[mythtv-users] MythVideo - different file type player on remote frontend

[Raymond Wagner]

On 06/29/11 16:15, Richard Morton wrote:
> This is all very well and good as a temporary measure on 0.23 and
> 0.24. but this also means that the OP may not use storage groups,
> which is as I understand it the direction that Myth is going, to the
> point that direct filesystem access will not be possible in an
> upcoming release.

At some point, local file access will be removed from the frontend for
video, music, and photos, requiring all access to be run through storage
groups.  This does not necessarily require remote access, and in 0.25,
MythVideo will automatically open the file locally if found, rather than
pulling it over Myth Protocol.  Local content on a frontend, such as
removable and optical media, will require a media server be available on
that host, either through a backend, or the new (largely untested)
mythmediaserver in 0.25.  This will allow all frontends access to the
content automatically, rather than just the local frontend.

> It is much better that the issues preventing the OP from using the
> internal player are raised and logged so that they can be raised in
> order to prevent a very hard re-entry when the direct filesystem
> support (and therefore external players requiring direct file system
> access) is  removed... unless someone knows that MPlayer or someone
> are building an integration to the storage group protocol.

There has been debate over whether the external player support will ever
fully be removed.  It will at the very least be simplified to a single
global definition, and a menu option to use it rather than the internal
player in the event the internal player fails.  There likely will no
longer be the multitude of options for file types and individual files.

The external players will have to access the content in the same manner
they do now when storage groups are in use.  They will have to be able
to understand the Myth URI syntax, and they will have to be able to
access content remotely, be that native support, or a wrapper script
that maps the content to a local file, to a FUSE mounted file, or to an
HTTP stream from the backend web server.