Difference between revisions of "Using MythTV"

Revision as of 07:14, 11 March 2007

Previous	Up	Next
User Manual:Detailed configuration Frontend	User Manual:Index	User Manual:Accessory Modules

Using A Myth Box From Day To Day

Ah, yes; the part you've all been waiting for. :-)

This section identifies all the things you can do with a MythTV unit, and explains how they work and how to control them. Hopefully, it will also identify things which can be done more than one way, and point out the most effective choice (and why you might want to do it another way anyway).

MythTV is, as we've said, a very capable, powerful, and most of all expandable system. The practical effect of this is that as we go along, we will describe things which can only be done with more than the basic configuration, or which work differently if you have more than the basic configuration.

Conventions and notes

Whether your screen will look exactly like the screenshots in this manual will vary depending on the theme you have chosen.

Editor's note: The images below are using only one of the several available OSDs. Personally, I prefer some of the other, "prettier", OSDs (no offense to the author of that OSD). Also note that some of the behaviors noted in this document will change with the release of 0.19 (mainly the LiveTV section). --TylerDrake

Editor's note: Please keep configuration related items as well as deep technical explanations to a minimum in editing this section. This section of the manual is for end-users; technical topics should be covered in the setup and config sections --Mikec 06:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Remote Control Buttons

The remote button icons represent common names for remote control keys. In reality, how these map to physical keyboard keys will depend on how your particular machine was configured. You will need to setup your Remote Control to suit.

You can find a full list of keyboard keys and functions on the keybindings page.

Remote Control Name	Keyboard Key	Remote Control Name	Keyboard Key	Remote Control Name	Keyboard Key
Pause	p	Exit	ESC	Rewind	Page Up
Left Cursor	Left Arrow	Vol Down	[ or F10	Fast Forward	Page Down
Right Cursor	Right Arrow	Vol Up	] or F11	Zoom, Size	w
Up Cursor	Up Arrow	Start	Home or Q	Prog +
Down Cursor	Down Arrow	End	End or Z	Prog -
Select	CR	Record	CR	Mute	F9
Info	i	Power	User	Slow Motion	A
Menu	m	Stop	User	AV input	C
1	1	2	2	3	3
4	4	5	5	6	6
7	7	8	8	9	9
0	0		s

Introduction

MythTV has been designed to be used via the "ten foot Interface": you should be able to drive its day to day functions from ten feet (3 metres) away sitting comfortably on your sofa.

In many respects, this is a compromise between functionality and simplicity. This is especially the case given that the average Remote Control only has about 40 to 50 keys (10 of which are numbers). Compare this with MythTV's over 100 keyboard functions.

MythTV users will also cite the much needed WAF or GAF; that is, Wife/Girlfriend Acceptance Factor. The good news is the 80/20 rule applies - you can do 80% of your day to day things with MythTV on about 20 keys on your remote.

Live TV vs MythTV

MythTV introduces a whole new paradigm shift in the way you watch TV. Traditional TV forced you to watch against the broadcaster's schedule. This meant that you scheduled your time around your favorite programs. This also created the channel-surfing culture, cycling through channels just to see what was on, more often than not there was never anything you liked.

MythTV introduces the Electronic Program Guide, or EPG, with its full description of what is currently being broadcast and what will be broadcast in the coming weeks. The guide is stored in a relational database so that you can make queries such as find episodes of "Desperate Housewives".

MythTV watching is more like the way you would watch your DVD collection. You browse what is in your collection and watch what you want, when you want. However instead of going out and buying DVD's, you harvest your favourite programs as they are broadcast, record them to your hard drive and watch them as you want.

MythTV has plugins that actually allow you to just look for broadcasts of your favourite films and, as soon as they are broadcast, record them to your hard drive to add to your collection! You can even have the system make recommendations and record them against the kind of shows that you like.

Many long-term MythTV users will say that they have stopped watching live TV and are instead spending time each week scheduling the system to record the kind of shows they like and just browsing through their collection of shows and movies and watching what they like at their leisure.

Dealing with Commercials

Whether you like to watch adverts/commercials is a matter of taste. MythTV on the otherhand gives you a choice of skipping over these in your recordings. As such MythTV is often compared to a TiVO. There is much activity in the industry with respect to commercial handling, and forcing users to watch these ie. you cant fastforward or skip these with Personal Video recorder devices or applications, indeed it may even become illegal to do so.

Media Consolidation

Over the years MythTV has transformed itself into a full blown media hub, able to handle all digital media including photos, music, videos, DVD and CD plus much more. More importanly since the 0.20 release, MythTV is now able to support the new Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) media server/client and control point standard, so that it can interact with all manner of other media applications and devices.

Menu Outlines

You may find it useful while reading the manual to refer to (or even print out) the Menu Maps for the front end and the backend setup program.

Starting MythTV

MythTV consists of two main applications: MythBackend and Mythfrontend. Mythbackend handles all aspects of your TV cards and capturing live TV shows into recordings, and most importantly all the information about these recordings and any media you have such as music and photos. You will always need to start the Mythbackend first. Mythfrontend handles the user interface and the interaction between you, your remote control and the mythbackend server.

Ideally mythbackend/mythfrontend should be autostarted when you power on your machine, see the user Manual:Detailed configuration Backend and user Manual:Detailed configuration Frontend on how to do this. Many users just leave their machines running all the time so that they can be sure to capture scheduled TV shows to recordings. For those of you that are concerned about electricity usage, then you can have your MythTV machine automatically wakeup just before a show starts, and then shutdown after the show has been recorded. The mythbackend server will automatically shut down when it is idle, ie is not connected to a front end, or is not recording.

You can also start Mythbackend from a terminal session with the following command:

> /usr/bin/mythbackend

And the MythTV Frontend with the following command:

> /usr/bin/mythfrontend

mythfrontend can be run either in full screen mode or inside a window.

Once MythTV has started you will be presented with the MythTV Front page. Here is one using the Retro Theme.

You can see a collection of Themes available here MythTv Themes.

MythTV Welcome Screen

0.19 introduced the concept of a "welcome screen" so that the frontend could be started with a press of the remote control. This has been introduced for those people that want to use scheduled wakeup and shutdown to record scheduled shows to save on power consumption. Prior to this the Frontend would always start up which in turn meant that the backend would never shutdown when the recording had finished, thus defeating the whole purpose.

The welcome screen will show the status of the backend and wait for you to manually start the frontend with your remote

You should set your system to autostart with mythwelcome rather than mythfrontend. Mythwelcome will automatically start mythfrontend in the event that the system is normally powered on. You can change this behaviour by accessing the configuration page. Press

You can also access shutdown and exit options in mythwelcome by pressing

File:WelcomeScreen2.jpg

You may find it helpful to read the Mythwelcome configuration page

Watching and Recording Live TV

Detailed information on watching live TV can be found in the Watch TV sub chapter of this manual.

Recordings

Scheduled Recordings

The Recording capability of MythTV is its most powerful feature and sets it apart from just about anything else on the market. It allows you to have complete control of even very complex recording scenarios. There are three ways to find the shows that you want to record.

1. Use the EPG.

This is good for recordings coming up in the next 24 hours, can be difficult if you want to schedule lots of shows, or don't know where and when they are being transmitted.

2. Use the Programme Finder

You can find this under Manage Recordings->Schedule Recordings->Programme Finder

This is good for scheduling lots of shows as well as when you want to schedule something that is more than a day away, saves lots of scrolling and searching the EPG.

Use , keys to select your shows to record.

3. Custom Recordings

For those of you that want to do really advanced stuff you might find it helpful to read the section on Custom Recording

If you have multiple tuner cards, MythTV will try and resolve schedule conflicts by searching for repeat broadcasts of the same show as well as trying to handle non broadcasts due to changes in schedules. For recording of multiple episodes of a show, MythTV will look at the episode information to identify unique episodes.

You can change Recording priorities in Setup->TV Settings->Recording Priorities

Select the show that you want to record and press the key repeatedly to cycle through the record options. A record icon on the guide will show which option you have selected.

	`Not Recording`
	`Record only this Programme at this specific time and this station. This is the best way to be sure that a certain showing is recorded. However, if the TV listings change and the show is not broadcast at that time, the show will not be recorded but will be marked as Not Listed to let you know that you should investigate.`
	`Record a title once from any of the times that appear in the TV listings. This is useful for recording a movie or special that has multiple showings because it allows the scheduler to choose one that doesn't conflict. It is not a good choice for recording a single episode of a series because it records the first available showing of the title without regard to the episode information.`
	`Record a show whenever the title is listed on the same channel, weekday and time. Note that if the TV station changes the schedule for a special episode, it would not be recorded. However, you can add a single record for the special episode.`
	`Record a title once per week from any of the times that appear in the TV listings beginning from the time of the showing that was selected when the rule was set. This is useful for news, current events or other programs where the same episode is shown several times each week but the listings may not include descriptive information. This may not be a good choice if there are different episodes shown during the week.`
	`Records a show whenever the title is listed for the time and station on any day of the week. Here again, a show will not be recorded if the time was altered by the station.`
	`Record a title once per day from any of the times that appear in the TV listings beginning from the time of the showing that was selected when the rule was set. This is useful for news, current events or other shows where the same episode is shown several times each day but the listings may not include descriptive information. This may not be a good choice if there are different episodes shown during the day.`
	`Records a show anytime the title is listed on this station. This is perhaps the most common rule to use for most shows.`
	`Record this title on any station at any time. This can be useful if a station has sister stations where shows are rebroadcast allowing the scheduler to record rebroadcasts on the other station when the original airing cannot be recorded.`

Common recording scenarios

Note: This is intended to be a use-case or best practices section for setting up different types of recordings.

New episode each week. Single showing per week.

This will be the most common recording type. Channel record.

New episode each week. Multiple showings per week.

Locate the timeslot that is the first airing of the new episode for the week. Setup as a find weekly.

New episode each (week?) day. Single showing per day.

Channel record.

New episode each (week?) day. Multiple showings per day.

Locate the timeslot that is the first airing of the new episode for the day. Setup as a find daily.

Any showing of a single episode.

--Todo--

How MythTV Records

Ringbuffer and Recordings

Prior to the 0.19 release MythTV treated timeshifting ie chase play and recording a programme differently. There was a Ringbuffer that handled the timeshifting element, whereas Recordings were saved into their own file. This had some negative side effects.

1. If you were watching a live show and 15 minutes into it you decided that you wanted to record it, pressing the record key only recorded the show at that point. You lost 15 mins worth even though those 15mins were in the ringbuffer.

2. Changing channels was unnecessarily slow because the system had to mess around with the ringbuffer each time.

With 0.19 Timeshifting and recording are one and the same. Now if you press the record button 10 mins into the show, all MythTV does is make a change in the database to indicate that this is a Recording and by magic it appears in your recordings collection.

Live TV recordings that have not been transitioned appear in the Default Recordings group.

Expirations of Recordings

If your machines starts to run low in disc space it will start to expire (delete) recordings to make room. The default behaviour is to delete oldest shows first, and is checked every 10 mins. You can mark Recordings as permanent in the Recording Browser. Select the recording you want and press and select "Don't Auto Expire".

You can change the default beviour in TV settings->General settings-> Global Auto Expire Settings

Commercial Flagging

MythTV recordings are automatically flagged for commercials, ie there are markers put in the database that tell the system where it believes commercials start and end. This allows you to jump over commercials when playing back recordings. You can also use this information to delete the commercials when you export the recordings.

You can change the default behaviour in TV settings->General settings->Job Queue

You might find it useful to have a look at Commercial Flagging which explains how it works.

Watching Recordings

Detailed information about watching recordings can be found in the Watch Recordings sub chapter of this manual.

Managing Recordings

Upcoming recordings

The MythTV master backend is responsible for managing the schedule for all TV tuner cards on the master and any slave. Its job is to search the TV listing for the shows you have requested and assign recordings to the TV tuner cards. If none of the shows that you've chosen overlap, it simply records all of the shows. However, if there are shows where the beginning and end times overlap, the scheduler follows rules that you've specified or makes logical decisions about what would be best if you haven't expressed any preference.

If you have a lot of recordings scheduled, you can check to see what they are, as well as resolve any conflicts that the system can't handle, with the upcoming recordings browser. Main Screen->Manage Recordings->Upcoming Recordings.

There are two 'views' available.

1.Press to include all of the items that match record rules even if they do not need to be recorded.

2.Press to focus on just the things that will record and items that may need your attention.

Conflicts Reminder

This tells you if there are any conflicts that would prevent one or more shows from being recorded.

Highlight Colour

The items in the list are colored in the record color for things that will record, white for things that may need attention, gray for those that do not need to record and yellow when there is a time conflict. Items at the top of the list may also be highlighted in red indicating that the recording is in progress.

Tuner Number and Status Code

Numbers indicate which card number has been assigned to record the show. Letters are used to indicate the reason that something will not be recorded. You can see what the letter means in the "Record Mode" Below.

Record Mode

This is a short status message for the highlighted item that indicates the type of record rule that was matched, the "total priority" for this showing and a one or two word explanation of the status code.

Press to see more information about the Recording and to make changes to its status.

Editing Recordings

The Editor allows you to remove any commercials that the may not have been detected by the system during recording. You might also want to remove the lead in prior to a show or the overrun at the end of a show. The process of editing is often referred to as creating a Cut List. This is because MythTV does not actually cut the Recording. Instead it creates a collection of in and out points in the database that is associated with that recording.

To Edit a Recording press to bring up the On Screen Menu. Select Edit Recording.

Hit Z to load the current commercial cutlist, if the commercial flagging job had already been run.

The Timeline Editor will now appear. If it's barely visible, you might want to switch the OSD theme to retro, which has a colorful timeline. OSD themes are set separately from the MythTV theme in the Frontend "Playback" setup.

You can now move along the time line with by the amount indicated at the bottom right of the screen Default is 1 Sec

Use to change the amount to move. This varies between 0.5 Secs to 10Mins. You also have the option of 1 frame at a time, 1 keyframe at a time and finally a cutpoint at a time (jumps from cutpoint to cutpoint).

To insert a cutpoint press . The Cutpoint menu will appear

Use to choose between Delete before this point or after this point. Just add the cutpoints that you need. The system will remember these the next time that you bring the recording up. Red areas along the Timeline will be deleted (Skipped). Green areas will be played.

If you now transcode this recording the system will take the Cutlist and produce an edited Recording ready to be exported.

Transcoding Recordings

The transcoder re-encodes files from one MythTV format to another. There are two reasons to transcode

Allow users to create MPEG-4 streams to save space.
Physically cut the commercials or video segments from the recordings.

Note this is not used for creating MPEGs for burning to DVD as you will get audio video sync issues, especially with DVB recordings. You need to use MythArchive for this or manually with Project X and DVD Author.

Use the Recordings Profiles to change how the system transcodes your recordings

mythfrontend -> utilities/setup -> TV Settings --> recording Profiles -> Transcoders.

now select either RTjpeg or MPEG-4 (selecting any of the hardware encoders will result in the transcoder not working). set the other parameters as you'd like. For best performance, you should match the audio to the 'Default' profile. If you plan to only use the manual transcoder, you can choose to set the video to be the same as the default profile too (as long as it is MPEG-4 or RTjpeg)

The transcoder can be used in two ways:

Automatically re-encode every file once it has completed recording.
After marking commercials, the transcoder can be run manually to delete the commercials from the file (thus further saving space).

The two methods are independent. The first is an automatic process that can be enabled/disabled through the setup program; the second is a manual method which must be invoked on each recording individually.

You can transcode a recording that has already been transcoded, for example to cut a further section with no loss in quality provided you are going from and to the same format.

To enable automatic transcoding, do the following: start the setup program under the host-specific settings: set the Transcoder Auto-run checkbox, or in newer versions of the program, you may select automatic transcoding from any of the recording profiles you have set up.

Everything should now be setup properly. If you elected to use the Auto-Run feature, the transcoder will automatically launch after each recording is complete. The transcoder thread runs at a low priority, so it should not impact any critical tasks or other recordings.

If you want to manually transcode a program, simply press while watching a recording and select Transcode (you should have already finished marking all commercials and creating your Cut List with the Recording editor).

If you change your mind press and select Stop Transcoding.

Once the transcode is complete, mythbackend will replace the old file with the new as soon as it is no longer in use.

Archiving Recordings

At some point you will want to archive your TV recordings for safe keeping. There are however some complications with this, due to the way Digital TV content is held on your hard drive. MythTV stores its recordings in the "/mnt/video" directory by default. You will find files in here with a .nuv file extension and a long complicated name based on the recording schedule. These files are in NuppelVideo format.They are effectively MPEG-2 files with special markings to help digital TV cope with any dropped information during broadcast. To archive these files to DVD they will need to be converted into normal MPEG-2 files that are compliant with the DVD standard.

MythTV 0.20 plug-ins now includes MythArchive for archiving your recordings. What follows is for users of MythTV 0.19 or earlier. A separate detailed guide exists for SUSE users at http://acaciaclose.co.uk/28654/124502.html. There are also prebuilt scripts to do all of the steps below automagically called MythBurn.

The process to archive recordings to DVD before version 0.20 involves the use of several external tools in the following steps:

Split DVB File with ProjectX

Project X takes a collection of DVB stream files and concatenates them into one big project. You can trim the files here also. It will then create synchronization marks between the audio and video. You can use the default settings.

Create DVD MPEG-2 stream

We now can convert the above output video (m2v) and audio stream (mp2) generated by projectX to a DVD compatible stream. We use the mplex command, which is part of mjpegtools. You will then have a .mpg file with combined audio and video all nicely synchronized.

> mplex -f 8 -o 1.mpg 1.m2v 1.mp2

Create a DVD Image with KDE_DVDAuthor

KDE DVD Author will allow you to create very nice DVD's complete with animated menus. You do not need to compile it. Just download and click on the installer.kmdr icon and KDE will install it. KDE DVDAuthor is a KDE Kommander application.

Required packages:

DVD Author
ffmpeg
lsdvd
normalize

Just follow the steps in the wizard, adding in the video , audio and images files that it asks for. It wil then generate a DVD ISO image once it completes.

Burn DVD image using K3b

K3b includes a wizard to burn DVD ISO images. You will find it under the Tools pull down. Tools -> Burn DVD ISO image. Just load up the ISO image from step 3, and you are done.

Exporting Recordings

MythTV recordings can be exported into multiple different formats such as iPod or PSP compatible MPEG-4 files, DivX and Xvid files, or files to burn to VCD, SVCD or DVD with the use of an external program such as nuvexport, which can be downloaded from https://svn.forevermore.net/nuvexport/.

Nuvexport is a command line program that can be used to create a copy of your recording in the following formats: Xvid, SVCD, VCD, DVCD, DVD, DivX, ASF, MP3, PSP, iPod, and MPEG-2 (though the iPod and PSP export options are currently unavailable). It does not alter the original file in any way, just gives you a new one in a folder of your choosing.

When run, it will use information from the MythTV database to give you a list of all your recordings to choose from, and allow various options such as resizing the video, cutting out sections marked with MythTV's edit cut list, altering the bitrate, and various other things. A work in progress manual for nuvexport can be found at http://www.inaudible.co.uk/nuvexport.

There is also a specialized script that allows you to transcode your files and subscribe to them on your iPod available at http://myth2ipod.com/. This utility uses nuvexport, and then does special post-processing with MP4Box to create an iPod-ready video. It will even generate an RSS feed for your shows, which you can subscribe to in iTunes. Currently (6/22/06) transcoding HD shows doesn't appear to work - you get rolling colors and disjointed sound. This is apparently a bug in nuvexport. SD shows work fine though.

Exporting to Flash

You may find it useful to read the section on exporting to your recordings to flash file format. This will allow you to easily watch recordings using a web browser.

Stream mythtv recordings from mythweb using flash video

Playing DVDs

As of 0.20 there are two ways to play DVD Discs on your Myth Box

Use the internal DVD player, MythDVD. It has complete menu and subtitle support, as well as consistent remote control and menu settings. It will also bypass all of the clag such as anti-pirate and FBI warnings and go straight to the main movie.
Use an external player such as Xine or Mplayer. Xine offers DVD Menu support, but you will need to do some work to map your keys on your remote control so that they match those for MythTV to make sure that there is no confusion what keys do what. As this is an external player you also need to make sure that the audio options are set up within xine and MPlayer as needed. You may find it useful to read the Configuring Xine page.

Press to bring up the DVD On Screen menu options.

Importing DVDs

The MythDVD plugin offers the capability to Rip your DVD's to the hard drive and then optionally compress the movie from its normal 5-9GB file size to 700MB-2GB depending on the final quality that you want. When transcoding the system will use the settings defined in the frontend configuration. The default is to use the Xvid codec.

Select the Import option on the Myth Frontpage -> Optical Disks -> Import DVD and follow the Ripping Guide.

Once you have either ripped DVDs or copied video files to the Video directory you will want to add both movie information as well as DVD cover art. You can do this via the Video Manager of MythVideo.

Managing Media

Videos

The MythVideo plugin provides the ability to manage and play videos of various formats with the help of external players.

Photos

The MythGallery plugin allows you to view all your photos as well as short movies from your digital camera. It will show your photos as they are organised in your file system and generate thumbnails of both folders as well as individual photos.

Music

The MythMusic plugin adds the ability to manage and play music files on the frontend.

Information Center

The information center contains system status information and access to plugins like MythBrowser.

A detailed description about the information center can be found in the Information Center sub chapter of this manual.

Advanced Features

Job Queues

Advanced Search

Controlling the mythfrontend via telnet (0.19)

Previous	Up	Next
User Manual:Detailed configuration Frontend	User Manual:Index	User Manual:Accessory Modules

@@ Line 198: / Line 198: @@
 ==Recordings==
-===Recording Live TV===
-While watching Live TV press the [[Image:RemoteRecord.png]] key, MythTV will start recording the show from the point that you started watching it until the show is finished, according to the Guide schedule.  This might cause some rescheduling of later recordings.
-[[Image:RecordingRecord.jpg]]
-The Tuner card being used to record from will be locked until the recording has finished or you explicitly cancel the recording.
-If you have multiple Tuner cards you can now change channels with the [[Image:RemoteUp.png]] [[Image:RemoteDown.png]] keys. MythTV will continue recording the current show and switch to the next available Tuner card. If there are no more available Tuner cards then the [[Image:RemoteUp.png]] [[Image:RemoteDown.png]] keys will just jump back and forth in the recording.
-Press the [[Image:RemoteInfo.png]] key, and the [[OSD]] will show the position in the recording.
-[[Image:RecordingInfo.jpg]]
-Use the [[Image:RemoteLeft.png]] [[Image:RemoteRight.png]] keys to move backwards and forwards in the recording.
-Press the [[Image:RemoteMenu.png]] key, and the On Screen Menu for Recordings will show.
-[[Image:RecordingOSM.jpg]]
-You can exit the watching recordings with the  [[Image:RemoteExit.png]] key.
-If you try watching live TV and all the Tuner cards are busy recording, you will get the following screen.
-[[Image:RecordingBusyinput.jpg]]
 === Scheduled Recordings ===