[mythtv-users] MythTV - PVR-250 - some newbie questions

[Mark Knecht]

On 4/23/05, emory <emory.commerce at gmail.com> wrote:
> Though you aren't using Fedora, check out http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
> for a lot of handy debugging tips (i.e. why you aren't getting any
> video, how to change the channel without mythtv, etc).

Thanks. I'll check it out.
> 
> Your .NUV files from a PVR-250 should be around 2 GB an hour.  The raw
> video files you are recording via command line look too small to be
> real video files, and the files you are recording with myth are too
> big to be MPEG2 encoded.   Have you tried running "mythtvsetup" to set
> up your PVR-250 as an input?

Yes - it's all setup using mythtv-setup. The specific MythTV version
and flags are here:

dragonfly ~ # emerge -pv mythtv

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild   R   ] media-tv/mythtv-0.18  +X +alsa (-altivec) -arts
-cle266 -debug -directfb -dvb -ieee1394 +jack -joystick -lcd +lirc
+nls -nvidia +oggvorbis +opengl +oss +xv 0 kB

Total size of downloads: 0 kB
dragonfly ~ #


I actually don't think the files recorded at the command line using
/dev/video0 are raw. I think they are mpeg and while I do get some
message that say mplayer isn't perfectly happy with them they do play
correctly and look OK, other than some interlacing/decoding stuff I
see. If I play one using mplayer in part I'm seeing this:

==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG 1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================
Checking audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 48000Hz/2ch/16bit...
AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 48000 hz, little endian signed int
AF_pre: 48000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
AO: [oss] 48000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/16bit -> 48000Hz/2ch/16bit...
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.33:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [x11] 720x480 => 720x540 Planar YV12
SwScaler: using unscaled Planar YV12 -> BGR 16-bit special converter
A:   3.7 V:   3.7 A-V:  0.006 ct:  0.066 104/104  8%  5%  0.7% 0 0 70%

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: sleep_timer
mark at dragonfly ~ $


However they do play and I seem to get about 40MB/minute so that would
be on the order ot 2GB/hour matching you number.

The nuv files I'm getting from MythTV right now are more on the order
of 800MB-1GB/minute. To me that seem more like raw video but I could
certainly be wrong.

My next experiment is to plow away the current setups for the PVR-250
and redo them. The  current setup uses /dev/v4l/video0. I want to try
it with /dev/video0 which is what works from the command lne but I'm
not sure how to have all this in MythTV and make sure it's really
doing what I want it to do.

Thanks for the info! I don't need to record SNL tonight. I would like
to. That's my goal, but it's not worth installing Windows here.

Thanks,
Mark