[mythtv-users] Intermittent grey preview, recording won't play

[John Pilkington]

On 01/04/14 23:22, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> On 26 March 2014 08:46, John Pilkington <J.Pilk at tesco.net> wrote:
>>> Does  mythfrontend -O FFMPEGTS=1  work?
>>>
>>
>> I think that will only work if you have ffmpeg installed, and I notice that
>> your pastebin posts are all with mythffmpeg.
>>
>
> No you do not.
>
> mythffmpeg isn't required (though it is normally always built).
>
> MythTV has implemented its own mpegts demuxer. By its own, I mean it
> now has almost nothing in common with the current native FFmpeg's one.
> There used to be a time they were similar, myth started from a version
> and started to patch it over and over.
>
> Myth's version supports extra things such as subtitle formats,
> detecting mheg streams, having special callback when the video format
> changes and so on...
>
> Unfortunately, there are bugs and no-one in the current mythtv
> developer team currently has the skills to fix them.
>
> What -O FFMPEGTS=1 does is simply not use the myth one and use the
> native mpegts demuxer: it's always built and relies on libavformat
> which is always there.
>
> Normally, when myth mpegts demuxer fails to open a video, we then
> attempt to use the ffmpeg's one, so -O FFMPEGTS=1 should not be
> necessary anymore.
>
> When you do force to the ffmpeg's own, then there are features that won't work.
>
> Just for accuracy and information

Thanks for the clarification about ffmpeg, JYA, (and for the reworking), 
but IIRC in this particular end-of-service case FFMPEGTS=1 does make a 
difference, at least with my build which is still at 0.27-fixes-178.  As 
it happens I rarely use more than video+stereo, and usually discard all 
other streams, so when I have used the switch I haven't noticed the 
disadvantages that could come with it.  The stop-recording-earlier 
option is better, anyway.

I do have ffmpeg installed, but I understand that in *buntu that is 
often no longer true.  I was just looking in advance for reasons why 
experiences might differ.