Control the media director's volume using either a receiver
| This page was written by Pluto and imported with their permission when LinuxMCE branched off in February, 2007. In general any information should apply to LinuxMCE. However, this page should be edited to reflect changes to LinuxMCE and remove old references to Pluto. |
How to set it up
If you hook to sound output from your sound card into a receiver, television, or amplifier, then whenever you adjust the volume while listening to an internal media source, such as the DVD player or PVR, then you'll want the volume commands to go to the external device, that is the receiver, television, or amplifier. To do this, in LinuxMCE admin, choose wizard, devices, AV equipment and add the devices like you would any other AV equipment. Then choose wizard, devices, media directors and edit the audiovideo pipe for the media director. For the audio pipe select the device of the soundcard's output is connected to. Be sure to specify what input the media director is using on that device. Now whenever you start playing media on the media director, LinuxMCE will turn on that device, set it to the correct input, and any time you adjust the volume that commands will go to that device, and the sound card's volume will not be affected. If you do not specify an external AV device for the audio pipe, then whenever you adjust the volume LinuxMCE will adjust the master volume control on the soundcard. Note the video commands work the same way. If you specify an external device for the video pipe, then whenever the media director starts to play video it will turn on that video device, set the correct input, and any video related commands such as increased brightness or decrease contrast will go to the correct video device.
How to use it
Whenever you start playing media on the media director, an appropriate remote control will appear on all the orbiters. All the remote controls have volume up and volume down and mute buttons.
Programmer's guide
Every media device has an app server device, and app server implements volume up, volume down, and set volume. When the media plug-in starts it checks to see if a given media director has a designated audio pipe, and if it does not it sets a variable m_pDevice_AppServer. The media plug-in intercepts all media related commands, and will reroute any volume commands to the correct audio device.
