[mythtv] Re: MythMusic Improvements

Kevin Kuphal kuphal at dls.net
Thu Jan 6 19:08:06 EST 2005


Colin Guthrie wrote:

> Chris Fleming wrote:
>
>> Nick Parkinson wrote:
>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Just wondered if anyone was working on improvements
>>>> for MythMusic; here's a list of things that spring
>>>> to
>>>> mind:
>>>>
>>>> 1. IPOD support, and for other portable devices
>>>> (USB)
>>>>   
>>>
>>
>> Having just set up my iPod to work with linux yesterday evening. I 
>> started thinking about integration Mythtv. My current thinking is 
>> that the best way to do this is to build some  scripts around gnupod 
>> (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html) to deal with the 
>> itunes database, it also has the capability to convert from ogg to 
>> mp3 format. So  initially I just plan to get some scripts working 
>> that will sync the tunes and playlists listed in mythmusic.
>>
>> My plan will then be to add a frontend plugin, however as a sync may 
>> take a long time, especially if we are converting to mp3's  the actal 
>> sync will run in the background and so the frontend will just be a 
>> means of checking the current status and mounting/unmounting the ipod.
>>
>> It will also need a method of dealing with situations where the iPod 
>> doesn't have enough capacity to store all of the music - I've not run 
>> into this situation yet, however the most likely solution will be to 
>> use a playlist to manage this.
>>
>> It would also be good to sync the rating, and playcount data.
>>
>> Any other thoughs? Anybody else doing this yet?
>
>
> I filed a bug/enhancement for this in bugzilla (but 19 or 20 IIRC) and 
> was going to have a crack at this for my iRiver, but havn't finished 
> the other improvments I'm making yet, so not had time to get round to it.
>
> It would be really nice if anyone starts working on this code if they 
> can make it configurable for different media players. For example, my 
> iRiver uses a different database format to iPod, and it can play 
> Oggs/WMA directly without needing any form of conversion (can't do 
> FLAC tho'). So it would be nice if these parts of the sync process 
> worked in a flexible/configurable manner.
>
> As for playlist, I think it would be nice to be able to register one 
> or more playlists per device for sync'ing. It's not unfeasable that 
> two or three people would all want to sync their media devices to the 
> mythbox, and may want to have different playlists etc, even if they 
> have the same player. Would it be possible to read some from of serial 
> number from the device and somehow associate it with the different 
> playlist (in some cases it may be the same playlists of course).
>
> I'm looking forward to the day when some form of regexp based 
> playlists are integrated into MythMusic and when that happens 
> autosync'ing of playlists may get pretty sweet.
>
> I guess there would be no problem with writing a small "control" file 
> on the device too to track the sync process, to save it scanning the 
> whole disc, although even a full disc scan isn't too crazy so perhaps 
> not needed.
>
> I defo like the idea of a background process, perhaps with some form 
> of loose bandwidth limit to save it hogging all your network bandwidth 
> (if appropriate) to allow you to watch a movie or play more music if 
> that's what you want to do.
>
> Do you see this as a totally separate plugin or just integrated into 
> MythMusic. I had originally thought part of MM but your comments above 
> perhaps suggest you thought otherwise??
>
> Just a few pennies for thoughts!
>
Just a couple cents here.  One reason that you might not see much 
activity in this arena is that in many ways this is something best left 
done to a vendor supported or dedicated sync program.  There is nothing 
specific to Myth that is needed for synchronization.  You have access to 
the music files on the filesystem and so the sync program does also.  
Other than a GUI (which may or may not be necessary), there's not much 
that you need Myth for.  Now, interchangable playlists is a nice idea 
but that is probably just as easily accomplished in a standard way 
supporting formats like .m3u or other playlist formats from MythMusic so 
that they can be used by any player that supports them.

Just some thoughts.  I saw similar "prospect" when I thought of 
integrating my MythMusic collection with my iTunes player on my PC and 
simply installed mt-daapd and voila, my entire collection is accessible 
to iTunes and MythMusic doesn't know a thing about it.

Kevin



More information about the mythtv-dev mailing list