[mythtv] How to edit the gui? (And some profile related stuff)

[Bruce Markey]

Isaac Richards wrote:
...
> I think the best way from a ease of use standpoint would be to have fixed size 
> groups, with 3 or 4 quality levels with fixed names.  Creating a new 
> recording group would automatically create the 3 or 4 different levels for 
> that group.  So, 'High quality' means 'high quality' regardless of which 
> profile group is eventually selected to record the show.

Agreed. I'll buy into fixed names if it meets this objective.

> We can predefine 
> groups for 'Software encoding (slow cpu)' (which would use rtjpeg), 'Software 
> encoding (fast cpu)' (for mpeg4), 'MJPEG Encoding (g400-tv, DC10+)', 'MPEG2 
> Encoding (PVR-250, PVR-350)', and even have it autoselect between all those..  
> A 'Use this recording group on these hosts' list wouldn't be hard to do 
> through the UI, either -- would there be any more granularity needed than 
> per-host?

Four of the last five times this question has come up, the user
was adding a card of a different type to an existing backend
system ...not that I've been counting (okay, I've been counting ;).

I don't think hostname is a relevant distinction. Recordid
clearly isn't the right answer and sourceid and cardinput
aren't the right thing either (if I had both coax and s-video
into a PVR and into a bttv card I wouldn't want to distinguish
codecparams per cardinput). I think cardid is the right 
distinction. If card 1 is a PVR and cards 2 and 3 are bttv
the codecparams should be associated with the cardid
regardless of the hostname, sourceid, show title, or ranking.


>  Hmm.. it'd probably be easier to enumerate the available hosts 
> (and card types per host) and allow the user to select a default profile 
> group or set it autodetect.  Be really similar to the capture card input 
> mapping screen in setup, that way.

I had suggested before that the groups should be created on
the recording profile page. Upon further review this clearly
belongs in the backend setup. I was thinking that there could
be a spinbox under step 2 "Capture Cards" to declare the card
type. But, hey, it's already there! 'capturecard.cardtype' plus
'record.profile' could be used to determine 'codecparams.profile'.

So, clear the white board. Proposal for a simple but effective
solution for profiles with multiple card types:

1) Use the existing cardtype selected in setup step 2. Additional
cardtypes could be added as needed otherwise no code changes here.

2) Add a table to map 'capturecard.cardtype' plus 'record.profile'
to specific 'codecparams.profile' numbers.

3) Modify the top page of TV-Settings->Recording to remove
"(Create new profile)" and show the four predefined profile names
for each unique value in 'capturecard.cardtype'. For most people
this would show four lines but there would be eight lines if
you had two card types. Codecparams would need to be initialized
if a new cardtype appears.

4) At record time, lookup record profile number and capturecard
cardtype in the new table to find the 'codecparams.profile'
number for the parameters to be used for this recording.

5) Add PVR codecparams and include them in the TV-Settings->
Recording pages.


I could hack at this myself but I'd trust either of you to do a
better job.

--  bjm