[mythtv] Slave backend using different encodings specs

[Bruce Markey]

Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 11:07:45AM -0500, Ben Brown wrote:
> 
> 
>>Okay, but the issue is I want 2 different Live TV settings.  One for the
>>master backend and one for the slave backend.
> 
> 
> OK, then that is not implemented.  Eventually I think I will make a per-host
> setting which selects which profile to use for Live TV.

You may remember in an earlier message on this topic, someone
described having a Matrox and a bttv card in the same dual
tuner system. This lead me to believe that a good solution
would be to map the profile descriptions to specific codec
parameters for a class of cards.

In other words, the profile field in the record table represents,
say 0=Default, 1=(same as) LiveTV, 2=Best quality, 3=Save Disk
Space, etc. Another table could then associate these with
specific codecparams for a class of cards. For most people
with one tuner, dual equivalent tuners, multiple backends with
similar resources, they would only need one class and profile
0 (Default) is associated with codecparams 0. They would only
need to enter these once, as we do now, rather than per host.

If they added an MJPEG or future HDTV, DVB, or hardware mpeg2
card they could add a new class for these cards so that Default
(0) is associated with codecparams 4, LiveTV (1) with params 5
and so on. Any number of card classes could be created and
any cardinputid could be associated with any class.

For either a per host or a card class approach, the interface
would have to make it clear that you are changing parameters
for this device and not that one so I think the interface issues
are equivalent.

For me, I have some machines with similar resources but one
has two tuners so parameters have to be geared to two recordings
at once even though the other machines could record at higher
resolutions. Either approach would work for me right now but
I believe defining classes of cards will be more useful down
the road.

--  bjm