[mythtv-users] Pause Transcoding When Watching Video

[Billy Macdonald]

On 2/12/07, Chris Pinkham <cpinkham at bc2va.org> wrote:
> * On Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 06:53:39AM -0600, Brandon Rogers wrote:
> > You mention in the ticket and here, that you may want to implement this
> > differently.  I was thinking it would be useful as a Playback group option.
> > So that my work isn't misdirected, what are your suggestions for this?
>
> I don't think this quite fits into what Playback Groups are designed for.
>
> I haven't had time to put a lot of thought into the patch in the ticket
> or any other solutions to the problem, that is why I said I wasn't sure if
> that is how I would like to see it implemented.
>
> --
> Chris

I have a couple HDHR boxes, and I have all transcoding set to be done
on a remote frontend as it is faster then the backend.  I ran into
problems similar, but they were usually related to recording and
transcoding and watching at the same time.  So I made a script that I
have in cron every minute that checks if the backend is recording on
an HDHR, and if so, sends a kill -SIGSTOP mythtranscode and kill
-SIGSTOP mythcommflag.  If no recordings than it sends SIGCONT.  The
script uses lwp-request to http://myth:6543 (if that's the right port,
can't recall exactly) so check the tuner status.

I had also done checks that check if the frontend is in playback using
Net::Telnet in perl to the frontend to see if it's in playback, but
found that unnecessary in my situation and have since deleted that
code.  That filled up the frontend logs with a line for receiving a
connection every minute though...

It's a dirty hack, but the Net::Telnet option may work for you.  Or if
there is a way to see how much proc time mythfrontend is using,
whenever it climbs over X%, pause the transcode job?  And run that
puppy every minute or something like that.