[clue-tech] Linux Media Center options and applications

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 14:51 -0400, Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> Which one is the video directory?  

Look under Settings->Video Settings->General Settings.  I'm actually
using the Classic menu theme so the location for the Video Settings menu
might be different for you.  

> One of the problems I have with
> MythTV is it has some non-intuitive language/distinctions that I don't
> understand yet.  For example, there's "watch recordings" and "watch
> videos."  Can I throw my avi files in the "videos" category?  If so, how?

Recordings always refer to scheduled or manual TV recordings and are
always in MythTVs native format (NuppleVideo).  Videos are for files
imported from some other source and can be in multiple file formats such
as AVI, MPEG, DVD ISO's, etc.  Yes, you can throw the AVI files in the
videos directory.  Before I started using the DVD ISO image I used to
rip my DVD's to AVI files (using AcidRIP) to reduce disk usage.  The
main problem with this was not having the DVD menus which my family
wanted, and sometimes not having access to the subtitles since sometimes
we can't understand what's being said.  So I recently switched to
ripping the DVD to an ISO image instead.  Much larger files but with the
complete DVD content.

> What I did so far is use myth.rebuilddatabase.pl to add all my AVI files
> to the "recordings" area.  

You can put them there but that, to me, is the hard way to handle them.
MythVideo (re: the videos directory, the Video Manager and related
functionality) is an easier way to work with them.

> I'd much rather just be able to throw them in
> a directory and browse them, and also have it automatically grab
> information from IMDB.  

Then you definitely want to save them in the Videos directory and use
the Video Manager to manage those files.  This is exactly what I do.

> Most of what I have are season DVD sets
> converted to AVI, not actual movies.  

I have similar for things like Lost, The Big Bang Theory, Outer Limits
and From the Earth to the Moon.  Stuff like that.  All are stored under
the Videos feature.  I create directories under the movies directory
(for me: /store/movies) for each disk, and I have two disks for movies
and 1 for DVD TV series sets.  So I
have /store/movies/Cinema-1/{drama,comedy,etc}, /store/movies/Cinema-2/{drama,comedy,etc.}, /store/movies/TV/{Lost,BigBangTheory,etc}.

Note that you can drop a JPEG or PNG in the each directory named
"folder.jpg" or "folder.png" and that will be the icon used for the
current directory when browsing the video gallery.  

> I like to convert all my videos
> first and not leave them in VOB format because I feel like I get better
> usage out of my disk space that way.

You can definitely reduce disk usage by ripping the videos to AVI but
you lose the DVD menus.  The AVI files seem to work on all my MythTV
clients (I have several around the house).  The DVD ISO's are having
problems on the system I have hooked up to the big TV in the living
room.  I haven't figured out what the problem might be there.  Might be
related to the video hardware on that motherboard.  

> Is there an easier way for me to do this with MythTV?

Drop the files into the Videos directory and use the Video Manager to
work with the files.

> I'm finding that MythTV will do everything I want, the only problem is
> understanding their millions of options and menu items.  It's definitely
> not the most user-oriented system from a setup/maintenance standpoint.

Every system has weak points.  I'm not crazy about MythTV's themes
interface.  I think there should be an easier way to customize the
interface.  And MythMusic is just plain klunky.  But MythTV itself (the
TV recording and playback interface) is excellent.  MythVideo is very
good but the Video Manager starts to be a pain if you have large numbers
of videos (as I do).  It needs a easier way to find the video you want
to edit.  It's fast but the search is linear.  It also needs better
handling for videos that are not found in IMDB and/or TheMovieDB.org.  

BTW, you'll also want to install MythWeb. This allows you to handle
recordings (scheduling them and managing them after they have been
recorded) through a web browser.  The browser interface is very nice and
very easy to use.  Plus, using an ssh tunnel and squid I can connect to
it from work and both manage recordings and *WATCH THEM* at work!

You can watch videos too but videos must be downloaded first so they
take a long time (2GB+ download before you can start watching).  TV
recordings are streamed via Flash so the playback starts immediately.
You can watch Live TV if you start a recording, wait a couple of minutes
and then start streaming the recording.  I did this to watch Wimbledon
and the French Open (US Open is streamed live via USOpen.org so I didn't
need to use MythTV for that).

> For example, they have Storage Groups, Playback Groups, and Recording
> Groups (any others?  I don't know yet).  

I actually don't use any of these.  I use High Quality for recording
profile and transcoder for all recordings but don't use any groups for
anything.  I have three video sources (2 std definition and 1 HD).
Other than that, I don't use any of the other features when setting up a
recording (which is, btw, much easier to do via MythWeb).

I *could* use those to group the recordings but I really don't have a
need for it.  I don't have *that* many recordings since most of what I
want to keep are from DVDs anyway.  Recordings are just for things I
want to watch later than broadcast time or want to commercial skip (like
with Lost - waaaaay too many commercial breaks).  I then delete the
recordings, except for Gardening by the Yard, which I keep for
reference.

> I want to group some videos
> together so I don't have to scroll through hundreds of titles in order
> to find the one I want.  

The Video Manager doesn't have a way to group titles that I know of.
It's just one long list.  But it's possible there is a feature there I
haven't discovered to deal with this.

> Which one of those would you guess is the type
> of grouping to choose?  I'd pick "playback groups" but I'd be wrong.
> Playback groups are really more like settings.  The winner is "recording
> groups."

Again, Playback Groups is part of Live TV recordings (re: part of the
core MythTV features) and not related to the Videos feature (which is
part of the MythVideo plugin) and you really want your AVI files to be
under the Videos features.

> Oh and good luck trying to find where the "recording groups" menu item
> is.  You might thing it's under Manage Recordings (actually it might be,
> but I didn't find it there), but I found it under Watch Recordings.
> It's a classic case of spaghetti'd menu trees.

The default menu theme is screwy.  Switch to the Classic menu theme
(under Setup->Appearance I believe).  I find it easier to locate the
features I want to use.

> All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the fact that it works well though.
> Once you learn how to do the stuff you want to do, it's relatively easy.

Exactly.  It's feature rich because all plugins are installed with most
distributions (like Fedora).  That can be confusing.  For example, I
don't use MythArchive (used for archiving TV recordings to ISO images,
for example), MythDVD (I just use my DVD player to play DVDs from disk),
MythGames, MythPhone, MythZoneMinder, etc.  So I have lots of menu
options that I simply ignore.  They'd be cool to use, but I don't need
them right now.  I could remove the plugins but they simply don't get in
my way enough to do that.

My biggest problem is that I think my external 500GB USB disk with most
of my Video recordings may have died.  Not sure what happened but it
happened right after I plugged in two more external USB drives (a 500GB
and a 1TB).  I wonder if having three USB drives off the same USB port
might have caused that disk to fry?  Anyway, I may be busy trying to rip
all the DVDs again.  *sigh*

The beauty of this process is that if the drive dies I still have the
DVDs as backups.  As long as they keep making DVD drives I'm okay.  Now
if the DVD drive goes the way of the SCSI 4MB tape backup, I'm screwed.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                               
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org / http://www.graphics-muse.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pessimism:  Every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills
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