[mythtv] MythTV Recording System Future

[Mike Javorski]

First off, let me say that I really appreciate all the effort that has
gone in to making MythTV what it is today. I currently use it for all my
TV watching (my TiVo now just records shows I want to archive in a
normal MPEG file)



MythTV Recording Future:
=============================================
When I set out on adding the various pieces of IVTV support I had no
idea the levels of cruft that had to be used to make it work. It's
crazy. There is little bits and pieces all over the place to make it
work. I realize this may be partly due to the fact it was added to an
existing system which dealt with individual audio/video compression
sources, but yikes..

I spent a great deal of time scratching my head trying to figure out
where the settings where going, and where the code needed to be hacked
to make it work.. Oy!

Well anyway. I am wondering what the general consensus is out there.
Should the recording system be made "plug-in" based? I would imagine
that in future there might be other "special" devices that people will
want to support, and the current mechanism (though it does work) makes
it a bit like voodoo.



================

I see the possibility for 3 classes of recording plug-ins:

 - Audio (provides a compressed audio stream)
 - Video (provides a compressed video stream)
 - Stream (provides a muxed audio+video stream)

or alternatively it could be just "stream" plugins, and there could be a
"stream" plug-in that has it's own plug-in architecture for audio and
video plug-ins. This would fit nicely as the current nuppelvideo
mechanism could be turned into a "stream provider" that would support
the existing files.


Additionally there should be comparative playback/decoding plug-ins
ones that are designed to deal with different stream types. (as
recordings should always be stored as some type of stream on the disc)

this could possibly be done with extensions:
 .mpg => fmpeg decoder mechanism

 .nuv => true nuppelvideo decoder mechanism

 .divx => some DiVX decoder

 .mtvs => the isaac richards nuv format (MythTVStream)

 .omf?? => ogg stream format

 .avi => longstanding though evil stream format


This system would allow for recording to formats that can be archived
and viewed on other platforms. Additionally it would support recordings
that were recorded in one format, and then re-encode them with a non
real-time encoder to end up with a higher quality file, but still be
able to view them through the mythtv interface. (something I want is to
record in Huffyuv then transcode to a multi-pass DivX or MPEG) 



================

If this makes any sense to you all who have actually been doing
development on MythTV (or anyone else for that matter), I would like
input on it. And if there is any interest I can work on developing the
idea into something more concrete.

I would be happy to contribute development time, though I cannot say how
much (my job status is in flux at the moment).


I have some other ideas, but I figure one big and nasty change at a time
:-)


- Mike