[mythtv] Re: MythMusic Improvements

[Colin Guthrie]

Chris Fleming wrote:
> Nick Parkinson wrote:
> 
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Just wondered if anyone was working on improvements
>>> for MythMusic; here's a list of things that spring
>>> to
>>> mind:
>>>
>>> 1. IPOD support, and for other portable devices
>>> (USB)
>>>   
> 
> Having just set up my iPod to work with linux yesterday evening. I 
> started thinking about integration Mythtv. My current thinking is that 
> the best way to do this is to build some  scripts around gnupod 
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html) to deal with the itunes 
> database, it also has the capability to convert from ogg to mp3 format. 
> So  initially I just plan to get some scripts working that will sync the 
> tunes and playlists listed in mythmusic.
> 
> My plan will then be to add a frontend plugin, however as a sync may 
> take a long time, especially if we are converting to mp3's  the actal 
> sync will run in the background and so the frontend will just be a means 
> of checking the current status and mounting/unmounting the ipod.
> 
> It will also need a method of dealing with situations where the iPod 
> doesn't have enough capacity to store all of the music - I've not run 
> into this situation yet, however the most likely solution will be to use 
> a playlist to manage this.
> 
> It would also be good to sync the rating, and playcount data.
> 
> Any other thoughs? Anybody else doing this yet?

I filed a bug/enhancement for this in bugzilla (but 19 or 20 IIRC) and 
was going to have a crack at this for my iRiver, but havn't finished the 
other improvments I'm making yet, so not had time to get round to it.

It would be really nice if anyone starts working on this code if they 
can make it configurable for different media players. For example, my 
iRiver uses a different database format to iPod, and it can play 
Oggs/WMA directly without needing any form of conversion (can't do FLAC 
tho'). So it would be nice if these parts of the sync process worked in 
a flexible/configurable manner.

As for playlist, I think it would be nice to be able to register one or 
more playlists per device for sync'ing. It's not unfeasable that two or 
three people would all want to sync their media devices to the mythbox, 
and may want to have different playlists etc, even if they have the same 
player. Would it be possible to read some from of serial number from the 
device and somehow associate it with the different playlist (in some 
cases it may be the same playlists of course).

I'm looking forward to the day when some form of regexp based playlists 
are integrated into MythMusic and when that happens autosync'ing of 
playlists may get pretty sweet.

I guess there would be no problem with writing a small "control" file on 
the device too to track the sync process, to save it scanning the whole 
disc, although even a full disc scan isn't too crazy so perhaps not needed.

I defo like the idea of a background process, perhaps with some form of 
loose bandwidth limit to save it hogging all your network bandwidth (if 
appropriate) to allow you to watch a movie or play more music if that's 
what you want to do.

Do you see this as a totally separate plugin or just integrated into 
MythMusic. I had originally thought part of MM but your comments above 
perhaps suggest you thought otherwise??

Just a few pennies for thoughts!

Col.

-- 

+------------------------+
|     Colin Guthrie      |
+------------------------+
|   myth at colin.guthr.ie  |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+