[clue-tech] Linux Media Center options and applications

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Fri, 2009-09-11 at 16:29 -0400, Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> Thanks for the detailed response.

No problem.

> Yeah, I'm using the Video Manager now, and it's much easier.  I would
> like to be able to create playlists, or somehow tell it to play an
> entire directory of videos sequentially.

You can do this but it's not really a playlist, just a sequential
ordering of videos.  In the Video Manager, select the movie that will
play first, then manually edit its metadata.   There is an option to
"play file next" (or similar) where you can set the movie to play next
after the current video ends.  Save that, then go to the next video and
do the same thing.  I use this, for example, to play videos that are
split into multiple files such as the Lord of the Rings series.

> Yeah, about that:  is there a way for me to look up my movies/tv shows
> that are in the directory, but not in the database, and maybe include
> them in the database?

You can manually edit some of the metadata (but oddly, not all of it) in
the Video Manager.  What I do is look up the entry in IMDB and then look
up the entry in TheMovieDB.org.  If the latter is missing I add the
entry, sans artwork and some of the more esoteric details.  I did this
for Battle of Britain (a 60's war movie), for example. The key is to
make sure the entry in TheMovieDB.org includes the reference to the IMDB
entry.  

After a few days (not sure what the delay is for) the auto-lookup will
succeed.  

I've still to do this for shows like Cosmos and Outer Limits.  These
both show up on IMDB but not on TheMovieDB.org.  Since I use the updated
tmdb.pl script (see my blog postings about this) I need them to be in
the latter before I can auto-lookup those entries.

Also, the title of the video (not the filename but rather the title)
needs to match the IMDB name or the auto-lookup won't work.

> I was thinking the way to do this might be through importing from
> MythArchive.  But if that is true, then how does it work?  It has a
> different directory than MythVideo.  Does it move or copy videos from
> its directory to the MythVideo directory?  I don't want it to copy... or
> does it just keep them in the MythArchive directory?

MythArchive and MythVideo are separate entities to my knowledge.  They
don't interact.  Copying files from one directory to the other does
nothing to import Myth's db data and there are no tools that I'm aware
of that will do that for you.

I think this may be one of MythTV's biggest drawbacks, though I've not
investigated it to know if I'm right.  It seems there is no common db
API for keeping file metadata.  Since everything is a multimedia file
they all have common characteristics.  Application specific metadata
(movie director vs original album release date, etc) can be kept in xml
in a TEXT field in the same table.  Not sure if they do this but it sure
seems like it would make this all a lot easier.  All they need in that
table is a type field to reduce searches to application specific
features.

> >> I want to group some videos
> > The Video Manager doesn't have a way to group titles that I know of.
> The subdirectories work for me to this end.  Does each directory support
> the folder.jpg file, or just directories with a file in them?  What if I
> have multiple files in a directory?  I only get one folder.jpg file?

If the directory does not have a file in it then it does not show up in
the video browser, which means it doesn't matter if there is a
folder.jpg in that directory.

The folder.jpg file is an icon used for the directory in the video
browser.  Individual files can use poster art.  I store my poster art
in /store/posters and these are referenced in the metadata for the
videos, which you can set using the Video Manager.

As an example, I have poster art for the X-Files movie.  I edit the
metadata in the Video Manager to associate that poster with that video.
The video file is in /store/movies/Cinema-1/SciFi.  That directory has a
folder.jpg which is actually a picture of a robot.  The video browser
starts in the root directory for videos, which happens to
be /store/movies.  It shows ordinary folder icons for any directory
in /store/movies that also has files in it.  If that directory has a
folder.jpg it shows that JPEG picture instead of the folder icon.  I
click on the Cinema-1 icon (which happens to be a chalkboard-clacker)
which then shows the folders in /store/movies/Cinema-1.  In there is the
icon of the robot, which is my /store/movies/Cinema-1/SciFi directory.
I click on that icon and I see the poster art for the X-Files movie.
Click on that and I get a summary of the movie.  Click on that to start
the movie.

> One thing I kind of miss from having these in the recording section is
> the little preview I got when I was selecting the show.

Videos don't use the video preview like TV recordings do.  They just
have movie poster art to identify them.

> Hmmm, MythTV has a special place to set up a LiveTV directory, and a
> DBBackup directory.  I'm guessing DBBackup is somewhere it dumps the
> mysql stuff.  What's special about "LiveTV" as opposed to the default
> recordings directory?

Not completely sure, but I know you can set up different quality of
recordings.  LiveTV is one such profile.  I have another for High
Quality recordings (larger files, better quality).  A LiveTV directory,
however, is just the place they store the live TV files.  Remember that
when you watch TV with MythTV you're actually watching a recording of
the LiveTV that is a few seconds behind.  That recording has to be
stored somewhere.  They use what is called a ring buffer to reduce file
usage but if you record a showing (as opposed to watching it "live") you
don't use the ring buffer.  At least I don't think you do.

> Oh, I haven't even tried to get into MythGames yet.  I want to do that,
> but that seems like a whole other can of worms.

I gave up on it.  I have no idea how to pull the ROM images off of those
old cartridges.  Supposedly the emulators will work with the original CD
images used in playstations and similar, but if you want the really old
cartridge-based games you're gonna have to find a ROM reader.  I can't
even find a place to buy the ROMs.

All I really wanted was Centipede.

> Yeah, I'm worried about that too.  I'm thinking of ultimately just using
> an rsync mirror, which means double the space.  But I think it's worth
> just buying something like this:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111033
> 
> rather than having to rip everything again.  I mean how much is your
> time worth anyway?  Plus, rsync is a good way to go because chances are
> the stuff you care about doesn't change very much.  (I don't think RAID
> 1 is necessary or desirable, your bottleneck is USB anyway.)

Ripping a DVD takes about 20 minutes if you rip to an ISO, a couple of
hours if you rip to an AVI with various features configured.  I have
multiple DVD drives in a quad-core (plus a laptop with a DVD drive) so I
can get through quite a few DVDs in a night.  The only problem I have is
some DVDs just won't rip to ISO's.  They do okay to AVI's, but not ISOs.
Haven't figured out why yet.

> So my main issues with MythTV now are:
> 
> (1) Volume Settings
> I thought I knew how this worked.  You can modify some settings in the
> General settings area (3rd page) and I set my starting Master and PCM,
> and chose Master as my volume control.
> 
> But no matter what I set there, when something starts playing, MythTV
> sees it as the max.  In other words, I can only turn the volume down
> from the initial setting.  I'd like to have it so it starts in the
> middle, at a normal-to-quiet volume, and I can turn it up from there.

Hmmm.  I have this set just as you say.  MythTV even resets the audio
control on my GNOME panel to its preferred settings when I start LiveTV
or a Video.  

The problem might be PulseAudio.  That thing has been a pain in the butt
since day one.  You might try fiddling with it to see if you can fix the
problem.

> (2) Video Playlist
> I'd like to be able to play more than one video in a row.  I'd be happy
> with just playing everything in a particular directory, but actually a
> real playlist might be nice.

Yeah, I haven't seen this feature yet.  No telling what's in CVS (or SVN
or git or whatever they're using) right now.  I don't pull from the
source tree.  I just wait for released versions.  I got enough devel
work to keep me busy outside of mythtv.

> (3) Adding Meta-data to Videos
> I'd like to be able to download the metadata for videos are are just
> dumped into a directory automatically from the net.  Even if I had to
> select the appropriate show from a menu of "good guesses" it would be
> nice to have.

It does do this but not to a file.  It goes straight to the db.  But it
fails quietly when it doesn't work.  If it has close guesses it will
show them and you can select the one that best fits.  

My problem with the metadata is that the fields it pulls from the net
are not editable locally.  I'd like to be able to fill in the data for
videos that fail the auto-lookup.  For example, my copies of RFK and The
Kennedy's from PBS don't resolve on IMDB.  So I'd like to be able to
edit the info manually.  I can set the title and poster but not year of
release, director, plot summary, etc.  That seems like a pretty basic
missing feature.


-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Principal Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                Everything should be made as simple as possible.  
                    But not simpler.  --  Albert Einstein.