[mythtv-users] convert nuv to vob

[Martin Bene]

>  	Yes, I didn't mean to slight your recent work... I was 
> trying to put it into a "historical perspective."  The OP 
> wanted to know how everyone has been doing it... 
> until recently, they haven't.  :)

Sure, quite true. On the other hand I wanted to use the opportunity to
get wider exposure for the mythburn scripts; They're limited in what
they can do - but within these limits I think the obtainable results are
quite nice.
 
> - Non-obvious place to obtain the current code.  diffs from 
> CVS? tarball snapshots?  Forums only official documentation?
Problem: I'm not the original author of mythburn, I'm not part of the
sourceforge project. I'm still trying to contact the original author to
see if I can get the modifications into the official project. I want to
avoid forking if possible because that would create even more confusion
for users. Until then, I don't see much else I can do. 

> - No Knopmyth, apparently that's not too important anymore, though?
Nope, the current verion should be pretty much distribution agnostic.
I'm running it on gentoo, some other users are on KnopMyth and FC3.

> - It requires mythweb, which I do not have set up on my mythbox
That's a problem currently. While the scripts would be usable without
the web interface the installer insists on installing the web component.
Hmm, if you know what you're doing you could just skip the installer and
create the config file by hand.

> - It appears to be set up to be on the main mythbox... I do 
> my processing offline on a machine with a real CPU, HD, 
> and network access (at school). 
> I'm reluctant to run any sort of install script on my 
> production mythbox.

Well, the installer does just a couple of things: 
 - create the config file
 - build a couple of fractal background menu images
 - build thumbnails for the php interface
 - patch the "burn dvd" link into mythweb
 - create symlinks to the files required for php interface in the
mythweb directory. 
 - set owner/access rights of the unpacked files

So, if you don't want/need the web interface you can skip the installer

The 2 (and 1/2) parts of mythburn can exist seperately, so it would be
usable on a seperate box - if you're able to connect to the mysql
database from the processing machine: the scripts need to read title,
recording time, description, cutlists etc from the database. Oh, in case
you wonder about the 2.5 parts: 
 * DVD creation script
 * PHP frontend to prepare the commandline
 * mythburn-ui myth plugin to create the commandline. That's the 0.5,
it's not yet ready for production use and also doesn't yet support all
the options available on the php frontend.
 
* unpack mythburn stuff to a directory of your choice
* create config file mythburn.conf in conf/ subdirectory:

# Mysqltvburn config settings
myfolder=/usr/share/mythburn
mythtvlocation=/var/video
mythtvfonts=/usr/share/mythtv
dvddir=/var/video/DVD
tempdir=/var/video/temp
webuser=apache
webgroup=apache
mythwebfolder=/var/www/localhost/htdocs
mysqlhost=localhost
mysqluser=root
mysqldatabase=mythconverg
mysqlpassword=

(obviously adjusted for your settings :-)

* run mythtvburn.sh to start the DVD build process. mythtvburn.sh won't
change any original files and will write only to the temp and DVD
directories.

Parameters:
	TV Format 
		'pal' or 'ntsc'
	Backgroundimage for main menu (from images/backgrounds
directory)
		filename
	Menumusic (mp2 mmusic file for menu, from music/ folder)
		filename
	Make ISO image?  
		'yes' or 'no'
	Burn to DVD (device /dev/dvd)
		'yes' or 'no'
	Clear DVD/VIDEO_TS directory at end of script?
		'yes' or  'no'
	Highlight style for menus (image from images/highlight)
		filename
	Animated Menus? Use screenshots for menu items or use 
	animated sequences. Animation is fairly slow ATM. 
		'yes' or 'no'
	create chapter Submenus? Generate submenu for chapter 
	marks or start titles right from the main menu.
		'yes' or 'no'
	Titles + "apply cutlist" flags: for each title you want 
	to include
		'nuv filename' 
		'cut' or 'nocut'

Example commandline:

/usr/share/mythburn/mythtvburn.sh 'pal' 'mythtv-logo.png' \
	'menumusic.mp2' 'yes' 'no' 'no' 'bar.png' 'no' 'no' \
	'898_20050706182500_20050706185500.nuv' 'nocut' \
	'898_20050705183000_20050705185500.nuv' 'cut' \
	'898_20050704183000_20050704185500.nuv' 'nocut' \
	> /var/video/temp/mythburn.log 2>&1 &
	
> I have no doubt that it works OK if you get it set up.  
> I haven't waded through to try to make it go yet.  
> As I said, I'm reluctant to screw with my production box.  
> I'm excited to see lossless MPEG2 cutting finally 
> coming around, though.

Well, lots of room for improvement; better feedback if the input files
don't have DVD compatible resolution for example.

Bye, Martin