[mythtv-users] A Pair of Feature Requests (long)...

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Sun Nov 23 14:52:16 EST 2003


Seth Lake wrote:
> howdy.

Hello,
 
> one of the main things i do with mythtv is record shows for my 3 year 
> old son, mostly sponge bob square pants.  these shows, being all fairly 
> simple animation, don't require much bandwidth at all to look good.  
> transcoding them to an ~800 mpg4 stream seems to be more than adequate 
> to make my boy happy.  on the other hand, stuff that my wife wants me to 
> grab is all larger bandwidth stuff, but we only intend to watch it once 
> then delete it for the most part, i don't care to transcode it at all 
> since would be a waste of time and not look very good at ~800.  it would 
> be nice if mythtv had the option, when you set the box to record, of 
> auto-transcoding per record setting instead of as a global flag...and to 
> take it a step further, auto-transcoding to a particular set of settings.

I don't think you need to transcode anything to accomplish
what you describe. MythTV 0.12 has "Recording Profiles" that
control the parameters for different types of cards including
the ivtv driver. You can specify the parameters for "Default",
"Live TV", "High Quality" and "Low Quality". On the advanced
options page for any show, you can choose which profile to use
for that show.

Set your parameters for animation in Setup->TV Settings->Recording
Profiles->Hardware Encoders->Low Quality (it should be called Low
Resolution =). For SpongeBob, press "I" (twice?) then choose this
"Profile:". Same for the High Quality things for your wife. If
you don't change the profile for a show, Default will be used.

> again, with sponge bob square pants, nickelodeon seems to vary the 
> start/end time of the show (it doesn't start right at the top of the 
> hour all the time), so when i see a recording has been cut-off i delete 
> it hoping it will be recorded right the next time around.  also, when 
> playing around with transcode settings to find something that worked i 
> simply deleted programs i had messed up.  after a week or so i realized 
> that myth would only record a program once...oops!  i had read that it 
> will only record a program once, but i had assumed that it looked at the 
> directory for duplicates, not that it actually kept track of them in the 
> DB.  well, i can get around that one alright (but kind of a pain) by 
> install phpMyAdmin and manually deleting the recordings that went awry.  
> it would be nice though, when your trying to collect every episode of a 
> show, if there was a toggle that looked in the physical directory for 
> duplicates instead of checking the DB.

Well, 0.13 will have at least three solutions for this. First,
current CVS and the next release will have "Pre-Roll" and
"Post-Roll" time that can be added or subtracted at each end
of a show. You can set SpongeBob to start early and/or end late
enough to record the entire show. Next, There are now three
options for duplicates "Never", "if deleted" and "Always". It
sounds like you were hoping for the new second "if deleted".
With this option it won't record an episode if you currently
have a recorded copy but will record if you've deleted the
previous recording. Finally, there is now an override feature.
On the conflicts page, it will now show all matching showings
for the things you've chosen to record. You can now mark any
show that was previously recorded (or marked to not record for
any reason) to explicitly "Record it anyway". Likewise, for any
showing scheduled to record you can specify "Don't record it".

I'd like to extend my thanks to Matt Zimmerman, Geoffrey Hausheer
Chris Pinkham and David Engel for adding the features mentioned
here on top of all of Isaac's work. With these recent additions,
MythTV is rapidly evolving a very powerful scheduler equal to,
and in some ways better than any of the commercial DVRs.

--  bjm



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