The Paul's Tech MythTV Project: Phase 4
Unfortunately, it's been a bit since I did some of the bug fixing for my installation of MythTV. So, I'm going to have to stick to some more general tips and fewer specific ones. Hopefully, you will still find this posting of value.
The default video player for MythTV plays back recordings very well. I had to do very little to help that. The only thing I did was to adjust the screen so that the picture was centered better. This is done under Utilities/Setup, Setup, TV Settings, Playback. Several screens in are settings for Vertical and Horizontal over/underscan percentage and Scan displacement. You can adjust these to shift the picture up/down and left/right.
The default video player is not so good when it comes to playing other types of video files. I download and playback video podcasts on my box, and I needed to setup a different program for that. I am using xine for playback of odd video formats, and it works well for that. To change the player to use xine, go into Utilities/Setup, Setup, Media Settings, Videos Settings, Player Settings. For the default player line, I use:
xine -pfhq --no-splash
That has worked well for me, but your mileage may vary. Also, if you need to install xine or you need some codecs to decode different video files, check out this link here.
Also, for convenience, go into Utilities/Setup, Setup, Media Settings, Videos Settings, General Settings and check the box for Newly scanned files are browseable by default. This will make new videos show up automatically in the Video section for playback. Otherwise, you will have to go into the Video Manager and make them playable.
For me, the default settings for most of the other stuff worked just fine. BUT, in order to get MythWeather working, I had to update my system to the newer version. For more info on doing the update, check out my previous posting.
One of the more difficult pieces to get working correctly is the Optical Disk, Archive function. This is where you go to burn recordings to dvd. There are a lot of steps involved in converting a recording to the proper format for burning to dvd. Any errors along the way will stop you getting a good burn. My opinion on it is to record your shows in a dvd compatible file to begin with, and things will go smoother. I have my recording profile set up to record at 720 by 480 pixels, and 2700 to 4700 bitrate. This gives me a high quality standard definition video that doesn't need re-encoding, and I can fit 3 hours on a dvd. If you need to cram more onto there, try playing with your bitrate settings until you get the amount of video you need.
If you are having problems with your burn, the mytharchive log files will be your good friends. Mine are located under the /var/lib/mytharchive/temp/logs directory. (You did set up the OpenSSH Server so you can easily access these files as I recommended in Phase 3, didn't you?) From the command line, type in nano mythburn.log to easily view the log. Once you find out where it got stuck, if you don't know how to fix it, try searching the forum at Nabble.com for help, or post your questions there.
If you are trying to get your remote control working, be sure to use the irw command at the command line. This will show you what the receiver is catching. Use ctrl-c to quit. If you are getting nothing, then do a google search with streamzap and mythtv and you should get some links with help on installing it.
Well, that covers a lot of little annoying details towards getting it working. I hope you have a fully functional system now. The next Phase is a few customizations that I did that you may wish to implement.
UPDATE: After having spent more time with the system, I found that if the power goes out and the machine doesn't get shut down properly, it can cause some errors in the database. The main one I've noticed is an error in the recordedseek table. This will cause all sorts of odd behavior in the frontend of the box. To fix it, I log into phpMyAdmin remotely, and run the sql command "repair table recordedseek". This seems to do the trick for me. The better solution would be to have the machine on a UPS of course, which I intend to do.
UPDATE: I was having trouble with the screensaver that was installed with my installation. I was trying to watch some Hulu videos through Firefox, and after 10 minutes the screen would fade to black and I would have to wake the system up by moving the cursor. After a lot of trial and error, I finally found a way to shut the screensaver off. I tried many of the things listed on other websites such as setting the dpms to off or using xset to try to shut it off, but none of those seemed to work for me. What I had to do was to go into the startmythtv.sh file in the /usr/share/mythtv directory and comment out the section where it spawns the gnome screensaver with the # symbol. After saving and rebooting, this stops the screensaver from being started in the first place, and fixed my problem.
Posted by PH on 09-22-2007 05:23:19 CST
The default video player for MythTV plays back recordings very well. I had to do very little to help that. The only thing I did was to adjust the screen so that the picture was centered better. This is done under Utilities/Setup, Setup, TV Settings, Playback. Several screens in are settings for Vertical and Horizontal over/underscan percentage and Scan displacement. You can adjust these to shift the picture up/down and left/right.
The default video player is not so good when it comes to playing other types of video files. I download and playback video podcasts on my box, and I needed to setup a different program for that. I am using xine for playback of odd video formats, and it works well for that. To change the player to use xine, go into Utilities/Setup, Setup, Media Settings, Videos Settings, Player Settings. For the default player line, I use:
xine -pfhq --no-splash
That has worked well for me, but your mileage may vary. Also, if you need to install xine or you need some codecs to decode different video files, check out this link here.
Also, for convenience, go into Utilities/Setup, Setup, Media Settings, Videos Settings, General Settings and check the box for Newly scanned files are browseable by default. This will make new videos show up automatically in the Video section for playback. Otherwise, you will have to go into the Video Manager and make them playable.
For me, the default settings for most of the other stuff worked just fine. BUT, in order to get MythWeather working, I had to update my system to the newer version. For more info on doing the update, check out my previous posting.
One of the more difficult pieces to get working correctly is the Optical Disk, Archive function. This is where you go to burn recordings to dvd. There are a lot of steps involved in converting a recording to the proper format for burning to dvd. Any errors along the way will stop you getting a good burn. My opinion on it is to record your shows in a dvd compatible file to begin with, and things will go smoother. I have my recording profile set up to record at 720 by 480 pixels, and 2700 to 4700 bitrate. This gives me a high quality standard definition video that doesn't need re-encoding, and I can fit 3 hours on a dvd. If you need to cram more onto there, try playing with your bitrate settings until you get the amount of video you need.
If you are having problems with your burn, the mytharchive log files will be your good friends. Mine are located under the /var/lib/mytharchive/temp/logs directory. (You did set up the OpenSSH Server so you can easily access these files as I recommended in Phase 3, didn't you?) From the command line, type in nano mythburn.log to easily view the log. Once you find out where it got stuck, if you don't know how to fix it, try searching the forum at Nabble.com for help, or post your questions there.
If you are trying to get your remote control working, be sure to use the irw command at the command line. This will show you what the receiver is catching. Use ctrl-c to quit. If you are getting nothing, then do a google search with streamzap and mythtv and you should get some links with help on installing it.
Well, that covers a lot of little annoying details towards getting it working. I hope you have a fully functional system now. The next Phase is a few customizations that I did that you may wish to implement.
UPDATE: After having spent more time with the system, I found that if the power goes out and the machine doesn't get shut down properly, it can cause some errors in the database. The main one I've noticed is an error in the recordedseek table. This will cause all sorts of odd behavior in the frontend of the box. To fix it, I log into phpMyAdmin remotely, and run the sql command "repair table recordedseek". This seems to do the trick for me. The better solution would be to have the machine on a UPS of course, which I intend to do.
UPDATE: I was having trouble with the screensaver that was installed with my installation. I was trying to watch some Hulu videos through Firefox, and after 10 minutes the screen would fade to black and I would have to wake the system up by moving the cursor. After a lot of trial and error, I finally found a way to shut the screensaver off. I tried many of the things listed on other websites such as setting the dpms to off or using xset to try to shut it off, but none of those seemed to work for me. What I had to do was to go into the startmythtv.sh file in the /usr/share/mythtv directory and comment out the section where it spawns the gnome screensaver with the # symbol. After saving and rebooting, this stops the screensaver from being started in the first place, and fixed my problem.