[mythtv-users] Mytharchive errors

[Harry Devine]

Rod Smith wrote:
> On Monday 08 December 2008 05:48:29 pm Harry Devine wrote:
>   
>> OK, I understand that part, but I just can't seem to figure out why the
>> command that Mytharchive is putting together is failing.
>>     
>
> It's buggy. Although there may be a simple fix for your specific problem, it's 
> unclear to me, given the symptoms you've presented, what that fix might be. 
> It could be something simple (I've one suggestion below), but it could be a 
> problem buried deep in the source code for ffmpeg (or conceivably some other 
> tool). You simply haven't presented sufficiently diagnostic information. 
> (That's not a criticism; these tools are extremely unfriendly to novice 
> users.)
>
>   
>>  48000 -acodec ac3 -f dvd "/tmp/work/1/newfile2.mpg"
>>     
>
> I hadn't noticed this before, but you're creating a temporary MPEG-2 file 
> on /tmp. This directory might or might not be big enough to hold the 
> temporary MPEG-2 file. If it's not, then the partition is filling up and the 
> process will stall or crash. I believe there's a setting in the MythTV user 
> interface for where MythArchive stores its temporary files. That directory 
> should be on a partition or logical volume with lots of space -- MythArchive 
> will be storing data equal to at least two DVDs in size there (maybe three or 
> even four; I'd need to verify that). Alternatively, you can type the command 
> by hand but change the location of this file to a directory where you know 
> you've got lots of space and see if it finishes this time.
>
>   
>> Lastly, I'll try the midentify script.  However, when I tried your
>> transcode script the other day, I wasn't really sure how to answer the
>> questions.  Mainly due to my lack of understanding of the audio/video
>> formats that are required.
>>     
>
> Try these:
>
> - bitrate: direct, ~3000000 bps (that's 6 zeroes); or by size, ~1500MB/hour
> - 1-pass
> - 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, whichever it is (getting this wrong will just
>   squash or stretch the copy)
> - don't crop
> - 720x480 final image size
> - default audio track
> - convert to 2-channel AC3 audio
> - audio delay: 0
>
> This should produce something that will be suitable for burning to DVD without 
> an additional transcode operation. If you get something wrong (like in the 
> aspect ratio or cropping), it'll still burn to DVD, but it'll be improperly 
> cropped or be stretched or squashed.
>
> Note that if my (very tentative) hypothesis about your running out of disk 
> space on /tmp is correct, transcoding in this way isn't likely to help; when 
> you run MythArchive on the transcoded recording, it'll still need a lot of 
> disk space to prepare the image, and it'll run out if you're using a 
> too-small /tmp.
>
>   
I checked the space on /tmp and it's a 5 GB partition with 4.6 GB left.  
However, since you mentioned that it may need 2 or 3 times more space, I 
decided to change the mytharchive directory to /storage/temp.  /storage 
is a 500 GB drive where I keep my recordings, and it has about 450 GB 
left on it.  I went through some of the settings and made the following 
changes:
1) unchecked "Always use mythtranscode"
2) checked "Use ProjectX"
3) changed the mytharchive directory to be /storage/temp

When I run it again, I get the same errors.  I am attaching the 
mythburn.log and progress.log files in case you'd care to peek at them.  
2 things that I noticed that seemed really weird was "Waiting for 
mythtranscode to create the fifos" and "unknown encoder 'mpeg2video'".  
The second one sounds like something's missing from my system, but the 
first one is odd to me because I said DON'T use mythtranscode.  It looks 
like that setting is being ignored.

Any ideas?  BTW, I haven't tried creating the midentify script yet to 
run your transcoder script in the mean time.
Harry

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