[mythtv] No video on macbook on with 0.25

[Andrew Leech]

On 27/05/12 1:31 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 05/26/2012 09:22 AM, Andrew Leech wrote:
>> Having recently purchased a new macbook (early '11 model), I found 
>> that 0.25 would simply show a white screen permanently when playing 
>> video, with the audio running fine in the background. Changing the 
>> video profile made no difference.
>> I found however that the 05 May build of 0.25b on 
>> http://avenard.org/files/mac/ worked fine. Anything newer including 
>> 0.25 release, /fixes and master all show the same problem.
>> After setting up compiling in the mac a couple of days ago, and then 
>> spending a good few hours bisecting and rebuilding, I've found the 
>> causal commit to be
>>
>> fa639a77c0 - Make users have to figure out if their video works.
>>
>> After reading the commit description, I followed the advice, found 
>> the painter setting and turned it to Auto, and there we go, my video 
>> now works fine!
>>
>> Was this really the desired behavior of this commit?
>
> Yes, unfortunately.
>
>> And if so, where should I have found this information needed to make 
>> video work?
>> Why isn't auto the default setting here, as surely it would give the 
>> best experience for the majority of users?
>>
>> I'm not a new user, I've been using myth on linux for about 7 years, 
>> but this had me stumped for quite a while. I've since checked my main 
>> machine, running mythbuntu, and it's interface was set to QT also 
>> although it's video has always worked fine. I had always wondered why 
>> the myth interface on that computer had been so slow, now I know. 
>> Switching it to Auto has made it run a lot better too!
>
...
> As far as how you would find the information, it's pretty much as 
> described in my rant in the commit message--most users won't.  Only 
> those who see a failure (such as you) would continue to look into the 
> issue, until they find the setting to change.  Ideally, they would 
> either notice http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/10559 or messages on 
> the mailing list archive ( 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/ ) or ask on the mailing 
> list or on IRC and someone would let them know that only OpenGL 
> painter works on Mac OS X, and that they should set their Paint Engine 
> to Auto.
>
> On the bright side, I'm pretty sure (though I haven't proven) that Qt 
> 4.8 has some major changes that mean we use OpenGL even when we don't 
> tell Qt to use OpenGL, and I expect it will encourage further changes 
> in the future (including better support from video drivers), which may 
> allow us to change the default to the sane choice, Auto.
>
> Out of curiosity, which Mythbuntu and which Qt version is on your main 
> system?
>
> Also, I'm assuming you have OS X 10.7?  What version of Qt is on that 
> system?  (Wonder if the non-functionality may be related to the 4.8 
> changes I mentioned above.)
>
Thanks for the detailed description of the problem. I do understand your 
motivations now. Maybe a note on the wiki or something about the OSX 
problem would be good, considering I used the binary download links on 
there originally to install mythfrontend 0.25 only to find they didn't work.

Yes, I am running 10.7, but used QT version 4.7.4 as was suggested in 
other OSX compiling posts as it's the only one available as a universal 
binary distribution. In hindsight I really don't need it to be 
universal, I could have just used the newer package and stuck to x64 but 
I didn't think of that at the time. If I get a chance I'll download 4.8 
and recompile to check if that does fix the painter issue. To be honest 
I had never suspected QT as the issue when it first hit me, as it was 
the video not working I assumed it was an opengl thing.

My main box is running mythbuntu lucid, on an Intel G6950 cpu, using the 
built in graphics and the intel driver. I am using newer drivers and 
mesa from http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu and 
http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu so I guess that's why I 
didn't see the problems from switching the interface to opengl the other 
night.

MythTV Version : v0.25-beta-173-g111f0ed
MythTV Branch : master
Network Protocol : 72
Library API : 0.25.20120315-2
QT Version : 4.6.2

I've been planning on updating it to 0.25 fixes from the mythbuntu 
repository but haven't had a chance lately. It's working well currently 
so haven't been to motivated to do so.