[mythtv-users] mythvideo plugin on xbox - controls don't work

Tue Jan 17 02:22:36 UTC 2006

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006, Kevin Kuphal wrote:

>>> Keith Hanlan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can somebody suggest a course of action?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It has nothing to do with mythvideo.
>>>
>>
>> There were two problems noted; one of them is mplayer/xbox/lirc
>> but the other is mythvideo. Specifically, I couldn't get
>> mythvideo's "internal" playback to work. Mythvideo is rather short
>> on documentation but I believe I'm supposed to be able to
>> configure it to use mythfrontend's internal playback. When I do
>> that, I get no response.
>>
>>
>Did you use "internal" or "Internal".  The latter is correct.

Ahh! Excellent. One problem down. One more to go. Thanks.

>> I know that lirc is working for me since I use it successfully
>> with mythtv. I know that mplayer is trying to use lirc since it
>> logs the fact: "Setting up LIRC support..."
>>
>Having LIRC set up for mythtv does not mean that mplayer LIRC
>support is configured properly.

Agreed. My point was merely that lirc itself is working in that it
is receiving input from my remote and passing them on. But Michael
Dean points out that the cursor movements that I see during
mplayer indicate lircMD, not lircD.

>Get LIRC support working in mplayer outside of Myth and it will
>work when launched from Myth

I'll try that. When the TV is next left unattended ...

>> Actually, I know that mplayer is using lirc because when I press
>> the arrow buttons, I see the X cursor appear and move. That
>> suggests that mplayer using lirc incorrectly. However, I can't
>> figure out how.
>>
>I don't see how.

Me either...

> That probably means that "something" is receiving those commands
> and moving the mouse.  Mplayer should respond by skipping
> forward and back or do whatever you have the left/right buttons
> programmed to do in mplayer, not move the X cursor.

Since it isn't, one could speculate that mplayer either that
1. mplayer isn't reading the correct input.conf (but it is since
    there's only the one input.conf file around)
2. lirc is reading the wrong .lircrc (but it isn't since the same
    file is used to configure input for mythtv and *that* is
    working.)

Michael Dean wrote:
> that's lircmd, the LIRC mouse daemon, which is configured in X
> (see section "Configuring lircmd (the LIRC mouse daemon)" in
> http://www.lirc.org/html/configure.html ) and has nothing to do
> with MPlayer, so your postulate, "I know that mplayer is using
> lirc because..." is invalid.  Note, also, that if you use the
> cursor buttons for the mouse, you cannot use them for other
> functions (not reliably, at least).

Ahhh! Another penny drops. It seems reasonable that I would want
to keep lircmd running though. As a test though, I'll see what
happens when I disable it.

Michael continues:
> Actually, LIRC receives a button press and transmits a string to
> *all* registered LIRC clients as configured in the .lircrc.  So,
> if you've mapped the play button to "P" for Myth and to "play"
> for MPlayer, when you press play, LIRC sends "P" to Myth and
> "play" to MPlayer.  It is up to the application to know when to
> ignore the button press.  Myth begins ignoring the button
> presses when you start a video from MythVideo.

That's Interesting. Does X begin ignoring input received from
lircmd when mythtv starts? Or does mythtv somehow direct lircmd to
stop messing around with the cursor?

I assume that Myth doesn't begin ignoring input from lirc if one
uses the "Internal" player though. Am I right?

> And, Kevin is right--it has nothing to do with Myth.  You just
> have to configure LIRC to work with mplayer.  Note, also, that
> you need to use the appropriate commands for the strings (i.e.
> not letters like with Myth).  You can get a list of the commands
> with:

The .lircrc and .mplayer/config files looks good though. I'm still
puzzled. But I've got some new ideas from you guys so I'll play
around a bit more and the results will hopefully point me more
closely to the solution.

One last thing Michael. You wrote:
> Let it keep using the default one in /etc/mplayer/input.conf
> (i.e.  don't put one in ~/.mplayer).

That contradicts the mplayer man page which states:
   "The default configuration file for the input system is
    ~/.mplayer/input.conf but it can be overriden using the -input
    conf option."
and the file itself has a comment
   "## The file should be placed in the $HOME/.mplayer directory."

Either way though, it doesn't seem to matter. I'll reconfirm
though by explicitly adding the -input option to the mythvideo
player configuration.

>> I assumed that lirc receives the keypress events, translates
>> them to some sort of command and passes them to mplayer. So,
>> why would it translate them to the *wrong* events when it sends
>> the commands to mplayer as opposed to mythtv?
>>
> No, LIRC receives IR button presses and changes them into
> mplayer functions based on the configuration you specify in your
> ~/.lircrc file.

umm. I think that's what I said.
>
>For example, mine has stuff like this:

This is all from a canned lircrc that is specifically designed for
mythtv on the xbox so I have no reason to suspect it is incorrect.

> ...  Which maps my remote "Pause" and "Play" buttons to the
> mplayer "pause" command which pauses/unpauses the playback.
> Do you have similar information in your ~/.lircrc file?

Yes, and there is also stuff for "vlc" and "xine", neither of
which is running.

Thanks again for your help gentlemen. I'll keep you posted.

Regards,
Keith Hanlan
Ottawa, Canada