[mythtv-users] Ticket #10697: Mythvideo always starts in "/" root

[Raymond Wagner]

On 5/6/2012 17:46, Martin Ginkel wrote:
> Am 06.05.2012 23:02, schrieb MythTV:
>> #10697: Mythvideo always starts in "/" root
>> ------------------------------------+----------------------------
>>   Reporter:  martin_ginkel@…         |          Owner:
>>       Type:  Bug Report - General    |         Status:  closed
>>   Priority:  minor                   |      Milestone:  unknown
>> Component:  MythTV - Video Library  |        Version:  0.25-fixes
>>   Severity:  medium                  |     Resolution:  Invalid
>>   Keywords:                          |  Ticket locked:  1
>> ------------------------------------+----------------------------
>> Comment:
>>
>>   "mythvideo" is now integrated into the frontend, and just the Video
>>   Library.  Those settings in the frontend are deprecated, and due for
>>   removal.  Use the "Videos" storage group defined in mythtv-setup to allow
>>   the backend to serve the content to all connected frontends.
>
> Sounds reasonable, but for a couple of my videos I still have to use mplayer,
> as the internal player plays gibberish. Use of external players seems supported
> according to:
>
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Video_Library#Local_Video_Storage

At the moment, local video storage only exists because no one has yet 
taken the time to remove it.  They have been staged for removal since 
MythVideo was converted to storage groups in 0.22.  While there were 
lingering issues with regards to encrypted DVDs, as of 0.25, the 
internal player will attempt to access storage group content from the 
local filesystem if available, bypassing that issue.

In regards to external players, those have also been planned for 
removal, at least in their current form.  The current best suggestion is 
to remove all the assorted options surrounding them, and to only support 
a single "alternate" player, that can be called manually from the menu 
in the event the internal player does not work.  While storage group 
content gets passed to external players as a myth:// URI, a wrapper 
script can trivially strip that away, and a more complex one can 
actually search through multiple paths defined in the database to find 
the correct one.  At the moment, that will require any storage group 
content be mounted on each remote frontend.  The current plan is to 
provide a library to be injected through LD_PRELOAD to override the 
native file access routines and allow those external players to access 
content from the remote server.

>>   All paths in the Video Library are stored and displayed relative to the
>>   path you defined for the storage group.  The only way you would be seeing
>>   anything different is if you were running in File Browse Mode (another
>>   option planned for removal), or you somehow have the old absolute paths in
>>   your database from an old version of MythVideo and need to rescan your
>>   content to refresh those paths.
>
> The paths (filename column) in the videometadata table need to be absolute.
> I changed one file to a relative path with respect to the video root,
> this can not be played anymore. But in the gallery view with directories
> enabled, this shows now as sibling of the root folder.

After closing the ticket, I followed up with the former dev last 
responsible for the Video Library, and you are correct.  Content stored 
on local paths still specifies the absolute path.  Only storage group 
content is stored relatively.  However in previous versions, MythTV was 
able to correctly strip away those paths and show the content properly 
merged with storage group content.

If this is no longer the case, then it makes more sense to simply make 
that configuration officially unsupported.  There is no good purpose 
fixing something that is getting removed in the near term anyway.  I'm 
still going to bet the issue you are seeing is the cause of File Browse 
Mode, another problematic "feature" on the chopping block.