[mythtv] MythVideo - multiple parts to a movie

[Joseph A. Caputo]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net]On Behalf Of DanM
> Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 3:35 PM
> To: Development of mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv] MythVideo - multiple parts to a movie
>
>
> Then it would be the responsibility of the parent to link to the child,
> instead of the child to the parent.  I've always done things that way.
> But if someone has a good argument either way, I'm willing to go that
> way.  By good argument, I mean something more than "You should do it
> this way because I do it way".
>
> The sql is easy either way:
>
> select * from blah where parentID = someNumber;
> vs.
> select * from blah where childID = someOtherNumber;
>
> -dan

Well, if the information resides with the parent, then you don't need to do
any extra queries to find out if there is a child, as you should have
already fetched the current record's childID field along with all the other
information.  Since multi-part movies are probably the exception rather than
the rule, it seems to make sense to do things this way.

Incidentally, how would you address the problem of 'unintended' child
playback?  By that I mean, if I'm watching a multipart movie and exit
mplayer halfway through the first part, I probably don't want the second
part to automatically start up.  I probably only want the second part to
start playing if I watch 'off the end' of the first part.  A prompt would be
better, but only a little bit.  I realize that it's only a single button
press to cancel the playback or answer a prompt, but it still seems kind of
hokey for a piece of software not to be 'smart enough' to know whether
you're ready to watch the second part of a movie or not.  After all, most
DVD players are (well, technically the feature is authored onto the DVD
itself, not the player, but still...)  Of course, the ultimate solution
would be for Myth to support native playback of multiple formats, but that's
Isaac's call.  Another approach would be to enhance MythVideo so that it
could control mplayer in slave mode or through a socket, which, in turn,
might allow mythvideo to know when a movie has been played all the way to
the end or stopped early.

Just thinking out loud again.  Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain :-)

-JAC