[mythtv-users] MythTV Raspberry Pi 2+ MythFrontend Setup Tutorial Updated

[Mike Bibbings]

On 23/03/16 14:18, Josh Rosenberg wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 6:02 AM,  <mythtv-users-request at mythtv.org> wrote:
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 11:07:07 -0600
>> From: Curtis Gedak <gedakc at gmail.com>
>> To: Discussion about MythTV <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
>> Subject: [mythtv-users] MythTV Raspberry Pi 2+ MythFrontend Setup
>>          Tutorial        Updated
>> Message-ID: <56E59E3B.7060303 at gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>
>> Thanks to the work of Peter Bennett and Lawrence Rust I have been able
>> to combine their work to create a new build of MythTV for the Raspberry
>> Pi 2 or better.
>>
>> The build is available at:
>>
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/1iyhq6usqzalmg6/mythtv-v0.27.6-69-g41a2a8d-RPI2-jessie.tar.bz2?dl=0
>>
>> MD5SUM:
>> 43dd1a86a25e0dec74655f60df245635
>> mythtv-v0.27.6-69-g41a2a8d-RPI2-jessie.tar.bz2
>>
>> SHA1SUM:
>> 7f6d6960417a57c622afb4ded1950b1647f7f973
>> mythtv-v0.27.6-69-g41a2a8d-RPI2-jessie.tar.bz2
>>
>> The key differences from Peter's excellent debian packages are:
>>
>>    -  Includes MythTV suite of plugins
>>    -  Enables EGLFS mode for rock-steady OSD with custom video
>>       playback profile
>>
>> The key difference from Lawrence's pioneering tarballs are:
>>
>>    -  Includes Peter's RPi fixes and enhancements
>>    -  Built upon MythTV 0.27.6 instead of 0.27.5
>>
>>
>> Installation of the new tarball is described in the updated MythFrontend
>> Setup Tutorial.  See:
>>
>> Setting Up an Inexpensive Raspberry Pi 2 as a Cheap Frontend to MythTV
>> with MythFrontend
>> http://gedakc.users.sourceforge.net/display-doc.php?name=pvr-rpi-mythtv-frontend
>>
>> Curtis
> I was able to try this out on my new Raspberry Pi 3 last night, and
> everything went well! The one problem, and it was a surprising one, is
> that H.264-encoded .mp4 files (transcoded using a custom job) were
> choppy to watch, while non-transcoded recordings (from Comcast in the
> US, so I assume MPEG-2) seemed to be fine even though I had not yet
> enabled the MPEG-2 codec.
>
> Any suggestions on improving H.264 performance? Should I try the XCB
> build rather than EGLFS? (I've never heard either of these terms
> before this week.)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Josh Rosenberg
> _______________________________________________
>
I doubt XCB will make any difference over EGLFS, it does not for me 
(caveat: I am not using the same build as you).

H.264 the decoding should be done in the gpu (which has H.264 decode 
builtin - no licence needed). The only thing I can think of for H.264 is 
make sure  gpu_mem=256 is set in your /boot/config.txt file. The default 
is 64 (and is not sufficient).

As you mentioned a custom transcode, the output of mediainfo could be 
useful, as it will provide full details of the encoding used in the 
recording.

As a final point, if you are using the builtin WIFI of the RPi 3, there 
are some outstanding issues which can cause  poor playback (blockiness, 
stuttering, juddering). One of the issues is that, by default, power 
management is enabled, you could try turning it off temporarily (sudo 
iwconfig wlan0 power off). The other issue which is not yet fixed, is 
the Broadcom WIFI  brcmfmac driver see 
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1313


Mike