[mythtv-users] Struggling with MythArchive

[Paul Harrison]

On 03/01/13 11:01, Alan Chandler wrote:
> On 01/01/13 11:26, Alan Chandler wrote:
>> Having recorded a couple of programs over christmas that my parents 
>> in law would like to watch I have tried to install mytharchive.  But 
>> I can't get it to work, and the error message isn't helping.
>>
>> My setup is ubuntu-server 12.04 with the mythubuntu packages running 
>> in that environment.
>>
>> My normal frontend is debian sid with mythtv-frontend running on my 
>> desktop
>>
>> My initial thought was to install mytharchive and run it from the 
>> front end - but despite no particular dependancy problems it soon 
>> became apparent that was a no go because it required file access to 
>> the backend recordings to work.
>>
>> So I installed mytharchive on the backend machine, connect into it 
>> via ssh -X and attempt to run mythfrontend from this machine.
>>
>> All works fine until I come to actually encode the video.
>>
>> Mythburn.log says that an error occurs whilst running mythffmpeg and 
>> that I should look in mythburn.log (which of course I am doing).  
>> There is no more information about the failure except the command used.
>>
>> I tried running mythffmpeg manually with the command that fails, and 
>> it terminates immediately (silently).  I did try changing from 
>> mythffmpeg to ffmpeg and the command seemed to then work (ie it was 
>> encoding a video and seemed to be progressing through it).
>>
>> Also I seem to have to run at root, because if I run as an ordinary 
>> user, and despite the /var/lib/mytharchive/temp directory having 777 
>> permissions, the code appears to be attempting a chmod when it is not 
>> allowed.
>>
>> So where do I go from here?
>>
> Is nobody able to help me debug this issue?  I am being banged over 
> the head to produce a dvd of a couple of programs I made for my 
> parents in law over christmas, and at the moment I can't do it.
>
> My main puzzle is what is mythffmpeg, and why that doesn't do 
> anything, when it appears that ffmpeg does.  I was sort of assuming 
> its just a wrapper, but perhaps it isn't?
>
> Is there any other way (ie follow some wiki instructions somewhere) to 
> manually create a dvd .iso file from the raw .mpg files from the program?
>

mythffmpeg is the version of ffmpeg that is linked to our version the 
ffmpeg libraries. It's done this way so we know that the version of 
mythffmpeg is compatible with the version of MythTV that is installed 
since they are built, linked and installed using the same version of the 
libraries and in theory everything that uses mythffmeg should have been 
updated to work with the installed version. This is particularly 
important when using ffmpeg since they like to change the name of the 
command line parameters with each version which breaks any scripts that 
use it like mythburn.py and nuvexport etc.

As to what is happening here I'm afraid from you description it's hard 
to tell :(

Did you see the reply from John? 
http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2013-January/344985.html

If the file is an mpeg you could try and force MythArchive to _not_ 
re-encode it which will bypass this step altogether. The DVD created 
wont be 100% DVD compatible but most players will still play it without 
problems.

Anyway the user list isn't a friendly place for devs or ex devs so I'm 
going to runaway before anybody notices I'm here :)

Paul H.