Messages

196

Users / Re: Any updates on mkv or ts files

« on: July 01, 2008, 10:34:00 pm »

Hi guys,

I've experimented with this also last week without much success. You;re talking about high definition files, right? (in my case a 1080p mkv). I've found this to be unwatchable with xine. It seems to work when I force it through mplayer but I cannot pause or fast forward, which is problematic since I sometimes am interupted while watching a movie.

Rodercot: could you tell me more about the DVD player? How do I use that one? To force Mplayer I would simply rename my files to .evo for example. How can I try the DVD player and see if it's any better?

Jean

197

Users / Re: Change MythTV recording location

« on: July 01, 2008, 05:12:40 pm »

Hi,

take a look at this:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5412.0

Jean

198

Developers / Re: Trying to compile App_Server

« on: July 01, 2008, 06:11:29 am »

Darren,
I am by no means a developer so what I think does not matter that much since I couldn't help developing it.
If we can somehow confirm that whenever there is a Master, there is also a PCM, and selecting PCM does not reduce any functionality, then we could just hard code PCM (and Front) and be done with it. Sometimes, the less options there are, the better for the normal user. That's why I was trying to get feedback from people using Master, as Master will not work for me on any PCs I tried, and if all of you guys use receivers for your sound, it's possible that Master has no use at all?

Of course it would be nice to put the option in the sound card, but like you said, it requires to create a standard sound card template which might be a lot of work when there is a simpler solution that suits most? (and we can use the developer's time to do some more usefull things?)

Jean

199

Developers / Re: Trying to compile App_Server

« on: June 26, 2008, 07:12:31 am »

Bulek,
yes of course, to make it configurable is the best solution for everyone, just a bit more work for developers :-)

Darrenmason,
that's very interesting what you;re saying, because I remember now seing that Master Mixer Name in the sound card device on my Media Live, however I just see that all my generic PCs where my sound problem is occuring don;t have a child device that's a sound card. Does that make any sense? Sound is working on these machines, the Sound Card setting in the MD options says "Standard Sound Card" and there is no sound card child device in the device tree. Is this normal or possibly a bug where LMCE is not creating the device under certain circumstances?

Jean

200

Developers / Re: How is Mplayer launched?

« on: June 26, 2008, 04:37:30 am »

Hello,

here are my findings in case anyone would like to pinch in:
- I was trying to playback large HD files that are unwatchable with Xine
- I forced them through Mplayer by renaming them .evo or .m2ts (either or seems to make no difference)
- The file was playing fine, but I noticed that I was unable to fast forward or pause (which is a problem since I rarely get to watch a movie without some sort of interruption)
- When I was pressing fast forward, Mplayer was exiting (others noticed this as well in other threads)
- I replaced the mplayer binary in /opt/pluto-mplayer/bin version dev-SVN-r20630-4.1.3 from 0710 stock by a more recent binary from the lmce svn
- Now I can fast forward up to x2, but no faster (status bar displays other speeds such as x8 x32 etc, but movie does not move faster than x2), and pausing still does not work (although the system does recognize the command since I can hear a blip in the sound every time I press pause)
- Pausing and fast forwarding both work when using either the old or new binary from the KDE desktop, even if I launch it with the same command line than lmce uses in Mplayer_Player

I conclude that the problem must be somewhere in the way the wrapper that launches Mplayer communicates with the player, and unfortunately that exceeds my current abilities. I can see some commands in DCERuter.log and in Mplayer_Player.log but nothing that gives me a clue.

If anyone has a suggestion, it's welcomed. In the meantime I could at least watch those files (which I don't do that often) from the KDE desktop, once I get the sound working there.

Thank you!

Jean

201

Users / Re: 2 MDs in one room

« on: June 24, 2008, 05:10:04 pm »

Thank you. I read http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Rooms and now I have 2 entertainment areas in my "Study" room and each MD assigned to one.
But to which rooms do I assign my MDs now? The web GUI will still complain if I try to assign both MDs to the same room Study.

202

Developers / Re: How is Mplayer launched?

« on: June 24, 2008, 07:01:18 am »

Thom,
thanks for the clarification. That makes me feel much better because it means that you guys are aware of a problem to playback HD and we can expect some progess there in future versions.

The way I "force" Mplayer currently for certain files is by simply renaming my files into .evo for example. Is that not a legitimate way to do it currently (besides me trying to recompile Xine_Plugin with some changes as to files extensions) ?

Maybe I should ask you about my actual problem of not being able to seek in files greater than ? Gb. Do you build Mplayer with the option --enable-largefiles currently?

Jean

203

Users / 2 MDs in one room

« on: June 24, 2008, 06:37:47 am »

Hello,

I'm surprised that nobody has asked this before (or it might be a very stupid question), but does anyone have a clean way of running 2 Mds in the same room? Since I use my MDs also as workstations, I have the problem that there are 2 for example in my study.
I could of course create 2 rooms like "study 1" and "study 2", but I was wondering if anyone figured out a cleaner way that respects the concept of "rooms" in Linuxmce? Maybe using child/parent relationships?

Jean

204

Developers / Re: How is Mplayer launched?

« on: June 24, 2008, 06:30:15 am »

Guys, thanks!
Darren, this is exactly what I needed, now I can try if this option will have an effect: --enable-largefiles

Thom, I know we're not supposed to use Mplayer to play video files, and that support fro Mplayer is in early stages, but a mkv of 8 Gb in 1080p (the system and screen resolution is 720p, the file is 1080p) just won't play correctly with Xine (I'm on a Media Live with 169.12 Nvidia driver and 4800+ X2 CPU). I tried every suggestion I could find (enable useevents, enbale/disable sync to vblank etc). When I force it to play with Mplayer it works fine (except for the fact that I can't seek). If there is anything else worth trying please tell me.

I also have similar problems when playing back HD shows recorded by Myth, from the video section, which uses Xine, versus playing them from ithin MythTV.

EDIT: --enable-largefiles is actually not a command line option to run Mplayer, but a configure option when building it

205

Developers / Re: Trying to compile App_Server

« on: June 23, 2008, 10:08:04 pm »

I have now recompiled App_Server and changed the code where amix selects the mixer to adjust the sound volume. Now instead of using the mixer called "Master" in alsamixer, it uses the mixer called "PCM".
On 3 different computers with different sound cards, I was finding that the default behavior of using the mixer "Master" did not adjust the sound volume and had basically no effect (I could indee see the mixer Master being adjusted when looking in alsamixer, but it had no effect on sound volume generated by LinuxMCE). Now with using the mixer PCM, the sound volume gets adjusted just fine.

So before opening a ticket in Mantis and asking to make this change permanent in the future code, does anyone know of a scenario where it is usefull to use the mixer "Master" and not "PCM", or do all of you adjust your sound via external receivers/amps anyway?
Just want to make sure that this change would not harm anyone in a particular hardware configuration that I didn't try?

Jean

206

Developers / How is Mplayer launched?

« on: June 22, 2008, 10:24:51 pm »

Hello,

where can I find the command line that launches Mplayer (from videos fro m2ts files for example)? Is it in a sh script, or somewhere in a pluto binary?
I have a problem with Mplayer not being able to seek within large mkv files, which is apparently a known proeblem, and I would like to play with the command line (there is an argument to enable large files support apparently) before trying to recompile a different mplayer binary.

Will report of course if I find anything helpfull/conclusive.

Jean

207

Users / Re: Switching gpu's after install

« on: June 19, 2008, 05:38:14 pm »

If you remember what you did to make the 8600 work, then you should be able to do it again if you have to, only much faster this time :-)
By the way I was talking about MDs, I have no idea if it's also that easy in a core. For an MD, worst case you can rebuild it...

208

Developers / Re: Trying to compile App_Server

« on: June 19, 2008, 05:32:23 pm »

Thank you! That worked great!
I had used the instructions on http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Building_From_Source and I'm not sure what the difference is but it must be missing a step.
I now put a link in the wiki from Building_From_Source to Setting_Up_A_Development_Environment.

Thanks again, and sorry, I didn't have a chance to visit the chat yet.

209

Users / Re: Possible to watch HD channels on a SD capable media director?

« on: June 19, 2008, 05:12:37 am »

So I tried decreasing the resolution on my MD to 640x480 (which means in theory that no more than 480 lines can be displayed, which matches SD 480p resolution), and the HD channels are still as choppy (it cuts every second when the cpu maxes out, then starts again).
So the video resolution is apparently not helping to reduce the amount of data that MythTV Player has to process for those HDTV channels.

For now I will just enable in mythtv setup both the HD and SD version of each channel. It would be even nicer to be able to hide certain channels on certain MDs, but this may be a question that I should ask in a MythTV forum.

Jean

210

Users / Re: Switching gpu's after install

« on: June 19, 2008, 02:37:11 am »

I've been able to switch back and forth between different video cards without problem. Worst case when I was getting a blank screen, I would login via SSH and change the driver in the xorg.conf. Sometimes it would be necessary to do a first restart with the vesa driver, then change it to what you need (ati/nvidia etc) and restart again.
There must even be a way to just restart X and not the whole computer, but I did not find it...