[mythtv-users] Reserving an encoder for an external program?

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sun Aug 20 22:28:23 UTC 2006


On 08/20/06 16:10, chris at cpr.homelinux.net wrote:

>On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 02:33:23PM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>  
>
>>On 08/20/06 09:08, Lars Kellogg-Stedman wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'm hoping that there's some way to schedule "idle time" for an
>>>encoder
>>>
>>You can tell Myth not to use it by not configuring it in mythtv-setup. 
>>
>You've missed his point.
>

Well, hey, you missed my point (and I'm pretty sure you missed his, 
too--as he seemed to want something that works with a "stock MythTV 
build" (quoted from his post)).  My solution works with any version of 
MythTV.

>  This is similar to the FAQ "my cable will 
>be disconnected for a few hours and I want to stop Myth from 
>recording static from that tuner during that time".  Stopping Myth 
>entirely
>

Where did I say, "shut down mythbackend?"  I said, "tell Myth not to use 
it [the card] by not configuring it [the card] in mythtv-setup."  That 
means he should configure all his other cards in Myth, and--to be 
complete--run mythbackend.  Therefore, he would have one card dedicated 
to radio and all other cards available for TV.

> would cause other non-cable (or in this case, non-radio) 
>tuners to be unavailable and would kill all the frontends.  
>  
>

What, not running MythTV means that MythTV won't record things?  I never 
would have guessed.

>Similarly, setting all the recording rules to "this schedule is 
>inactive" is a lot of work for a short outage and affects all 
>tuners.  The "do not record" overrides apply to the show, not the 
>tuner.
>
>Currently the only way to free up a tuner is to manually insert "do 
>not record this showing" overrides for every show that falls into 
>that time period for which the desired tuner would be a candidate.  
>  
>

Which means as new shows "cascade" into those recording slots (from 
previous conflicts), you'd have to insert more overrides.

>If multiple tuners are candidates for recording then they *ALL* 
>have to be disabled because Myth doesn't allow us to direct 
>recordings to a specific tuner.
>  
>

Yep.  Definitely not a workable solution.

>The solution we really need is two-fold:
>
>Part 1- A way to specify a specific tuner in a recording rule that 
>overrides the normal allocation of shows to tuners.
>
>Part 2- A special kind of recording rule (or a recording 
>profile/codec for a normal rule) that allows Myth to schedule a 
>recording but then not actually record anything when the time 
>comes.  That would allow the tuner to be forced to an idle state.
>
>Incidentally, why does the frontend's "Setup | TV Settings | 
>Recording Profiles" page have a "(Create new profile group)" option 
>when you can only associate the profile with a video source in the 
>mythtv-setup program?  I can understand having an editor for 
>adjusting the bit-rates in the frontend, but would have expected to 
>see the creation and deletion of profile groups in the mythtv-setup 
>program.
>

Extending the EXECTV's support for marking a capture card as unavailable 
would be an easier solution if you planned to write new code.  I think 
it's pretty much as easy as sending a "FREE_TUNER" command to the backend.

Mike


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list