Author Topic: VDR Setup  (Read 20883 times)

fibres

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2008, 02:06:28 am »
Just don't seem to be able to get scan to work - comes up with parse errors for the conf file. Google doesn't render anything interesting on this error message except that others also have had it, but no solutions.

I have confirmed that the card is working by using mplayer dvb://"blah" against the channels.conf file after copying it into ~/.mplayer/ - I can watch TV stations indicated by their name in that file. But the same file just doesn't want to play with scan.

I am now trying Kaffine as Fibres suggested - it finally recognises that I have a DVB card and I am trying the autoscans, hopefully I can also create a functional .conf file. But the autoscan doesn't seem to find anything yet - I can see the signal bar jump up every so often but now channels get listed....

Hi colinjones

I did not use kaffeine to make my channels file. While I was testing things a few months ago I used kaffeine to view dvb. In order to get kaffeine to scan I had to create a frequency file for kaffeine to use to scan with. See kaffeine like the scan program within dvb-tools does not scan the frequencies. Howeer it scans for all channels in a multiplex on a list of given frequencies.

You will need an initial frequency file for your area. I am using DVB-C which is a direct cable card in my pc. I used a file from a cable box I have which had a list of the frequencies aqnd used this is a base for the file I created to get kaffeine to scan. I then today used this initial file with the scan utility to enable me to make a chanels.conf for vdr using the chnnels file.

I ran the scan from the /home/linuxmce directory using the following command scan -o vdr > channels.conf theinitialfile.conf
This worked fine and gave me channels.conf whch I then loaded in the web interface as described by andrew above.

What are you trying to scan it it DVB-T(Over Air Digital) DVB-C(Cable) or DVB_S(Satellite)?

If you cannot find an initial file for your area try looking up a program called w_scan on google as this will scan for frequencies and give you an initial file to work from.

Hope this has been of help.

Regards

fibres

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #16 on: January 18, 2008, 02:18:04 am »
I have managed to get scan to work after messing around for a while. I finally got Kaffine to detect and tune my stations - but only based on its included au/sydney preconfigured file. Once that was done, I went into Kaffine's config folder under the linuxmce profile and copied the file out.

I still can't do scan -o vdr > channels.conf, it just creates an empty file and errors out and if that happens to be the name of the file I got from Kaffine (it was originally) it overwrites it and you loose it - I think that is what Fibres had a problem with.

But I tried scan -o vdr channels.tmp > channels.conf where channels.tmp is what I called the file from Kaffine, and this seemed to work - certainly it scanned, and detected "running" TV stations and created an output file. Problem is, I don't know where to put this output file so that VDR sees it. I tried /etc/vdr and /vdr/vdrsettings where there were existing files which I renamed. I rebooted, but VDR still says no signal and when i hit F6 the channel list is still the European one...

What am I doing wrong? Why won't scan parse the example file so that I have to use Kaffine - certainly Kaffine outputs a scan compatible file, but I don't seem to be able to get VDR to use it.... getting confused now!


Ok just seen this post.

The easiest thing to do is copy the initial scan file for your area that you ave found in kaffeine.
The kaffeine scan files should be in /home/linuxmce/.kde/share/apps/kaffeine/dvb-t if its terresterial dvb
copy the au-sydnet fiel from here to /home/linuxmce
Now while in /home/linuxmce riun the following command

scan -o vdr > channels.conf au-sydney or whatever your local channel is.
Once that has given you the output file goto the web admin

Select Advanced/Configuration/VDR Setup
Once on thaty screen will give you an option to upload a custom file. Upload your channels.conf here

Reboot your machine and all should work.

Regards

colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2008, 02:28:54 am »
Shit I'm an idiot! Got so tied up in the scan thing that I forgot about the web admin! Did that and now I can see live TV....

Weird thing is, the picture has a combing effect with horizontal pans on all channels - I thought this was an interlacing issue - but I am testing it on non-interlaced channels, with a computer LCD monitor that isn't interlaced either....

fibres

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #18 on: January 18, 2008, 02:32:28 am »
Strange I am not getting that at all.

I have a perfect picture.
Could be a slight error in the channel scan.

What card are you using?

I am using a TechnoTrend TT-1500 DVB-C on UK Cable

Regards

totallymaxed

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #19 on: January 18, 2008, 11:15:08 am »
Shit I'm an idiot! Got so tied up in the scan thing that I forgot about the web admin! Did that and now I can see live TV....

Weird thing is, the picture has a combing effect with horizontal pans on all channels - I thought this was an interlacing issue - but I am testing it on non-interlaced channels, with a computer LCD monitor that isn't interlaced either....

The deinterlace setting inside vdr is off by default
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colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #20 on: January 18, 2008, 11:30:59 am »
What does this mean, though? Does it ignore the interlace setting in the web admin? Is ther another way of turning it on - the combing is quiet dramatic in all but the gentlest of pans. Is there a way of avoiding having to take the CPU hit of deinterlacing - can LMCE output in 1080i/p as appropriate for the media, and let the TV deal with it as a TV/STB combo would?

totallymaxed

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #21 on: January 18, 2008, 12:19:54 pm »
What does this mean, though? Does it ignore the interlace setting in the web admin? Is ther another way of turning it on - the combing is quiet dramatic in all but the gentlest of pans. Is there a way of avoiding having to take the CPU hit of deinterlacing - can LMCE output in 1080i/p as appropriate for the media, and let the TV deal with it as a TV/STB combo would?

Currently the de-interlace setting in Web Admin is not used by lmcevdr and the internal de-interlace settings should be used. If yor video output is 1080p capable then that is what will be used by lmcevdr.
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colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #22 on: January 18, 2008, 01:10:35 pm »
I'm sorry Andrew, I am still missing a piece in the puzzle! You say you need to use the internal setting, but that if your output is 1080p capable it will use it. Are you saying that the internal setting will automatically turn on if 1080p is the current output? If so, then this part is not working, as the output is not being deinterlaced. Is this the case?

Marie.O

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Re: VDR Setup - Scanning for channels
« Reply #23 on: January 18, 2008, 05:38:23 pm »
Just a quick note on channel scanning for DVB-T and DVB-C. Have a look at w_scan. It is a small utility which you have to compile yourself, which produces a channels.conf without initial transponder. Have a look here http://www.edafe.org/vdr/wscan.html

rgds
Oliver

PS: If anyone has problems compiling, I can easily supply the executable.

Zaerc

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #24 on: January 18, 2008, 07:26:08 pm »
Well I've just (re-)figured out about the same thing.  This is basicly what I did (may need to stop LMCE first with the launch manager):
Code: [Select]
sudo apt-get install dvb-utils  # only needed once

sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop  # free the dvb card
scan -o vdr .kde/share/apps/kaffeine/dvb-t/nl-Randstad >channels.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/vdr start  # start vdr again

Then I uploaded the generated channels.conf in the web-admin under: Advanced > Configuration > VDR Setup.  Everything seems to be working alright, but I still can't get a decent (stable) signal, which is another problem that I still need to look into (probably get a better antenna and/or a signal booster).

But I do get the channel/programming info, and I must say the integration looks really sweet!

"Change is inevitable. Progress is optional."
-- Anonymous


totallymaxed

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #25 on: January 18, 2008, 08:49:45 pm »
I'm sorry Andrew, I am still missing a piece in the puzzle! You say you need to use the internal setting, but that if your output is 1080p capable it will use it. Are you saying that the internal setting will automatically turn on if 1080p is the current output? If so, then this part is not working, as the output is not being deinterlaced. Is this the case?

If you need to de-interlace your live TV or recorded TV picture then you need to use the internal vdr setting for this. However if your video is set for 1080p then you will not see the need for vdr's de-interlace settings as the video card hardware will already be handling this for you (at least thats the theory...)
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colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #26 on: January 18, 2008, 09:44:48 pm »
I think we may be talking at cross purposes.

I understand that my video card is taking successive lines and outputing them progressively from an input signal that "arrived" from and interlaced source. It would have to or the screen wouldn't form a viewable image.and in that sense it is de-interlacing.

What I'm talking about is the post processing compensation options like in the web admin that are to correct pictures that are going through the process described above.

Because the source was interlaced, and successive lines are from 1/50th second apart, with motion this will often cause particularly horizontal offset due to the difference in time they are sampled. If these lines are then displayed interlaced this in effect neutralises the effect. But if you reorder the lines to make them progressive, you are putting significantly offset lines next to each other, and that horizontal effect is "combing" and it looks terrible!

The de-interlacing is a very heavy duty post processing function, which is I presume why they provide several different levels in the console.

Sure many video cards may have this function in hardware, but they aren't going to know to use it unless they are told to.

I guess my question is - are there any other options to control this problem without having to take the heavy CPU hit, although as I say would have thought this could be done in hardware. Can vdr control it so if the source is interlaced then it passes that through as interlaced and let the TV switch - frankly the benefit of a progressive scan image is tiny compared with the terrible effect of combing caused by converting to the progressive signal from interlaced!

So passthru automatically, hardware de-interlacing to save CPU, or perhaps some other approach???

colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #27 on: January 19, 2008, 12:11:37 am »
I think I may have found some options to control what VDR does to the stream before outputting it, in:
http://lisas.de/~alex/?p=19 and
http://www.mail-archive.com/vdr@linuxtv.org/msg02635.html

I am assuming that the xineliboutput plugin is the glue between VDR and Xine_wrapper. In the setup.conf file for VDR, there is an option called "xineliboutput.video.deinterlace" and "xineliboutput.video.deinterlaceoptions" the first is set to "none"

The links suggest that setting it to tvtime or something else and then configuring the options will give a far better result. I have tried this but it doesn't seem to be doing the deinterlacing. Problem is, I have found the setup.conf file in at least 2 different places! (/etc/vdr and /var/lib/vdr) and I don't know anything about Linux, so I'm not really sure which one I should be changing! Nor am I sure whether I actually have to reboot afterwards. I tried just restarting the MD from the LM, and restarting the core services, plus doing an /etc/init.d/vdr stop/start.

Does anybody know about the vdr integration, and which file I should be screwing with?! Totallymaxed, wasn't it your guys that did this stuff?

Marie.O

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #28 on: January 19, 2008, 12:17:58 am »
Problem is, I have found the setup.conf file in at least 2 different places! (/etc/vdr and /var/lib/vdr) and I don't know anything about Linux, so I'm not really sure which one I should be changing!

Both are the same file. The first is a soft-link to the second.

rgds
Oliver

colinjones

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Re: VDR Setup
« Reply #29 on: January 19, 2008, 12:25:08 am »
Didn't think to check that! Certainly explains some strange behaviour whilst I was editing them :)

So does that mean that it is "active" in the sense that I edit that file, and it will have the effect on LMCE, or is LMCE preconfiguring these parameters and ignoring the file? Just don't want to be tinkering with files that aren't even being read as part of the implementation!