[mythtv-users] MPEG recordings

[Michael T. Dean]

Alan Murrell wrote:

>  1. I have several MPEG recordings that were recorded using 'mp1e'
>
an MPEG-1 encoder.

>a while ago, but I seem unable to play them in MythTV.  When I go into "Videos ->
>Browse Videos" and select any of the recordings, all the information is
>blank (which isn;t so much a bother), but also the "Runtime" is listed as "0
>minutes".  When I try to play it, I get the "Loading..." show up on the
>screen, but nothing plays.  Nothing shows up in the log files (i.e., I don;t
>see any "mythfrontend" log files in the log directory).  Any ideas as to
>what is wrong and how to fix it would be apprecited.
>  
>
Does Myth's internal player know how to play MPEG-1, or will he have to 
use MythVideo with MPlayer or xine?

>  2. I am using a PVR-250 to do my recordings.  Whle a recording is
>happening, I notice almost no load or CPU usage on the recording server,
>which seems to indicate that the PVR-250 is indeed doing the recording (and
>therefore recording in MPEG-2 format), however, they are recorded with a
>'.nuv' extension, and when they are finished, I cannot play them in a
>"standard" media player, such as Windows Media Player, even if I rename the
>extension to '.mpg'.  I am guessing that this is what is happening:
>
>  - the PVR-250 is indeed recording in MPEG-2 format, and the '.nuv'
>extension is just a standard extension that MythTV uses
>  
>
Yes.

>  - when the recording is finished, MythTV is going through and flagging the
>commercials, and it is while it is doing this that it is transcoding to
>'.nuv' format
>  
>
Actually, they are not trancoded--unless you specifically enable 
automatic transcoding.  If so, they will be transcoded from MPEG-2 
content within an MPEG Program Stream (for example) container to MPEG-4 
content within a NuppelVideo container (according to your transcoding 
profile).

If you haven't enabled automatic transcoding, they *will* open in a 
properly configured media player--even Microsoft Windows Media Player.  
Note that depending on how you try to open them, different results can 
occur.  For example, a web server may return a MIME type that 
incorrectly identifies the contents of the file--which can cause 
problems with some players.  WMP, however, generally ignores the 
specified MIME type and uses file extension to identify the file 
contents, so changing the extension to .mpg (or, better yet, using 
mythlink.sh from the contrib directory modified to add a .mpg extension 
to symlinks to the original files) should allow you to open the files in 
WMP.  If using Samba to open them, you might run up against file size 
limits.  And, I'm sure there are far more situations that may cause 
problems.

Mike