[mythtv-users] mytharchive on a frontend

[D]

On 3/5/07, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:
> I'm going to start with the immediate technical problem, then end with a
> meta/procedural question at the end, which will hopefully obviate the
> need for the technical solution.  Please bear with me.
>
> I have a Myth backend/frontend machine in the office (FC6, Athlon XP
> 2400_, PVR-350), and I have my laptop connected over .g wireless (Suse
> 10.0, Thinkpad T42).  What I would like to do is be able to run
> mytharchive on my laptop to burn recordings on my backend to DVD, to
> reduce the burdens of ffmpeg,etc from my server.
>
> I have the front end/back end/mytharchive/etc installed on the laptop.
> When I try to select recordings to burn on the screen with the disk size
> progress meter, it doesn't show the bar getting bigger when I add
> content (though it shows the sizes of the individual recordings).   When
> I try to burn the disk, I get the following:
> 2007-03-05 22:46:36
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/usr/share/mythtv/mytharchive/scripts/mythburn.py", line 3600, in ?
>     processJob(job)
>   File "/usr/share/mythtv/mytharchive/scripts/mythburn.py", line 3378,
> in processJob
>     preProcessFile(node,folder)
>   File "/usr/share/mythtv/mytharchive/scripts/mythburn.py", line 1076,
> in preProcessFile
>     mediafile = os.path.join(recordingpath,
> file.attributes["filename"].value)
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/posixpath.py", line 62, in join
>     elif path == '' or path.endswith('/'):
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'endswith'
> 2007-03-05 22:46:36
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I am guessing the problem is caused by one of two things:
> 1) There's some setup field I haven't set that I need to
> 2) mythburn expects to be running on the same machine as mythbackend.
>
> Am I right?  Which one?
>
>
> Now for the "process" question:
>
> My server has an AMD  XP 2400+, but it's also a mail server, web server,
> Subversion server, ....  The load recording programs isn't horrible
> because I have a PVR-350 with a hardware encoder, and only the one card
> (for nowa).  I am getting quite a bit of "ivtv0: All encoder VBI stream
> buffers are full. Dropping data/ivtv0: Cause: the application is not
> reading fast enough.", but I'll ask about that in a future message.
>
> I need to watch programs on my laptop, not the mythbackend box, because
> it's in a an inconvenient place to watch TV.  I'm trying to use
> mytharchive to burn programs to DVD that I've recorded, then I can watch
> them downstairs on the DVD player.  I also don't want to watch the
> programming on the laptop, because I'm usually working on the laptop
> while watching the recordings.
>
> I find when I try to use mytharchive to copy programs onto a DVD to
> watch elsewhere, on occasion it locks up my server completely.  I'm
> pretty sure this only happens when it's also recording at the same time,
> so I assume it's a processing power thing.  Is that reasonable, or is
> there likely some other issue?
>
> Can anyone think of another viewing option?
>
> Thanks in advance.
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>


yes, archiving eats a lot of CPU and takes time due to the transcoding
involved - it may very well be slowing your machine to a halt.  I use
an XP 2500, however, and haven't had any problems though I have only
rarely burned and dont recall if I was recording at the same time.

as for archiving from a frontend only machine....I'm not sure. I think
the files need to be accessible from the filesystem, so it may be
possible if you nfs the recordings directory locally.