[mythtv] Mythvideo DVD ripping

[Lawrence Rust]

On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 14:06 -0700, Robert McNamara wrote:
[snip]
> I'm not against an external daemon.  I'm against an external daemon
> which is merely a wrapper for a bunch of command line tools whose
> arguments change with the direction of the wind.  We already have to
> compensate for a number of "transcode" versions and their command
> lines, I'm not eager to reinstate such a thing.

If, as Raymond Wagner suggested, the transcoding is performed by
creating a myth job then the need to use external tools is removed.
This could easily be added to this patch.

[snip]
> > At present, this is only sensibly achieved by incorporating and adapting
> > the libdvdcss sources for use with the myth protocol.  Not in itself too
> > difficult but what are the advantages?
> >
> 
> We've spoken about this in IRC and agreed that it's not an approach we
> are comfortable with.  Thus it's a complicated programming exercise
> (albeit not an impossible one).

Agreed, maintaining a (highly) modified version of libdvdcss isn't going
to be easy.  So this is probably a non-starter.

> >
> > Let's turn this on its head - why can't the myth: protocol become a
> > proper OS device?  Then libdvdcss would support it directly.
> 
> Lots of things are possible.  Given that's not likely to happen any
> time soon, all I can do is say that I hope you take some interest in
> helping us complete the migration to Storage Groups, and wish you all
> my best.

>From my perspective I need to provide a way to rip DVDs and that I have
achieved for 0.24 with this patch.  In looking forward to 0.25 and
beyond I have 2 choices: a) fix the patch (which isn't too difficult) or
b) Write something that will be added to Myth so others can benefit.  I
would prefer route b but I don't hear the demand and furthermore there
appear to be a number of obstacles, the most difficult being how to deal
with encrypted DVDs.  And even if I did provide a way of ripping to a SG
I'm not confident that the effort would be welcome.

At this point it seems that maintaining this as a private patch might be
best.

-- 
Lawrence