Topics

76

Users / Internet Radio/TV streaming

« on: March 04, 2008, 01:23:41 am »

I logged a Mantis feature request for the Xine functionality to be expanded to allow Internet Radio streaming (and perhaps TV), as this is an area that is missing on LMCE, and that I found very useful on previous appliance media players. Xine appears to have all the capabilities requires to start an Internet stream and play it, so it seems to be a matter of adding a media grid and media type, plus the scenario and code to trigger the right options for xine to play it. Would be a great addition....

The response I got was essentially - you can do this by buying a Squeezebox and setting up another room, then loading Squeezeserver on the core.... I think this is a very surprising response to say the least! This boils down to - buy some extra hardware rather than a relatively simple extension of the existing system at no cost. After all, LMCE is supposed to be an "all in one" system.

Does anybody else agree with this? Or would like to see Internet Radio (/TV) added to the functionality? Bulek has already added his support into the Mantis ticket. If you are interested, could you indicate here? Or better yet, add your comments to the Mantis ticket - http://mantis.linuxmce.org/view.php?id=4012

The more people vote this way, the more chance we have of getting it taken up as a task!

Rgds
Colin

77

Users / Beta 4

« on: March 02, 2008, 09:38:29 pm »

Ok, now beta 4 is 3-4 days late, but nobody has posted a single update!

Why always the intense secrecy?

Can somebody please publicly post an updated ETA?

78

Users / Gaps between tracks in music playback/chapters/options?

« on: February 29, 2008, 01:08:34 am »

I'm having difficulty with any mixed (DJ), continuous or classical music that I play. The old problem of gaps between tracks.... it makes the music really annoying to listen to! We listen to this type of stuff all the time ...

The problem seems to be split into 2:

1. Gaps in audio of CD: the CD standard (redbook) defines a 2 second gap, but many CDs ignore this standard because they need the music to flow from one track to the next (come to think of it Audio Books will probably have the same issue). But LMCE seems to enforce these...

2. After ripping the CD, obviously the orginal CD structure is now irrelevant, but (after logging a Mantis and discussing it with Kir) it seems that the problem is not easy to solve in the LMCE architecture because each mp3 is triggered by a play_media event, and then finishes with a media finished event which triggers the next media file and this makes it difficult to seemlessly stream these together, not to mention that the audio hardware probably closes the stream in between which would likely cause a "pop" if there was no gap

So I am trying to think of a way of fixing this. I have concatenated all the tracks into one super-mp3! But this means there is no ability to navigate from track to track....

What I am wondering is, do any of the audio container formats have the facility for "chapters" or "tracks"? I have looked at ogg on wikipedia and it seems to suggest that it may support this but it isn't clear whether that is for audio or video.

Any suggestions? If ogg can do it, does anybody have any suggestions for a rip tool that will do the chapters/tracks automatically, AND does LMCE even take any notice of these??

79

Users / Video media freezes for 20 seconds then continues

« on: February 26, 2008, 12:40:51 pm »

Just rebuilt my core - all my media played fine previously. Whilst playing my video media, randomly it may happen only once in 30 mins, or 2-3 times in 10 mins, seems quite random - but backing up and playing the same stretch it doesn't do it. And in previous builds with all the same media it has never done it before.

Doesn't matter what I press on the remote, there is no response, menus don't react at all. If I press several buttons, when it does start playing again, it replays all the buttons I pressed it very quick succession and then continues normally. If I just leave it without pressing anything it starts playing again on its own after about 20 seconds....


Anybody seen this before?

80

Users / Audio in VDR and KDE suddenly stopped working!!!

« on: February 25, 2008, 10:13:59 pm »

Core has been running for a couple of weeks just fine. Was watching a DVD, when that finished, sometime later we wanted to watch TV. No audio!

I can see on my AV receiver that there is no signal coming in from the SPDIF optical - the PCM light is flashing and there is no channel indication. However, DVDs, CDs and media files all play perfectly! Upto 5.1 or 7.1 channels if the source has it - the AV receiver reflects all this perfectly.

I go to KDE desktop, and same issue - it doesn't make a sound. Run TV in Kaffine, same problem. Rebooting makes no difference. Re-ran the AV wizard, can hear the music and the surround test no problem. Back to LMCE, no sound for KDE or VDR!

I rebuilt the whole system from DVD. Can hear the AV wizard sound, and "Sarah" when she comes up, but still no sound for VDR or KDE, only for DVD, CD and media files....

Can anybody make any suggestions? Please? I'm in a lot of trouble with the other half at the moment! Spending too much time on "that damn thing" caused a fight last night 

81

Users / With most CDs I've ripped, at least 1 or 2 tracks do not get attributes

« on: February 24, 2008, 01:21:44 am »

This means that these tracks vanish from the media browser unless 1) I add the attributes manually or 2) I browse for the particular track when sorted by Filename....

going to log this in Mantis as well..

82

Users / 0003982: Ripping a CD with bonus track doesn't get the bonus track

« on: February 24, 2008, 01:19:27 am »

I ripped Morcheeba - Big Calm.

This has 11 tracks plus a bonus track "The music that we hear"

It completed the rip successfully - but when I look in the database there is an "in-progress" file. On the share it is a .mp3.in-progress file that is only 1k and it is the bonus track. But apparently it did find it in the Amazon(?) database as it is named correctly. 

Logged in Mantis with the above number

83

Users / Ripping CD incorrectly identified a CD

« on: February 24, 2008, 01:01:05 am »

In the process of ripping a number of CDs I have, I inserted the Ministry of Sound: Annual 2008 CD1 but the core identifies it as Ministry of Sound: Ibiza Annual 2008! About 2 of the tracks happen to be the same but in a different order, all the rest are completely different.

It does the same thing whether you are just playing it or ripping it...

84

Users / Ripping CDs and Cover Art??

« on: February 23, 2008, 11:59:53 pm »

Am I being really stupid and missing something? I am ripping CDs - that works fine, identifies the CD, tracks, album and other attributes and assigns them to the tracks (mp3s) correctly. But it doesn't seem to assign any cover art. Isn't it supposed to do that too?

I know that you can assign cover art (and search for it) using the cover art menu in the admin site, but this is extremely slow and laborious!

85

Users / Freepbx/Asterisk/AMP - beta3

« on: February 20, 2008, 01:15:52 pm »

Sorry, I feel like I missed something here. I was under the impression that the telephony system in LMCE was Asterisk. I have heard AMP mentioned which I assumed was a version of Asterisk, but also freepbx. That last bit I didn't really understand as it would seem to be (from the name alone) a duplication.... so I just assumed it was a plugin or something like that to Asterisk, but as I am not yet at the point were I can set up VoIP I didn't really think about it much...

But I just read something that seemed to suggest that Asterisk (or at least AMP if that is different) is no longer used from 0710b3 onwards and has been replaced with freepbx. Is this true? Or what is the difference?

86

Users / OzTivo EPG in Australia for VDR - Macca?

« on: February 17, 2008, 02:50:50 am »

Macca (or anyone)

Any chance of instructions on how to setup http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Information_for_australian_users OzTivo for VDR? This article gives info for Myth only.... is VDR integration even possible ... at this stage .. or ever?

Col.

87

Users / Email notifications from Forum and Mantis - just me??

« on: February 15, 2008, 10:51:25 pm »

Is it just me? I don't seem to have received any email notifications for threads or Mantis's that I am monitoring, for about 2 weeks (for Mantis)...

Also, the forum seems to be slowly degrading... I know there was an outage nearly 12 hours ago, but for the last few weeks slowly but surely various icons just don't appear any more. Sometimes user avatar icons, but the LinuxMCE title icon in the top left, the Chat icon, etc....

88

Users / Installing Flash plugin...

« on: February 13, 2008, 09:04:18 pm »

I have tried to install Flash from the Adobe website, but the installer there complains about AMD64 architecture. I saw something somewhere about nspluginwrapper (is that it?) but when I tried that it didn't seem to work either. Anybody got any clues as to how I can get it installed?

89

Users / Diskless MD in beta 3 doesn't load VDR

« on: February 11, 2008, 02:02:35 am »

Just started my Dell Latitude D420 laptop as a diskless MD under beta 3 for the first time. Everything built OK - but during the setup wizard, it never asked me if I wanted to use VDR or MythTV - I'm assuming this is because I am already using VDR on my core and you are not allowed to mix. BUT the message boxes came up in the left top corner saying that it couldn't download VDR and plutovdr(?)

When I watch the boot messages it clearly says it is starting the mythtv (backend? can't remember which). But during the LMCE progress_window when it is starting the devices it is attempting to start VDR! Obviously it fails and I cannot watch TV on the MD...

There is nowhere I can find to tell it to try and install VDR components again... at the same time I told it to install libdvdcss, bluray ripping stuff, and win32 codecs - all were successful. But then again, I don't think it is really "downloading" from the Internet for VDR anyway, I'm assuming it is really getting it from the Core (or not, as the case maybe here!)

My core is AMD64(DVD) beta 3, and the laptop is Intel.

Any thoughts?

BTW - the other functions of the MD work fine, except that it seems to crash/hang shortly after booting. The cursor still moves around the screen in response to the touch pad, but no menus work, can't CTRL-ALT-[F2|backspace|F7|etc]. Just have to power off and reboot. Not sure if this is anything to do with it.

Col.

90

Users / 0710 release date....

« on: February 10, 2008, 01:32:40 am »

OK, nobody has asked in a while! So I will - any hints on whether we are talking a day, a week, a month, more.... before the release? Or maybe another beta first?

I'm bored... read everything in the forums, browsed mantis for hours I want the new stuff