Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Myth software specific stuff

I'm starting to get too get too much stuff collected up on my PVR posting, so I figured splitting out stuff that was specific to Myth software would be worth it.

File/show renaming has pluses and minuses.

New mythv-vid branch has an opengl renderer that appears to be well received, although Make sure the XComposite extension is disabled for the best performance. While neat, XComposite will lower rendering speed quite a bit when using OpenGL. VAAPI (video-decode acceleration API) is also a factor.

If it isn't already enabled (mine was), call cable company and ask for them to send the app_if enable command down ("
have the headend engineer enable the "App IF Port" using the DAC") to cable box to enable serial port (or HSI port) on cable box. There seems to be surprisingly little info on setting the external channel change command, either for serial or IR blaster. Did I miss something at install?!

For IR, Google search on
0_82_KEY_POWER, irsend, send_power_new, ch_chan.sh. Searching irsend and external channel change, I found a bit hint on the ubuntu forums: irsend DirecTV $S [NUM] or:
Make a file /usr/local/bin/change_chan.sh

#!/bin/sh
REMOTE_NAME=TWC_UR4-P360 # change this obviously
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.4 # note, you may have to tweak the interdigit delay up a bit
done
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME SELECT
That same search turns up other hits that I haven't investigated yet (but which probably contain my answer). Finally found a more extensive discussions of the channel change script on the ubuntu forum, which has a posted copy of channelchange.pl (still current as of Jan 2008)

For serial, even less stuff. Found this posting from someone named
Karl Kamysek which mentions mythtv/contrib/channel_changers/dct-channel which:
# ./channel -v 10
Attempting to initialize DCT
No response to packet
No response to init_1; trying to continue
No response to packet
No response to initialize_2
That was also mentioned on the mythtv-users list which seems to mention that being located here: /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.18.1/contrib. Looks like searches for dct-channel turn up quite a bit, including a thread from 2005. Found a 2007 link to dct-channel.tgz. Ahhhh - finally found MythTV_External_Channel_Changer on the Ubuntu wiki.

Myth also appears to have power scripting if you know where to look... but scripts may need some touching up to know how/when to stop if they are prematurely stopped by the user.

Various tips on myhdbox, knoppmyth, and gentoo-wiki.

Man, I'm surprised to find that the complaints about MythMusic are mostly correct. It really seems like an unfinished product. I'm sure it can be done via SQL, but I can't find any way to change anything after the CD is imported - that includes deleting a song or album!

For rebuilding a database:
myth.rebuilddatebase.pl scipt will import the old recordings. Speaking of which, someone else has posted:
automysqlbackup bash script is awesome! I use in my cron.daily. It backups mythconverg daily and weekly, compresses them, rotates them, erases older ones etc etc. check it out: http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

this is the command I run in my cron.daily folder
Speaking of sql - I'm a command-line type guy, but I'm not afraid of GUI's either... so which sql GUI/browser is best? phpMyAdmin? sqlmaestro? sqlmanager?

Lastly, the ever important debug:
mythfrontend -v important (or -v help to list more options)
Now for SVN / myth-dev hints/stuff:

Using 1 machine for both trunk and fixes.

Builds of 0.21 (and I assume 0.20) require a two step process due to a circular library reference.
Need to read: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.html#svn.tour.history.snapshots

Maybe I'll just stick with building my own Mythbuntu rather than the whole svn:
-or-
Beware when upgrading!