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Perhaps try switching the recording codec in mythtv. I know mplayer/vlc didn't like my RTjpeg (myth's deafult) nuv files, but works okay with my Mpeg4 nuv files. Nuppelvideo gives me a headache. XBMC can play my mpeg4 nuv recordings, too, but I never tested RTJpeg with it.
elupus Wrote:it wasn't solved. something that ffmpeg doesn't support i suspect. upload a small sample somewhere and i'll have a look when i get time (no timeframe at all)

Great thanks. no rush, switching apps isn't the end of the world this would just make life easier & make xbmc even more perfect.

http://rapidshare.com/files/137392242/My...e.rar.html
1 minute nuv sample from mythtv, 90.9mb uncompressed/76.2mb rared.
yashka Wrote:Perhaps try switching the recording codec in mythtv. I know mplayer/vlc didn't like my RTjpeg (myth's deafult) nuv files, but works okay with my Mpeg4 nuv files. Nuppelvideo gives me a headache. XBMC can play my mpeg4 nuv recordings, too, but I never tested RTJpeg with it.

Just did a quick test, looks like changing the transcoder to mpeg4 works. Thanks for the workaround!
Hmm--tried posting this yesterday, but it seems to have not worked:

I'm having some problems with the mythtv front-end.

MythTV machine name is "gibreel", IP 192.168.15.180

Set up my source in XBMC as myth://mythtv:[email protected]/ and I can access the list of recordings. I can even see the thumbnails--just can't play anything. I select a video and it sits there for about 30 seconds and does nothing. If I go in and navigate via SMB to the mythtv box's recordings directory, they play fine. Just not through the mythtv recordings interface. Might I have misconfigured something? I have DNS set up properly so I doubt it's that.

I believe I have the latest T3CH build of XBMC:

20:34:19 M: 57573376 NOTICE: Starting XBMC, Platform: Xbox. Built on Jun 30 2008
20:34:19 M: 57573376 NOTICE: Q is mapped to: E:\dashboard
20:34:19 M: 57573376 NOTICE: The executeable running is: E:\dashboard\default.xbe
20:34:19 M: 57573376 NOTICE: Log File is located: Q:\xbmc.log

Here's the debug log:

21:10:41 M: 35962880 DEBUG: CPlayerCoreFactor::GetPlayers(myth://mythtv:[email protected]/recordings/1036_20080816210000.mpg)
21:10:41 M: 35962880 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: myth://mythtv:[email protected]/recordings/1036_20080816210000.mpg
21:10:41 M: 35962880 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue:Tongueut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
21:10:41 M: 35438592 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll GetFileAttributesExA
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll SetNamedPipeHandleState
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll WaitNamedPipeA
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll UnmapViewOfFile
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll MapViewOfFile
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll OpenFileMappingA
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve kernel32.dll OpenEventA
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll ?terminate@@YAXXZ
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll __doserrno
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll _open_osfhandle
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll _umask
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll ldiv
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll iscntrl
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: Unable to resolve msvcr71.dll ??1type_info@@UAE@XZ
21:10:41 M: 33939456 DEBUG: kernel32.dll fake function DisableThreadLibraryCalls called
21:10:41 M: 33918976 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:10:41 M: 33923072 INFO: msg: cmyth_conn_connect: asked for version 8, got version 40
21:10:41 M: 33918976 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:10:41 M: 33923072 INFO: msg: cmyth_conn_connect: asked for version 40, got version 40
21:10:41 M: 33923072 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:10:41 M: 33923072 INFO: msg: __cmyth_rcv_proginfo: got recording info
21:10:42 M: 33837056 DEBUG: Got rss feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/XboxScene
21:10:42 M: 33845248 DEBUG: RSS feed encoding: UTF-8
21:10:42 M: 33845248 DEBUG: Parsed rss feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/XboxScene
21:10:43 M: 34004992 INFO: Loading skin file: DialogBusy.xml
21:10:43 M: 34009088 DEBUG: Load DialogBusy.xml: 29.09ms (21.42 ms xml load)
21:10:43 M: 34009088 DEBUG: Alloc resources: 29.54ms (29.54 ms skin load, 0.00 ms preload)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: cmyth_connect: connect failed on port 6543 to 'gibreel' (10060)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: cmyth_conn_connect_file: cmyth_connect(gibreel, 6543, 16384) failed
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: (cmyth)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 INFO: msg: cmyth_file_destroy: cmyth_rcv_okay() failed (-1)
21:11:01 M: 33869824 ERROR: XFILE::CCMythFile::SetupRecording - unable to connect to file
21:11:01 M: 33869824 ERROR: InputStream: Error opening, myth://mythtv:[email protected]/recordings/1036_20080816210000.mpg
21:11:01 M: 33869824 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
21:11:01 M: 33869824 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream
21:11:06 M: 34553856 INFO: XFILE::CCMythSession::CheckIdle - Closing idle connection to mythtv backend 192.168.15.180
21:11:36 M: 34566144 DEBUG: SECTION:UnloadDelayed(DLL: Q:\system\libcmyth.dll)
21:11:36 M: 34566144 DEBUG: Q:\system\libcmyth.dll (base 10000000): Detected memory leaks: 1 leaks
21:11:36 M: 34566144 DEBUG: leak caller address 10001022, size 14, counter 1
21:11:36 M: 34566144 DEBUG: libcmyth.dll: Total bytes leaked: 14
Well, I'm going to college this year, and torrents are blocked at WSU in washington.

Which means i'll have to get my TV shows the old fashioned way, using a PVR. Luckily, i have a TV tuner card on the way. Now, i'd like to record my shows using MythTV, but since the MythTV interface sucks compared to XBMC, i was wondering:

How good is the myth frontend in XBMC? Will I be able to forgo the frontend for MythTV altogether, or will I need to schedule recordings and whatnot from the MythTV frontend? I'm doing all this from an installation of Mythbuntu.
I know very little of the XBMC frontend, but I did read very recently that it supports viewing of recorder programs only and not recording. The whole EPG and recording business is something that is being developed as far as I know (at least there is a thread somewhere about the EPG development).
EPG is one of our Google Summer of Code projects. Hopefully we'll have a good chunk of it within the coming weeks. Unfortunately it won't make it into our Atlantis release, but you can use a personal build if you need it.
Isn't the GSOC project a little more than just EPG? Perhaps I've missed something but I thought initially it was to design a complete API allowing the introduction of TV PVR functionality to XBMC with Myth being used as the test case? Other devs could then use that api to add support for other PVR backends such as mediaportal.

Has the scope changed?

Cheers,

Arkay.
Yea, it's supposed to be a front end that supports a plug in style interface to any PVR. That way you can look though your tv-guide on screen in XBMC, pick what you want to record, and XBMC will send that information to the PVR, whether it by MythTV or, perhaps in some future world, TiVo. Then the shows get automatically added to your library and you can play them from there. I'm sure there's also supposed to be some sort of live tv functionality. How much was actually implemented I couldn't tell you. But the student was recently accepted to the team and plans to continue development.
SneakerElph Wrote:Well, I'm going to college this year, and torrents are blocked at WSU in washington.

Which means i'll have to get my TV shows the old fashioned way, using a PVR. Luckily, i have a TV tuner card on the way. Now, i'd like to record my shows using MythTV, but since the MythTV interface sucks compared to XBMC, i was wondering:

How good is the myth frontend in XBMC? Will I be able to forgo the frontend for MythTV altogether, or will I need to schedule recordings and whatnot from the MythTV frontend? I'm doing all this from an installation of Mythbuntu.

I am more or less doing the same thing you are asking about. I dislike the MythTV Frontend as it seems pretty buggy and slow and pretty outdated. Whereas XBMC plays almost everything, looks awesome and performs pretty well aside from the odd segfault here and there. So what I personally do is to use Mythbackend along with Mythweb(awesome web interface). I also use phpmysql for database editing but that's another thread. With mythweb and mythbackend I am able to schedule recordings, add new schedules, browse the EPG for things I may want to record, set up transcoding jobs, delete recordings, I can even stream recordings if I am local to the server. Mythweb handles all that and more. Mythbackend handles the actual recording and tuning and database stuff. Mythweb and Mythbackend are fabulous but as with anything there are some bugs but most are mainly due to my unique setup. I use DVB-S and ATSC(Over the Air HD) tuners. Also with Mythweb I can schedule recordings from anywhere with Web access(and using my VPN that is.)

Now for watching said recordings you have a few options, if like me your XBMC and MythTV are on the same box you can just add a source which points to your recording folder(s) and watch them like but you may want to use a program which is included with myth call mythrename.pl to rename your recordings to human readable format as myth names recordings based on channum, date, time etc so it is just a bunch of numbers. Secondly you can add a UPNP server as your source of which Myth has a built in UPNP server. This will list you recordings and such, seems to work pretty well mostly. Thirdly you can add a network source and name it as so:

Code:
myth://youreservername

I think that is the naming scheme, someone correct me if I am wrong, I am not in front of my box currently to check. Now with this one you can actually watch LiveTV and check a limited EPG(for current time only I believe) as well a watch your recordings. This method works pretty well as far as I can tell but I rarely watch LiveTV with Myth, I use it 99% for recording only. Lastly there used to be a Python script called xbmcmythtv that was a pretty full featured MythFrontend. I am not sure what the current status of it is and whether or not it is still functional.

All that said I really hope the GSOC project of a unified PVR comes to fruition as that would be pretty incredible.

Finally have you tried/thought of subscribing to a Newsgroup service for your TV needs? Maybe you Uni doesn't block newsgroup access yet?

Hope this helps,

Kevin
Pretty sure I've read most of this thread and may have seen some information somewhere that said there was no seek functionality in LiveTV as yet but that it does work with RecordedTV.

Could someone please confirm? I can ff/rew Recordings only a little (maybe up to 4x) before the pic locks and playback stops. I can always exit out and re-start but not being able to manually skip ads is currently stopping me showing the wife how to use it Smile Particuarly as I have review/skip set up as 80 sec forward 8 sec back. As soon as you use it it locks up?

Cheers,

Arkay.
That's 30 sec forwards..

+1 vote for including "edit" in the forum tools. Even if it's only for 30 minutes after the initial post?? At least you can fix the odd typo....

Cheers,

Arkay.
SneakerElph Wrote:Well, I'm going to college this year, and torrents are blocked at WSU in washington.

Which means i'll have to get my TV shows the old fashioned way, using a PVR. Luckily, i have a TV tuner card on the way. Now, i'd like to record my shows using MythTV, but since the MythTV interface sucks compared to XBMC, i was wondering:

How good is the myth frontend in XBMC? Will I be able to forgo the frontend for MythTV altogether, or will I need to schedule recordings and whatnot from the MythTV frontend? I'm doing all this from an installation of Mythbuntu.

I haven't been able to make the “myth://” source work 100% reliable yet but I use the following solution as a work around until stable PVR functionality in included in XBMC:

This solution require a working MythTV-back-end (referred to as the back-end). EPG and sceduling of recordings has to be done via Myth-web. The machine running XBMC is referred to as the front-end”.

On the back-end:

Create a directory to hold listings of your recordings (links with proper names):
E.g: ”/var/lib/mythtv/listings”

Export the directory holding listings and recordings trough NFS or make a SMB share using Samba:
E.g: “/var/lib/mythtv”

Run mythrename.pl to create links to your recordings (hint: you can make several subdirectories with different list, sortable on date, title, recording group etc., assigning different series to different recording groups make it easy to make separate lists for series, categories or users):
E.g: ”mythrename.pl --link /var/lib/mythtv/listings”

On the front-end:

Create a directory that will hold the listings and recordings (I run Linux so it's natural to mount them trough NFS in fstab, I guess it could be done using a SMB-share but I don't know for sure if it would work with Linux symlinks, created by mythrename.pl, and SMB-sources in XBMC, NFS makes it possible to transparently make them part of the front-ends local file system):
E.g: ”mount mythhostname:/var/lib/mythtv /var/lib/mythtv”

Create a source in XBMC that points to the local directory holding the list of recordings:
E.g: ”/var/lib/mythtv/listings”

You can now conveniently browse and playback your back-ends recordings from your front-end. This is a rock solid solution only involving the file system and the NFS protocol, making it possible to fast forward etc. (my replacement for commercial skipping).

This works great for OTA viewing but what about viewing in real time? There is no convenient way to zap around with this solution but you can watch a program in real time (or near real time). This is how it is done:

Browse the EPG trough Myth-web and start a recording of the program you want to watch.

Run mythrename.pl as soon as the recording has started to create a link to the file the program is recorded to.

Browse the list of links with recordings and start playback of the program (works great during recording of a program, you can even rewind, fast forward etc.).

This solution soles most of my needs but how do we keep the list of links updated? We don't want to be forced to manually run mythrename.pl every time the back-end starts a recording or removes a file (e.g. when recordings are purged due to auto deletion etc.). I have seen solutions based on cron but that is not a particularly elegant solution if we have to poll for changes all the time. My solution is to use incron instead. Set it to watch the directory holding the recordings (e.g. /var/lib/mythtv/recordings) and make it run mythrename.pl on the events IN_CREATE and IN_DELETE.

Some useful links for the ones going down this path:
NFS
mythrename.pl
incron
arkay Wrote:+1 vote for including "edit" in the forum tools. Even if it's only for 30 minutes after the initial post?? At least you can fix the odd typo....
I second that (just look at my previous post, really wanted to correct and further clarify some things)!