[mythtv-users] Mythtv/gentoo hangs when playing live or recorded video

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 10:03:53AM +0000, Ben Edwards wrote:
> Its a nVirda MX 4400 I have.  Do you recon going to XFree86 is the way
> forward or did you solve it another way?
> 
> On 11/11/05, chris at cpr.homelinux.net <chris at cpr.homelinux.net> wrote:
> > My desktop machine started doing that after I upgraded from xfree86 to
> > xorg.

My recent experiences with Debian and MythTV have been a world of hurt.

I have two front-end machines.  Both run Debian-based distros and both
were broken by Debian's decision to kill xfree86 as the Debian xorg
packages don't support the hardware in either of them.

In the case of the XBox (Xebian 1.1.4 with Debian updates) I managed to
find a site with a Fedora driver for the xbox and so I copied the driver
and xorg.conf over the broken Debian versions and with a little tweaking
managed to get it running again.

I then had no choice but to upgrade from the stable 0.18.1-2 Myth to
0.18.1-5 because the upgrade to xorg replaced the X libs for which the
stable Myth was built.  (To make matters worse, the Myth sites seem to
have deleted the stable packages.)  I managed to get the 0.18.1-5
frontend running on the XBox but now it has no plugins for weather,
news, video, music, etc.  At least I can once again watch TV (after more
than two weeks of blindly recording stuff I thought I'd never get to
watch.)

I haven't found a suitable Radeon driver for xorg, so my desktop system
is running X on the Framebuffer.  I can do anything except watch MythTV.
If I manage to find an unofficial Radeon driver I may give it a try, but
for the most part I'm willing to wait it out as long as the XBox keeps
running.

I just wish the MythTV plugin maintainers would put out a 0.18.1-5
release.

BTW, the backend has had its share of woes.  I upgraded ivtv to version
4 and mythbackend to 0.18.1-5 and it captures video just fine.
Unfortunately it's lost the ability to transcode.  I grabbed the latest
stable nuvexport tar and installed it but run into two different
problems depending on which show I try to transcode (both attempts to
convert a .nuv to VCD format):

*** EXAMPLE 1 ***

Choose a function, or episode(s) to remove:  c
Where would you like to export the files to? [.]
Enable Myth cutlist? [Yes]
Enable noise reduction (slower, but better results)? [Yes]
Enable deinterlacing? [Yes]
Crop broadcast overscan (2% border)? [Yes]

Now encoding:  Good Morning America:  Untitled
Encode started:  Fri Nov 11 07:33:23 2005
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Starting ffmpeg.
processed:  0 of 0 frames (0.00%),   0.00 fps    INFO: [yuvdenoise]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   INFO: [yuvdenoise] mjpeg-tools yuvdenoise version 1.8.0
   INFO: [yuvdenoise]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
yuvdenoise: invalid option -- r
processed:  0 of 0 frames (0.00%),   0.00 fps
^C

I suspect the problem here is not with MythTV itself but with a broken
(Debianized) ffmpeg.

*** EXAMPLE 2 ***

Choose a function, or episode(s) to remove:  c
Where would you like to export the files to? [.]
Enable Myth cutlist? [Yes]
Enable noise reduction (slower, but better results)? [Yes]
Enable deinterlacing? [Yes]
Crop broadcast overscan (2% border)? [Yes]

Now encoding:  Pulp Fiction:  Untitled
Encode started:  Fri Nov 11 07:32:02 2005
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
Waiting for mythtranscode to set up the fifos.
^C

I don't know where to start looking on this one.  The script creates a
temporary directory in /tmp OK:
drwxr-xr-x  2 mythtv mythtv    40 Nov 11 07:32 fifodir_11463

I don't know which program is waiting or why.