[mythtv-users] a couple of nits and a big transcoding (MPEG4->MPEG4) problem

[Steve Briggs]

I've been using myth for a couple of months now and overall
have been quite impressed with it's features and capabilities.

I'm running Fedora Core 4 and myth 0.18.1-116 from atrpms.

Two minor nits and one big one problem:

1) I save a lot of movies.  The "Watch Recordings" layout
works great for TV shows (with the series titles on the right
and the individual episodes on the left), not so good for
movies.  All the movies show up on the right with no
hierarchical structure -- which makes for a painfully
long list to scroll through.  I've figured out how
to go change the database to make the title some category
(i.e. "Movies-SF") and the subtitle = movie title, so
it's not a big deal, but it would be nice if the GUI
supported this somehow.  Could be I'm missing something
obvious here.

2) Inside the individual episodes.  The GUI seems to list
them from most recent recording to oldest.  It would be
nice to have a configurable parameter to change this.
Particularly for movies, when I'm looking for a movie, I
remember the title, not when I recorded it.  I'd like to
see the movies listed alphabetically.  For series, probably
the most useful would be to sort by episode number or
original air date.  Again, maybe I'm just missing something.

Even better would be to apply the great search engine myth
has for the EPG and use it for the media library.



Finally, I'm still having fits with transcoding.
I record MPEG-4, flag & edit out commercials, then
transcode to MPEG-4.  The problem is that after
transcoding, seeking is broken.  Here's the process/problem:

Transcode and keep the original.
At this point, recordedmarkup is empty, but playing/ seeking
still works flawlessly on the original.
On the transcoded one, I see the following problems:
  Total run time is wrong (= original time, not transcoded time)
     For example, if I have a 30 minute show and cut out minutes
     10 - 20, it should say it's now a 20 minute show, but "I"
     (or seeking) still shows it as a 30 minute show.
  Seeking takes "forever" (I get an error saying there's no seek
     table and it has to search)
  Seeking sometimes jumps the correct amount, other times
     it only advances a second or so.  I suspect this is due
     to myth trying to seek to a non-existant location -- one
     that was edited out (for example, if I cut out minutes
     10 - 20 then try and jump ahead 10 minutes from minute
     5, it should go to minute 25, but I think it tries to
     go to minute 15 -- which doesn't exist any more).
  There are frequently video artifacts after seeking (like it
     went to a non-key frame?)

Run mythcommflagg --rebuild.
The only difference this makes is that there are no longer
artifacts after seeking -- it always seems to end up on a key
frame.  All the other problems remain.  In fact, in some
cases the total time (as shown by "I" or while seeking) increases
to be even longer than the original.  (So, I start with a
30 minute show, edit out 10 minutes, transcode, mythcommflagg
and somehow end up with a 34 minute show??? -- myth is *seriously*
confused).
BTW, if you play the transcoded file (30 minutes long, cut to
20 and transcoded) and watch the timer, it acts just like it 
should:  counts time up until 20 minutes, then the show ends, 
even though the display says it's a 34 minute show.

I'd really like to get this figured out!

TIA

Steve




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