[mythtv] Development thoughts + Mythtv crashing bug - during playback/delete

Isaac Richards mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Mon, 9 Sep 2002 13:36:30 -0400


On Monday 09 September 2002 09:50 am, Charles Choukalos wrote:
> Issac,
>
> I was digging through the Mythtv code and trying to
> familiarize myself with what's going on.  I was
> thinking about Snapstream and (forgot the co's name)
> their DVR2 software.  Basically I think that Including
> some way to reuse/move around the stored show files
> would be very useful.  So I'm wondering if there's a
> reason that the files are stored in your special
> nupplevideo format and not as just .avi's, .mpegs,
> .nuv's ect with standard headers and have a entry in
> the mysql db that says what they are for play back
> purposes?  

I don't really want to deal with playing back other formats.

> Additionally, I'm thinking that their
> should be a path stored for each entry in the mysql db
> to tell where a show is actually stored (by default/of
> for recording whats setup now works)... but that way
> you could archive the shows to CD (have a note in the
> DB), or move them to another harddrive (ie my media
> server idea that I keep touting).  Is this going to
> break a lot of things?  I know that right now the
> nuppelvideo header is going to cause trouble... but
> I'm not sure how much of a change this requries.

Well, you'd also have to have some way to locate files that have gone missing, 
I'd think.  Main reason I have it the way I do is so I could change the 
location of the stored files in the config file without having to update the 
database.  Instead of storing a static path in the db, what would you think 
of searching multiple paths for the files?

> Okay, on my second rant.  I'd love to have commercial
> skip in there...  Have we thought about a 30 second
> skip function for the remote/interface yet?
> Additionally, does anyone know what the protocol for
> the VCR+ commercial skip is?  (I'd just love to not
> record any commercials when I'm archiving shows!)  If
> someone's got some suggestions, I'd be willing to
> start some code for this.

The ff/rew amount is configurable in the settings file.  Adding a separate key 
binding with a larger fast forward amount would be easy, as well, if you 
wanted to do that.  As for automatic stuff, I'd be leery of including 
anything that was too greedy in eating video data..  _probably_ be better to 
include the data it needed to eat a commercial in the file, and only remove 
things on playback, not recording.

> Okay, and on to other bug issues.  Suddenly mythtv
> (release 5) is crashing on me when I try to watch
> recordings, or delete them.  It just dumps out
> unexpectedly.  I don't have the screen capture on me,
> but nothing looked out of place.  However, I think I
> know what might have happened.  I tried to watch live
> tv while the system was recording a show (it was
> probably 3/4 of the way through).  When I hit the
> watch live tv it crashed.  Brought it back up again,
> and that's when all the trouble started happening.
> Now I'm thinking that I must have corrupted something
> in the mysql db that If I clean it up it should work
> correctly again?  Any thoughts?

Other than running it in gdb and seeing where it crashes, no =)

> Also whats the status on mpeg2 format for recording...
> I know that you were working on that, so I'm just
> wondering where it is or if this is something that I
> can fool around with.

I've never worked on support for mpeg2, just libavcodec's mpeg4 stuff.
That all works fairly well, just change the Codec setting in the config file 
from 'rtjpeg' to 'mpeg4', and it'll encode using that.  It does use quite a 
bit more CPU, though.  I haven't worked much on re-encoding yet.  And 
actually, most of libavcodecs other video encoders should work as well, but I 
haven't really tested them.

Isaac