, for example it doesn’t update the watched flag in Kodi.

I tried ZDMC internal player just to test it out, and for some strange reason, I could not re-enable the external Zidoo native player. The external player switch is on, but it keeps using the internal player. I had to remove ZDMC, reinstall & reconfigure.

 

When I used Kodi in nVIDIA Shield Pro a few months ago, I use the following script to make ExoPlayer as an external player (for DV content).

Code:

<playercorefactory>
<players>
<player name="ExoPlayer" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
<filename>com.google.android.exoplayer2.demo</filename>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<playcountminimumtime>120</playcountminimumtime>
</player>
</players>
<rules action="prepend">
<rule video="true" player="dvdplayer">
<rule filename=".*DV.*" player="ExoPlayer"/>
</rule>
</rules>
</playercorefactory>

Maybe you can modify the script to call for Zidoo’s native player instead. I have no idea what it’s called and I’m not a programmer, I got that script from somewhere. Notice the rule for “DV” in the file name to trigger the script, you can change/remove accordingly.

Save into a text file and name it as playercorefactory.xml and then put it into Kodi’s Profile Directory (Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/). Do this using Kodi’s File Manager. Restart Kodi.

I don’t remember if you have to set in Kodi settings to use an external player, you can try. Maybe if you don’t use a file name rule.

Hope that helps in a way.

 

You can find all needed infos on this page : https://kodi.wiki/view/External_players
The Zidoo native player app is "Gallery" and his package is "com.android.gallery3d"

 

or how will I delete this line
<rule filename = ". * DV. *" player = "ExoPlayer" />
then all video files will be played by external player ???

 

Hello, I have the same problem, please, as you solved

 

I have the same problem. Zidoo Z10 pro and ZMDC 18.9. Firmware 6.0.90_G and 6.1.05_G.
The sound of the E-AC3 is not output.
After turning off audio transfer, it is downgraded to PCM 2.0.
After applying the recommended settings in ZDMC and turning off the E-AC3 and turning on transcoding to the AC3 format, DD 5.1 pops up, but there are breaks all the time.
In the previous Zidoo X10 player in ZDMC, the sound was played correctly.

 

I also had a front x9s player and everything was fine and you don't know if I will solve it any way thank you in advance.

 

I don't know how to solve this. ZDMC fits me, everything is fine as I want. Just this E-AC3 sound problem ...
Nie wiem, jak to rozwiązać. ZDMC pasuje do mnie, wszystko jest w porządku, jak chcę. Tylko ten problem z dźwiękiem E-AC3 ...

 

I also miss the sound ac-3 you have this problem I am already solving all possible settings here in 5 days reset and in the receiver I was already desperate I would not expect that the wall will have a problem with the sound it was always fine

 

A colleague above wrote that this problem was solved in Kodi 19. Maybe you need to install and check ..
Although there is probably no stable version yet.

Interestingly, with the sounds of the dense Dolby Atmos DTS-X formats, there is no problem ...

 

as you say atmos and dts-x no problem i'm going to try code 19 if it helps

 

I don't have time now - work.
Give me a report or something else later.

 

Ok

 

Hello, I have the same problem, please, as you solved
(Z9x)

 

No doubt when there is a full release build of Matrix some kind soul at Zidoo will eventually port it to ZDMC, but you won’t get all the features of Kodi if you use internal player, and you won’t get the full features of Zidoo if you use external player.
End of story.