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> Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
> remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
> of external player support.

Any word on support of ISOs in a storage group? Last I read online
this was not working yet and was delaying migration away from the old
directory-based storage system.
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jedi wrote:

>
> Well now that you put it like that you've reminded me that the internal
> player has major problems with defects in recordings. Quite frequently I have
> OTA recordings that have a little bit of "digital snow". These tend to crash
> the internal player pretty much immediately. My external players are all much
> more able to deal with those sorts of flawed recordings.
>

I'm not sure when your experience comes from, but recently
(0.20+) I have not had a single crash related to a bad
recording.

And to be clear here, I do (due to a poor design decision)
get regular glitches in the video streams.

Cheers,

Allan.
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On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nick Rout <nick.rout@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Raymond Wagner <raymond@wagnerrp.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
>> remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
>> of external player support.
>
> That would be a shame, but that's another thread.

I agree 100%...that would be an absolutely awful change in my opinion.

Tom
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On 2/23/2010 20:36, Tom Dexter wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nick Rout<nick.rout@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond@wagnerrp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
>>> remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
>>> of external player support.
>>>
>> That would be a shame, but that's another thread.
>>
> I agree 100%...that would be an absolutely awful change in my opinion.
>

It's all based around a push to simplify MythTV and reduce the
opportunity for things to break. With the internal player and storage
groups, mythbackend manages all access to content to any frontends that
want it, and any bugs that arise will be internal problems that can be
diagnosed and dealt with. With external players, you have to set up the
external player, you have to set up NFS on all machines, you have to
figure out whether issues are in mythtv or some other 3rd party
software, and you may have to explain to frustrated users they need to
seek help elsewhere. Everything just becomes considerably easier to
maintain as external dependencies are reduced.
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Eric Sharkey <eric@lisaneric.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Michael T. Dean
> <mtdean@thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> > If we leave external players enabled, then no one ever reports
> bugs--because
> > they only use external players.
>
> Are these bug reports actively wanted? Any time I get a video that
> mplayer plays flawlessly but the internal player can't handle you want
> a new bug filed?



I've emailed some of the devs before with 20-50 meg trimmed clips of videos
that work in mplayer, but not internal, and they were happy to look at
them.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:47:06AM +1100, Chris Adams wrote:
> > Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
> > remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
> > of external player support.
>
> Any word on support of ISOs in a storage group? Last I read online
> this was not working yet and was delaying migration away from the old
> directory-based storage system.

There's also:

1) vob files
2) mkv's with captions or subtitles
3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
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On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 09:07:52PM -0500, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 2/23/2010 20:36, Tom Dexter wrote:
> >On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nick Rout<nick.rout@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond@wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> >>>Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
> >>>remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
> >>>of external player support.
> >>That would be a shame, but that's another thread.
> >I agree 100%...that would be an absolutely awful change in my opinion.
>
> It's all based around a push to simplify MythTV and reduce the
> opportunity for things to break. With the internal player and
> storage groups, mythbackend manages all access to content to any
> frontends that want it, and any bugs that arise will be internal
> problems that can be diagnosed and dealt with. With external

The external player setup seems to be the single most robust part of
mythtv at this point. You can easily sidestep a lot of bugs and problems
and it's a very straightforward sort of workaround.

> players, you have to set up the external player, you have to set up
> NFS on all machines, you have to figure out whether issues are in
> mythtv or some other 3rd party software, and you may have to explain
> to frustrated users they need to seek help elsewhere. Everything
> just becomes considerably easier to maintain as external
> dependencies are reduced.

That's silly. MythTV still has frontend clients connecting directly
to the database and dragging in all of the associated issues dealing with
mysql. If you want to get rid of gnarly external dependencies, start with
that. Also have frontends inherit settings from other frontends rather than
needing to be tweaked from scratch.

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On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:26 PM, Eric Sharkey <eric@lisaneric.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Michael T. Dean
> <mtdean@thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> > If we leave external players enabled, then no one ever reports
> bugs--because
> > they only use external players.
>
> Are these bug reports actively wanted? Any time I get a video that
> mplayer plays flawlessly but the internal player can't handle you want
> a new bug filed?
>

Certainly. I've said the same thing about DVDs that don't play. If you
open a ticket with relevant information (backtrace per the instructions on
mythtv.org, a sample of the file that causes the issue, or in the case of a
DVD, the title), the developers will look at it. All of this is needed so
they can replicate the issue on their system and see where the problem
lies. Playback improves/degrades/changes with each FFMPEG resync because
that's where the core support in the internal player comes from and there is
one in trunk right now which is why it's probably best to wait for 0.23
before reporting anything right now.

In the case of DVDs, developers have been known to rent movies via Netflix
or other services just to be able to test a particular DVD against the
internal player.

Kevin

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond@wagnerrp.com>wrote:

> On 2/23/2010 20:36, Tom Dexter wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nick Rout<nick.rout@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond@wagnerrp.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and
>>>> allowing
>>>> remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the
>>>> removal
>>>> of external player support.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> That would be a shame, but that's another thread.
>>>
>>>
>> I agree 100%...that would be an absolutely awful change in my opinion.
>>
>>
>
> It's all based around a push to simplify MythTV and reduce the opportunity
> for things to break. With the internal player and storage groups,
> mythbackend manages all access to content to any frontends that want it, and
> any bugs that arise will be internal problems that can be diagnosed and
> dealt with. With external players, you have to set up the external player,
> you have to set up NFS on all machines, you have to figure out whether
> issues are in mythtv or some other 3rd party software, and you may have to
> explain to frustrated users they need to seek help elsewhere. Everything
> just becomes considerably easier to maintain as external dependencies are
> reduced.


I think the resistance to pull out external player support is somewhat
flawed. I agree that users should use the internal player whenever
possible. I think a better solution would simply be to put the external
player option as a single option to define. Make it off by default and
enabled via a checkbox. When the users checks the box, MythTV pops up a
dialog that simply reminds them that if they're using the external player as
a workaround, they should report bugs and direct them to a wiki page about
how to do that. It doesn't complicate the code much at all to launch an
external player, provides the users with a workaround that they may very
much need, and directs users to the proper location to report problems if
they are truly experiencing them.

Kevin

> 1) vob files

Still a problem if they are actually setup in a VIDEO_TS directory structure.

> 2) mkv's with captions or subtitles

These play fine, myth just doesn't support the embeeded captions which is not a "does it play over SG's" issue.

> 3) avi's with external caption file (srt)

These play fine over SG's

> 4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio


Same as #2

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> > 4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
>
>
> Same as #2


And to follow up on my own post the person I know who said he does this has just admitted that he transcoded the audio to another format so ignore this one since I can't say for sure if myth handles this audio type or not :)


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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:12 AM, Greg Estabrooks <greg@phaze.org> wrote:
>>   1) vob files
>
>  Still a problem if they are actually setup in a VIDEO_TS directory structure.
>
>>   2) mkv's with captions or subtitles
>
>  These play fine, myth  just doesn't support the embeeded captions which is not a "does it play over SG's" issue.
>

It becomes a "doesn't play over SGs" because it doesn't support
embedded captions where mplayer does (which doesn't support play over
SGs). I guess I'm not entirely understanding why this isn't a
problem. If the internal player doesn't support a feature that is
supported by an external player that forces a user use an external
player to get access to that feature, isn't that what you're talking
about?

>>   3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
>
>  These play fine over SG's
>
>>   4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
>
>
>  Same as #2
>
> _______________________________________________
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> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
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>

That being said, I think I use the internal player for just about
everything else at this point which makes me very happy.

James
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, jedi <jedi@mishnet.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:47:06AM +1100, Chris Adams wrote:
>> > Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
>> > remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
>> > of external player support.
>>
>> Any word on support of ISOs in a storage group? Last I read online
>> this was not working yet and was delaying migration away from the old
>> directory-based storage system.
>
> There's also:
>
>  1) vob files
>  2) mkv's with captions or subtitles
>  3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
>  4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
>

I only use Storage groups now and have no issues at all with any of 1,
2 or 3 being in a Storage group and playing via the Internal player
at all on any frontend with no file system mounts (I used to use NFS
for MythVideo, but not anymore).
I primarily use VOB files as that is how they get ripped from my DVDs.
I used to use a few ISO files, but dropped them (actually transcoded
them to another format) in favor of being able to use Storage Groups
To be fair, I do not use subtitles or captions much, as my eyes and
ears work fine, and I have no real need for them, but I do understand
the need for them for some people for physical or language barrier
issues.
I don't use m2ts files, so I have no idea about that.

Your general negative comments about MythTV in this thread makes me
wonder why you even use it if it's really that bad for you.
I'm not sure how much you paid for your copy of MythTV, but mine was
really, really cheap.

Frank
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:12:59AM -0400, Greg Estabrooks wrote:
> > 1) vob files
>
> Still a problem if they are actually setup in a VIDEO_TS directory structure.
>
> > 2) mkv's with captions or subtitles
>
> These play fine, myth just doesn't support the embeeded captions which is not a "does it play over SG's" issue.
>
> > 3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
>
> These play fine over SG's

SG's? These are quite broken now in the current release.

>
> > 4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
>
>
> Same as #2
>
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> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 09:43:17AM -0500, Frank Merrill wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, jedi <jedi@mishnet.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:47:06AM +1100, Chris Adams wrote:
> >> > Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and allowing
> >> > remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the removal
> >> > of external player support.
> >>
> >> Any word on support of ISOs in a storage group? Last I read online
> >> this was not working yet and was delaying migration away from the old
> >> directory-based storage system.
> >
> > There's also:
> >
> >  1) vob files
> >  2) mkv's with captions or subtitles
> >  3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
> >  4) m2ts files with TrueHD audio
> >
>
> I only use Storage groups now and have no issues at all with any of 1,
> 2 or 3 being in a Storage group and playing via the Internal player

...ok. So some of this stuff is fixed but myth just can't cope with
regular files on regular filesystems?

> at all on any frontend with no file system mounts (I used to use NFS
> for MythVideo, but not anymore).
> I primarily use VOB files as that is how they get ripped from my DVDs.
> I used to use a few ISO files, but dropped them (actually transcoded
> them to another format) in favor of being able to use Storage Groups
> To be fair, I do not use subtitles or captions much, as my eyes and
> ears work fine, and I have no real need for them, but I do understand
> the need for them for some people for physical or language barrier
> issues.
> I don't use m2ts files, so I have no idea about that.
>
> Your general negative comments about MythTV in this thread makes me
> wonder why you even use it if it's really that bad for you.
> I'm not sure how much you paid for your copy of MythTV, but mine was
> really, really cheap.
>
> Frank
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
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On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond@wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> On 2/23/2010 20:36, Tom Dexter wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nick Rout<nick.rout@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Raymond Wagner<raymond@wagnerrp.com>
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Just a heads up, the shift in MythVideo to using storage groups and
>>>> allowing
>>>> remote access rather than relying on NFS, will likely result in the
>>>> removal
>>>> of external player support.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That would be a shame, but that's another thread.
>>>
>>
>> I agree 100%...that would be an absolutely awful change in my opinion.
>>
>
> It's all based around a push to simplify MythTV and reduce the opportunity
> for things to break.  With the internal player and storage groups,
> mythbackend manages all access to content to any frontends that want it, and
> any bugs that arise will be internal problems that can be diagnosed and
> dealt with.  With external players, you have to set up the external player,
> you have to set up NFS on all machines, you have to figure out whether
> issues are in mythtv or some other 3rd party software, and you may have to
> explain to frustrated users they need to seek help elsewhere.  Everything
> just becomes considerably easier to maintain as external dependencies are
> reduced.

Removal of external player support still seems like a significant loss
of functionality to me. I could see it if supporting it is a big
burden on development, but most all of what you mention are burdens on
the person who wants to _use_ the external players. I could see
making people go a little out of their way to enable external players
and to use the internal player by default.

Would this change mean that everything would use storage groups and
need to be in the database? I don't tend to leave many videos on my
backend permanently and tend to use file browse mode with an empty
videometadata table.

Tom
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock@gmail.com> wrote:
> Removal of external player support still seems like a significant loss
> of functionality to me.

I agree. I've been trying to wrap my head around this for the last
day and I just see this as a lose lose proposition.

With external player support, I can, if I like, set the player to be
/bin/bash and have the video be a shell script to do just about
anything. I mean, I could get today's MythVideo launch DOSEMU to run
a '90's era demo scene "video" if I like. When will the internal
player support that?

Eric
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Eric Sharkey <eric@lisaneric.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Removal of external player support still seems like a significant loss
>> of functionality to me.
>
> I agree.  I've been trying to wrap my head around this for the last
> day and I just see this as a lose lose proposition.
>
> With external player support, I can, if I like, set the player to be
> /bin/bash and have the video be a shell script to do just about
> anything.  I mean, I could get today's MythVideo launch DOSEMU to run
> a '90's era demo scene "video" if I like.  When will the internal
> player support that?
>
> Eric

Not only that, if everything needs to use SGs and myth proto, I can no
longer even play files directly off the hard drive of my standalone
frontend...something I do all the time...if I'm understanding this
correctly.

Tom
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> >  These play fine, myth  just doesn't support the embeeded captions which is not a "does it play over SG's" issue.
> >
>
> It becomes a "doesn't play over SGs" because it doesn't support
> embedded captions where mplayer does (which doesn't support play over
> SGs). I guess I'm not entirely understanding why this isn't a


No, the original comments I was replying to were talking about what sort of material can or could not be used over Storage groups. The issue described here is not in any way related to the use of storage groups.

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> > > 3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
> >
> > These play fine over SG's
>
> SG's? These are quite broken now in the current release.


They play just fine in trunk with the few files I have that have SRT's, and here at work using 0.22-fixes as well.




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I have a question about reporting bugs since it's been talked about a bit. How would we first determine if a problem we are having is a bug in the software or something not set up properly on the end user side of things?

As an example I have files that play fine in mplayer but stutter with crackling audio with the internal player. I always just thought it was something I missed on my end. How would a somewhat clueless user proceed?

Thanks,
Walt



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On 02/24/2010 10:16 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Tom Dexter wrote:
>
>> Removal of external player support still seems like a significant loss
>> of functionality to me.
>>
> I agree. I've been trying to wrap my head around this for the last
> day and I just see this as a lose lose proposition.
>
> With external player support, I can, if I like, set the player to be
> /bin/bash and have the video be a shell script to do just about
> anything. I mean, I could get today's MythVideo launch DOSEMU to run
> a '90's era demo scene "video" if I like. When will the internal
> player support that?
>

There's a plugin for that... MythGame, the generic application launcher
plugin for MythTV.

Note that you could have it launch any application--including an
external video player--not just a game player. MythGame /is/ the
generic application launcher plugin for MythTV. MythVideo isn't.

Besides, MythVideo in the form you all recognize is likely to disappear,
anyway. The plugin itself is planned to go away, and instead the
backend and frontend will provide support for playing even non-recording
video (and music) files. (And, yes, standalone frontends will work,
too--and, yes, even with Storage Groups.)

Let's all stop complaining until you see what's planned. There are some
very big, overarching changes that will happen.

Mike
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Walter Machado <jjmaden@hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> I have a question about reporting bugs since it's been talked about a bit.
> How would we first determine if a problem we are having is a bug in the
> software or something not set up properly on the end user side of things?
>
> As an example I have files that play fine in mplayer but stutter with
> crackling audio with the internal player. I always just thought it was
> something I missed on my end. How would a somewhat clueless user proceed?
>

Generally, ask here, get help, and then if the general consensus is that
you've encountered a bug, post on to the ticketing system and be sure to
follow all the guidelines there for creating good tickets. There's also an
IRC channel that can provide live help when people are connected.

Kevin

On 2/24/2010 08:50, jedi wrote:
> MythTV still has frontend clients connecting directly
> to the database and dragging in all of the associated issues dealing with
> mysql. If you want to get rid of gnarly external dependencies, start with
> that.
>

That's also something currently in the planning stages.
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On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:38:49AM -0400, Greg Estabrooks wrote:
> > > > 3) avi's with external caption file (srt)
> > >
> > > These play fine over SG's
> >
> > SG's? These are quite broken now in the current release.
>
>
> They play just fine in trunk with the few files I have that have SRT's, and here at work using 0.22-fixes as well.
>

I'm at 0.22 after an interesting stretch running trunk. I'm not too
delighted about the prospect of upgrading all of my machines again. It's
good to hear that some of this stuff is getting fixed though.

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