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Messages - alx9r

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46
Thanks for the props.  I assume wierdbeard65's comments were directed at me ;)

47
Users / Re: New in the Wiki: Alx9r's Sample Setup
« on: May 12, 2009, 05:13:40 pm »
I saw that there were some complete systems except for the AMD processor and RAM recommended on the Wiki.  Those were manufactured by MSI and available at NewEgg.  However, they have been discontinued. 
Do you recommend a system like that, or building one from the bottom up?

Hi Dave,
I completed a guide for what I think is the most pivotal part of hardware selection for LinuxMCE - selecting mainboards.  You can find the guide here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/How_to_Select_Mainboards_for_Your_LinuxMCE_System

I'd appreciate hearing how useful it is to you. 

To answer your question: I always build from scratch.   Doing so seems to result in a better value machine once you are done.  You also get to control every last component that goes into your system.  This is a good thing when building a LinuxMCE box because its purpose is so particular and different in many ways from a regular PC.

Alex

48
For those in a hurry, please just answer the questions in bold below.

Hello all,
Anyone who has a working LinuxMCE Media Director, please take the time to answer this survey.  I will compile the information into compatibility tables here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/How_to_Select_Mainboards_for_Your_LinuxMCE_System#Compatibility_Table

There is already a survey for GPUs.  If you can take the time to answer that too, you can find it here:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5313.0

Network Adapter
Main Survey Questions:

A1. What network adapter is working for you?

A2. What speed is it?

A3. With which version(s) of LinuxMCE is the adapter working?

A4. Do you PXE-boot with this adapter?


Optional Survey Questions:
A5. Is the network adapter on the motherboard or a network interface card?

A6. What model of motherboard or network interface card are you using?

A7. Did you have to perform any special installation steps to get your network adapter working for you?

A8. Is there anything else that you think others should know about your network adapter?

Audio Chipset
Main Survey Questions:

B1. What audio chipset is working for you?

B2. Do you have analog output working?  SPDIF output?

B3. With which version(s) of LinuxMCE is the adapter working?


Optional Survey Questions:
B4. Is the audio chipset on the motherboard or a sound card?

B5. What model of motherboard or sound card are you using?

B6. Did you have to perform any special installation steps to get your audio chipset working for you?

B7. Is there anything else that you think others should know about your audio chipset?


Thanks for your input.  I will compile any responses into the wiki topic.

Cheers,

Alex

49
I've written a wiki article that will hopefully make the task of learning how to select a mainboard for LinuxMCE a little less labor intensive.  You can find it here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/How_to_Select_Mainboards_for_Your_LinuxMCE_System

The content is based almost entirely on information gleaned from this forum.  It is really just a more organised and to-the-point compilation of all the invaluable mainboard-selection wisdom posted here over the past few years.

I wrote the article with the hope that it would help new users as much as possible.  It probably doesn't contain much new information for regular forum readers.

If you have a working system it would be great if you could answer the hardware survey thread that I will post in a moment -- I'll use the survey information to improve the wiki article.

Regards,

Alex
newbie advocate

50
Users / Re: HOW DO I Equalise volume on all recordings?
« on: May 11, 2009, 09:38:10 pm »
For a solution to be universal to lmce, I think the only way would be what you are referring to as the software compressor stage (within the mixer in my mind).
The software compressor stage won't help when the sound card is the audio source only part of the time.  That is, when a receiver is used to switch between, for example, radio, blu-ray players, gaming consoles, and the media director sound card.

Alex

51
wow, that's cool.  I had read about the distributedness of commflagging, but couldn't tell if it worked in LinuxMCE without setting it up.  thanks for the details seth.

regards,
Alex

52
Users / Re: HOW DO I Equalise volume on all recordings?
« on: May 11, 2009, 06:54:06 pm »
The best way I can think of would be to have the sound mixer crank up the volume if below a low thresh hold, and lower it below a high one.  This would increase quiet talking without making loud explosions too loud (like a "Night Mode" in a receiver), as well as equal out the volume across all videos.  Unfortunately I don't know of anything that does this. 
skeptic,
What you are describing is similar to what an audio compressor does.  "Night Mode" on my receiver is just an audio compressor (aka dynamic range compressor).  The nomenclature here is overloaded, what I mean is described in this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

An aggressive compressor stage in your system would probably get you most of the way there.  It seems like there might be a few ways to accomplish this:
*a software compressor stage acting on audio before it is sent to the sound card
*transcoding your media library with a compressor applied
*use a receiver with an audio compressor built-in
*use a hardware audio compressor like an Alesis 3630 between your soundcard and whatever you are using to drive your speakers

The most effective audio compressors I have worked with are multi-band.  They adjust the gain of different regions of the audio spectrum separately depending on the audio signal.

Hope that helps,

Alex

53
my rather underpowered core with a A64 3200+ commflags 720p dtv shows at about 22 fps for reference.
Great, that's exactly the ballpark figure I was looking for.

54
Users / Re: HOW DO I Equalise volume on all recordings?
« on: May 10, 2009, 11:55:47 pm »
Meaning a permanent fix, i.e. maybe adding these settings to the webmin, which would make it receiver agnostic.

Hmm...the actual values for pre-amp volume offsets, and master volume are subjective (i.e. a person listens and makes decisions accordingly).  The values depend on at least the receiver, speaker, and sound chip models and probably also the size of the room and how it's furnished.  That dependence precludes installation-agnostic values.

The process might be able to be made somewhat more user-friendly by implementing a wizard to guide a user through the process.  Normalizing volume in this way is definitely an interactive process.

Alex

55
Users / Re: HOW DO I Equalise volume on all recordings?
« on: May 10, 2009, 11:06:07 pm »
Is there a way to fix this permanently?

I'm not sure what you mean by permanently.  Do you mean across different user's installations?

56
Is there someone who could comment on how much processor time mythtv commflagging takes in their setup for an episode of whatever TV show they commonly record?

I am trying to figure out how much processor I should budget for a core that will be performing commflagging.

Regards,

Alex

57
Users / Re: HOW DO I Equalise volume on all recordings?
« on: May 10, 2009, 10:55:44 pm »
chipppy,
I had a similar problem and expected that the solution would have to be something like skeptic or colinjones' proposed solution.  After some investigation I found that the biggest volume differences could be tamed with a few tweaks to the way volume is handled throughout my system.

Here is what I found for my particular setup and media library:
 * The audio of some videos is played over the analog output of my sound card while others are played over SPDIF.  I have both a TRS=>RCA cable (for analog audio) and a spdif cable hooked up between my media director and receiver.
 * Audio on a spdif input of my receiver is played back much louder than similar audio on an analog input.
 * The comfortable listening volume of audio files is different from video files.
 * The comfortable listening volume of mp3, wma, and flac audio files is fairly consistent across my collection.
 * The comfortable viewing volume of videos played back over spdif is fairly consistent across my collection.
 * The comfortable viewing volume of videos played back over analog is fairly consistent across my collection.

To normalize the sound as much as possible I did the following:

Part One - Normalize Pre-amp Volumes
1. Selected a video that played back over spdif and another that played back over analog to use as samples for adjusting volume.
2. Adjusted the pre-amp volume on my receiver such that both the analog and spdif videos played at the same listening volume without adjusting the master volume on my receiver. (iirc the difference was a full 18 dB)

Part Two - Automatic Master Volume Adjustment on Playback
1. Determined my receiver's master volume setting such that a typical video file plays back at a comfortable volume.
2. Determined my receiver's master volume setting such that a typical audio file plays back at a comfortable volume.
3. Created two 'Respond to Events' entries to set the receiver volume to the corresponding volumes when starting video and audio playback, respectively.

Part Three - Enable Audio Compression on Receiver
1. Selected a video with a very high dynamic range audio track.  (I think I used the opening scene of transformers.  Anything with loud action mixed with quiet dialog should work.)
2. I increased the audio compression setting on my receiver until I could hear the dialog and loud action comfortably without adjusting the master volume. (On my receiver the audio compression masquerades as "Night Mode".)

The benefits:
 * Playback is always started with a comfortable listening volume.  No more embarassingly and disturbingly loud initial volume when switching from video to movie or recorded tv show or from movie to mp3 track.
 * Much less adjustment of volume from scene to scene in a movie.

Limitations:
 * I still need to adjust the volume occasionally to get just the right volume.
 * Purists will not like the idea of enabling audio compression full-time.

Hope this helps you or someone else.

Alex

58
Users / Re: New in the Wiki: Alx9r's Sample Setup
« on: May 07, 2009, 07:16:43 pm »
Thanks for posting your sample set up. 
I want to build a LinuxMCE hybrid core machine.  The problem is that many of the components you used are no longer available.  That is also the case with what I find on the Wiki.
How do I know which components to use?  Also, should I use 710, or wait until 810 is out?

Hi Dave,
The problem you describe is, I think, common to most new users -- it certainly was a challenge for me when I was getting into LinuxMCE.  I am currently working on a hardware selection guide to hopefully get newbies going in the right direction.  It would be great if you would be able to test the guide out with your fresh mind once it is ready and provide some feedback.  I've got part of the mainboard selection guide complete already.  I'll post it once the first draft is complete. 

Regards,

Alex

59
Users / Re: Paid Development in Open Source
« on: May 02, 2009, 02:11:33 am »
With respect to merits of paid development in FOSS projects:

Having a means of supporting a FOSS project in a way other than by contributing time (i.e. by donation) is important because it can increase the likelihood that a popular feature will actually get developed.  Surely this idea is actually some well understood economics axiom, but I will try to explain it in my own words.

If the only way a person can contribute to a project is by actually writing code, every person who does not have the skill to do such work is eliminated from the pool of people who are able to contribute.  I greatly benefit from LinuxMCE and would like to contribute somehow. I do not, however, have the skills (at least not yet) to actually write code to further its development. 

If a person can also donate money as a way to contribute to a project, look at all the people who can contribute to the project: All people who have money they would like to donate AND all people who have specialized skills and time they would like to donate. 

I suspect that currently the group of people who would like to contribute to the development of LinuxMCE but do not have the specialized skills required to actually work on the code-base hands-on is significant.  By creating a means of transferring money from this group to members of the group of specialists who actually write the code, the specialists would be able to spend more of their time on LinuxMCE than without the cash injection.  More time spent working on LinuxMCE by the specialists means a better LinuxMCE product with more features.

If those who are donating money can somehow steer what development it furthers, then features that are popular will garner support in the form of money. 

The previous sentence is important.  Without a donation system, the only features that will be implemented are those that are important or interesting enough to people with the specialized skills to create them.  However, with a donation system, there is a significant chance that features that are important to all users but perhaps not to developers will be implemented.

A good donation system should both increase the number of users whose contributions can be harnessed, and make the list of features that is actually implemented more democratic.


Alex

60
I'd prefer to have the foundation set up as legal entity.

br, Hari

I fully agree with hari here. 

In fact, governance rules would likely be automatically inherited from statutes in whatever jurisdiction the foundation is established -- this would reduce the amount of work required to establish the rules as most of the generally applicable rules are already defined.  I think it would also be easier to retain accounting and legal services as an official legal entity. 

I have personally witnessed successful evolution of a non-profit volunteer organization in the past.  From my perspective, it would not have succeeded were it not for the force of law protecting its fair operation. 

Similar ground has been successfully ploughed in the past by other OSS projects.  Mozilla Foundation and Ubuntu Foundation come to mind, but surely smaller ones exist too.  I don't think there is any shame in copying valid parts of their structures.

Alex

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