[mythtv-users] issue playing mp3 using Internal player

[James Miller]

On Wed, 25 Mar 2020, Stephen Worthington wrote:

> Yes, creating a playable video file that way has its problems.  I did
> that for my mother's opera recordings that I used to do from an FM
> radio station.  I did work out what settings to use to create a
> playable file, but that was a very long time ago and the way I did it
> back then does not work now with newer versions of MythTV.  But the
> settings to make ffmpeg create a file MythTV can play may still work.
> I actually used avconv instead of ffmpeg and here is the command I
> used:
>
> avconv -loglevel quiet -f image2 -loop 1 -r 25 -i:v:0
> /usr/local/bin/audio_only.jpg  -f s16le -channels 2 -ar 48000 -i:a:1
> /dev/video24  -f mpegts -map 0:v -vcodec libx264 -map 1:a -acodec aac
> -ab 512k -strict experimental -shortest $recording_file
>
> What that is doing is recording audio from the /dev/video24 device (of
> a Hauppauge PVR-150 card with FM) and adding a looping video image
> from the /usr/local/bin/audio_only.jpg file.  The output is an MPEG2
> transport stream file (.ts) with AAC audio and H.264 video, similar to
> the DVB-T broadcast programs we record here in New Zealand.
>
> Of course, since it is a long time ago, I am not sure that such a file
> will still play properly, but it is likely.  The downside of your
> using the above conversion is that it would convert the audio from MP3
> format to AAC format.  So, as with all lossy conversions, the quality
> will be reduced a bit.

Thanks for the interesting input. I tried a number of different ffmpeg 
incantations cribbed from various internet postings (I'm not proficient 
enough in ffmpeg to come up with my own possibilities), but none have so 
far resulted in a file that is playable. Just to be clear, I actually 
download the finished podcast as an mp3 as opposed to recording it myself, 
as you were doing. As to lossiness, that's not much of a concern to me 
since this is a talk podcast.