[mythtv-users] mythtv on ppc (was: cvs compile problems)

[Gregorio Gervasio Jr.]

>>>>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 18:14:59 -0800, Cedar McKay <cedarmckay at mac.com> said:
c> I have no experience with linux on PPC yet so I can only nod and
c> encourage you on. Please post if you make any major breakthroughs.

>> I haven't been able to get the libavcodec Altivec-enhanced
>> routines to work (even with mplayer -- video output is all wrong) so
>> it's using a lot of CPU just to decode.  It uses about 70% on a
>> 400MHz G4 for a 640x480 @3300k stream.
>> 
c> Gentoo advertises on their website full G4 optimization bla bla bla. I
c> have no experience with gentoo, but I understand it is a all-source
c> distro.  I wonder if someone tried to emerge mythtv on a PPC gentoo
c> machine whether your problems would persist or be taken care of?

        The libavcodec Altivec code requires an Altivec-enabled gcc
(unlike the Altivec support in xine which I think only needed binutils
support).  I tried building and installing gcc-3.2.1 and managed to
get libavcodec to compile but the output was wrong (video completely
garbled).  (Unfortunately, some kernel drivers I had compiled with
gcc-3.2.1 caused system crashes.  Since my LinuxPPC distro was
obsolete anyway, I decided to just wipe out my system and install
Debian.)  It looks like the Altivec parts were written for Apple's gcc
or maybe some version from Motorola.  For now, I'll just try to get
mythfrontend to work without Altivec.  Later on, I will take a look at
Gentoo/fink mplayer to see if/how they used Altivec-enabled
libavcodec.

c> as well as xmltv. It seams like almost everything is there. The one
c> thing that worries me is xv, which (if I understand correctly) talks
c> directly to hardware. I doubt that any of the fink ports (even GNOME
c> and KDE) do this.  Sadly, I can't code (which is why I help with
c> documentation instead) but I'm very interested in an OS X front-end
c> port. It would be sweet one day to use fink to install mythtv (at
c> least the frontend).

        I think OSX X11 does have Xv support and fink Qt is the X11
version (Qt/Mac is not free?) so the easiest path is to run mythtv
under X11 anyway.  What might be a problem is sound (no OSS), but we
could probably take a look at fink mplayer or xine to see how it's
done.
-- 
Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.
gtgj at pacbell.net