[mythtv-users] Using MythTV files remotely

[and]

Couldn't you just use with the mpeg2 files from the pvr250?
-the mpg's it generate are quite playable on any machine I would guess..

I realize that you might end up with bigger files and/or less quality 
than with mpeg4, but it would seem to be a good approach. One that I'm 
trying to do for the very same reasons as you (record in US and watch 
in EU).... ;-)

I would thing a combination of quarter (360x240) resolution and thin 
bitrate (1 or 2 mb.....or less) would make a decent video for watching 
over the web....... How far can you turn down the stream on a pvr250 
card?

any insights?
rgds
anders

On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 03:12 AM, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:

> On Wednesday 17 September 2003 07:23 am, Timothy.Weaver at at.redbull.com 
> wrote:
>> I have scanned the entire history of the mailing list and did not see
>> anyone using MythTV the way I intend to use it. As I am currently 
>> living in
>> Europe without any possibility of satellite or other form of English 
>> TV, I
>> decided to setup a MythTV box in the USA where I can remotely control 
>> it to
>> record programs, transfer them to my computer in Europe and watch TV. 
>> This
>> has some interesting implications.
>
> VERY cool.  Kudos for your ingenuity!
>
>
>> First some background. I have a PVR-250 in a 2.5Ghz machine with 512MB
>> connected to a cable modem. Upstream on the cable modem is around 
>> 12KBps.
>> This is an important point because my real issue is in finding the 
>> optimum
>> settings to give me a decent quality file at the lowest possible 
>> size. I
>> accept that I need to balance quality versus file size. I will be
>> transferring the files in the background and will not stream or 
>> directly
>> access the files, therefore I can accept slightly bigger files in the
>> interest of decent quality.
>>
>> I have successfully setup the September 16 tarball of ivtv and CVS of
>> MythTV remotely and can capture video just fine using "cat 
>> /dev/video0 >
>> video.mpg". I also have xmltv and MythWeb running and can record 
>> shows, so
>> I should be able to handle the administration fine from Europe. As I 
>> have a
>> straight coax into the PVR-250, I did not have to worry about lirc 
>> (thank
>> god).
>>
>> I set MythTV's Default profile to record at 720x480 with audio 
>> sampling at
>> 32000. I then set the Transcode profile to 480x320 with audio 
>> sampling at
>> 32000 (as I read the mailing list, the audio sampling must match).
>>
>> My questions are:
>>
>> 1) Can anyone recommend which settings in MythTV's Transcode profile I
>> should use to obtain decent quality for a file size I could live with
>> downloading?
>
> That's very subjective, based on your definition of "decent quality" 
> and what
> a 'liveable' file size is.  However, why not try the default MPEG-4 
> settings
> (bitrate 3300 scaled) with MP3 audio quality 1 (I think that's the 
> highest
> compression, if not then 9).  Then start tweaking from there.
>
>
>> 2) Is anyone still experiencing lockups with the mythtranscode
>> functionality? I need tor research more, but I think this is the 
>> cause of
>> box lockups I am having.
>
> Can't say, as I don't currently use the transcoder.
>
>
>> 3) I will be viewing the files on a Windows box.
>
> No, you won't :-)  Seriously, though, I don't know of any way to watch 
> a
> native Myth MPEG-4 recording on a Windows box.  Someone is working on a
> DirectShow driver/plugin, but I don't know if it's in a usable state 
> yet.
>
>> As PVR-250 encodes
>> straight to MPEG-2, I can download and watch the MPEG-2 files fine.
>> However, the transcoded files to MPEG-4 give me a codec error on 
>> Windows
>> Media Player and Intervideo WinDVD.
>
> Right; it's not an MPEG-4 file, it's a NuppelVideo file.  The video is
> compressed with an MPEG-4 codec, but it's not an MPEG container as the 
> audio
> is not muxed in, among other things.  AFAIK there is not even a Windows
> player that can handle vanilla NuppelVideo files, let alone Myth's 
> tweaked
> version of the Nuppel format.  You might want to get a Linux box up and
> running.  If you can't install Linux on a box there, try KnoppMyth, 
> which
> lets you run a Myth frontend directly from a bootable CD.
>
>> Is there any way I can confirm the
>> transcode is working properly
>
> Yes; play the file back in Myth.
>
>> and also any way to indicate when the
>> transcode is completed on a given recording?
>
> Well, there's not notification feature... I think maybe there's a flag 
> in the
> database that indicates if transcoding has been done.  Barring that, I
> believe the existence of a "<program>.nuv.old" file would indicate a
> completed transcode.
>
>> 4) Is there any easy way to identify the connection between the file 
>> name
>> used on the file system and the actual contents of the file? I know 
>> it is
>> the time and date in the name. I know I can look it up in the mysql 
>> tables.
>> But I am looking for something more glamorous and don't want to 
>> reinvite
>> the wheel .
>
> Again, you probably want a Linux box for this, running a standalone 
> frontend.
> You could try running a cron job on your backend in the US to dump the
> 'recorded' table from the mythconverg database to a file, and transfer 
> that
> file along with the recordings to your EU box.  Then import the data 
> into
> your local (EU) mythconverg database.
>
>
>> 5) Finally, as I have no need for the LiveTV function, can anyone 
>> confirm
>> whether the LiveTV functionality is doing anything when I am not 
>> running
>> the frontend (which I will rarely ever do, but I can do it for
>> administration purposes over a Xvnc connection).
>
> LiveTV is only activated if a frontend is using it.
>
> You can get a pretty slick setup going if you setup a Myth frontend for
> yourself.  It will be a little complicated, but feasible.  If you're 
> really
> locked into a Windows box, your best option would be to keep the files 
> in
> MPEG-2 and bite the bullet on the large file transfers.  You can 
> probably
> adjust the capture settings to get the files a little bit smaller.  
> Your
> other WIndows option is to try to use mythmkmovie to transcode the 
> recordings
> into true MPEG-4 (DivX or Xvid) files that should be playable on a 
> Windows
> box; you'd need to set up a cron job to do this.
>
> Best of luck, and please report back on your progress!
>
> -JAC
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