[mythtv-users] Can I 1) Mythbrowser without mythbackend? 2) Display progress bar while mplayer buffering?

[Michael Moore]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 9:31 PM, Brad DerManouelian
<myth at dermanouelian.com> wrote:
> On Aug 15, 2008, at 7:01 PM, Michael Moore wrote:
>
>> I just got my Myth system set up. It's working pretty well, but I was
>> wondering if there's a good way to do any of the following...
>>
>> 1) Is there a way to use Mythbrowser and Mythweather without the
>> backend being turned on? Right now if it can't connect it goes to the
>> setup screen. If there's even a way to point mythfrontend at a
>> different profile, I wouldn't even mind using a script in my .xinitrc
>> to decide which profile to use.
>
> No. The frontend needs to connect to a backend when starting up.
> There's no other way for it to get the information from the database
> as to which frontend is connecting and which settings to use for that
> particular frontend - in your case, display properties, weather
> settings, browser settings, etc.

So this is probably dumb, but might work then?

I could have a backup backend running on the frontend. .xinitrc would
detect if mysql is available and if it's not, it would move a
.mythtv_localbackend folder to .mythtv before starting MythTV. If
mysql to the real backend is detected, it would make sure that the
correct .mythtv folder was in place.

> That being said, the backend is meant to ALWAYS be on so recordings
> will take place when the time comes. Is there a reason you don't want
> it to be on?

I'm not actually doing recordings. We don't have cable or get much OTA
so I'm just using it to share our home movies, photos and music from
our bigger 'server' computer into the living room.

>> 2) Is there a way to display a progress bar while mplayer is buffering
>> the video (when using Mythvideo). I have a large buffer set (300M), so
>> on large files mplayer can take a long time to start. I've thought
>> that it was frozen several times when loading large videos.
>
> No, you'd have to write a script to get the progress from mplayer and
> display it yourself. The frontend doesn't integrate that closely with
> mplayer or any external player. It simply launches what you tell it to
> launch or uses the internal player.
>
> Why are you setting such a large buffer to start a video? Even if you
> are streaming video wirelessly, 300M is overkill.

Probably because I'm a noob. Some of the videos I haven't reencoded
yet are 13 gigs or so and our wireless is pretty flakey. They were
stuttering a lot and someone on IRC suggested trying something big
like that.

Thanks,
-- 
Michael Moore
-------------------------
My failed attempts to draw : http://stuporglue.com/