[mythtv] updated FAQ submitted for your approval

[Isaac Richards]

Thanks, I'll look it over tonight.

Isaac

On Thursday 15 August 2002 11:02 pm, Chris Kleeschulte wrote:
>  MythTV FAQ
>
> ) My mouse pointer disappears over the windows?
> - This is desired behavior.  The interface is meant for use with a remote
> control, or a keyboard.
>
> ) What's this 'strange error flushing buffer' mean?
> - Nothing, really.  It's just lame (the mp3 encoder) complaining for some
> obscure reason.
>
> ) The audio's _really_ out of sync, and it doesn't pause when I pause live
> TV? - You need to mute the line-in, and set the mixer to record from the
> line in. The audio you're hearing is from the audio pass-through, enabled
> by the V4L driver, and not MythTV.
>
> ) I get an error when compiling about 'mkspecs'?
> - You need to set QTDIR.  On Debian, it should be /usr/share/qt On
> Mandrake, it should be /usr/lib/qt3
>
> ) I can't change the channel when watching TV?
> - Something's wrong with your program database.  Did filldata run with no
> major errors?
>
> ) I want to run the database on another machine?
> - Ok, first, you'll need to edit the mc.sql script first to setup the
> proper permissions for the machine that'll be running mythtv and connecting
> to the database.  Next, after you've followed all the directions and built
> all MythTV's programs, and after you've done a make install, but before
> you've run filldata, you need to edit the /usr/local/share/mythtv/mysql.txt
> file to it points to the server you're running the mysql on.  If you want,
> you can copy that mysql.txt file to ~/.mythtv/.  If it's in ~/.mythtv/ then
> it won't get copied over by another, future, 'make install'.  Once that's
> all done, you should be all set, I think.
>
> ) Is it currenlty possible to have MythTV change the channel on my cable
> box, instead of my tuner? The reason I ask is because I have digtial cable,
> however I only have a analog WinTV tuner card in my PC. - Yup, see here:
>
> http://www.snowman.net/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2002-July/000020.html
>
> Essentially, most of the code's there for it, it just needs someone that
> actually wants the feature to finish it up.
>
> ) Which TVOUT card are people using?
> - I'm using a Gainward Geforce4 Ti4200, but any card that has Xv support in
> Xfree should work just fine.
>
> ) The "Tv Guide" function...does it only work in UK?  I'm gonna be
> travelling, but not that far.  :) - No, the tv guide is xmltv
> (http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~epa98/work/apps/xmltv/). It current works in the
> US, Canada, UK, Germany, and Austria.
>
> ) I was also wondering if there is a specific reason a hardware
> encoder/decoder is not used? - Well an encoder/decoder would be more
> efficient, but most of them are closed source requiring reverse engineering
> to build a driver. There is this one
> (http://www.linuxtv.org/mpeg2/kfir.xml) if you're so inclined to integrate
> it into mythtv.
>
> ) First of all, I have gathered that you are using X11 and the Xvideo
> extension for your output.  How do you control flipping the images of a
> video stream from one frame to the next such that they only get flipped on
> the vertical retrace (vsync pulse).  As I understood it, this was not
> possible in X11/Xv.  If you can't do this, then you must get horrible
> tearing of your displayed video streams. - Actually, I only see very minor
> tearing when using a monitor as a display device, and that very rarely.  On
> a TV as an output device, none at all. XvPutImage with a call to XSync
> immediately after seems to automatically sync up with the retrace.  The
> video output code does make its best attempt to display frames at exactly
> the right times, which also helps.
>
> ) I have also gathered that you are using the Nuppel video format.  I have
> not really looked much into this format myself, but does it store field
> information (i.e. interlaced streams) or is it progressive like MPEG1 and
> store frames?  If it's progressive like MPEG1, how do you deal with the
> temporal issues of two fields, each being a different snapshot in time
> being combined together into a single frame?  Do you get interlace
> artifacts or does Nuppel have some smoothing/blending/interpolating"
> algorithm to combine the two fields into a single frame? -I've got code in
> there to deinterlace the image (grabbed the linear blend filter from
> mplayer), but that's only needed when displayed on a monitor -- the tv out
> (at least with nvidia's drivers) does the right thing and separates the
> frame into its fields for display.
>
>
> end-------------------------------end
>
>
> thanks,
> Chris