MythTV on Mac x86

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Revision as of 01:27, 31 March 2007 by T0ny (talk | contribs) (Changes Needed for older builds)

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MythTV is working on the new Intel based Apple Macintosh platforms. This page is intended to share information among the people attempting to build and optimize the Intel Mac code.

In the 'contrib' directory of the MythTV source code, there is a perl script which automates the build process for MythTV on MacOS systems. The script is called osx-packager.pl. The descriptions of changes needed assume that script as a starting point.

Binaries

For anyone who just wants a binary, see the Myth on Mac OS X page.

0.20 Status

March 30, 2007 -- Anyone running on Apple TV yet? If so, please share. http://www.appletvhacks.net/

Sept 21, 2006 -- You will need, in addition to XCode Tools, svn-client installed on your Mac for the osx-packager script to work. Fink installed it easily ('sudo apt-get install svn-client', or from the Fink GUI).

After installing svn-client, MythTV installed and worked perfectly.


Sept 14, 2006 -- Most of the build issues were resolved in recent svn updates. With the final 0.20 release, running osx-packager.pl will result in a working build, with no modifications. 0.20 included some late additions for MacOS, including an MMX optimized colorspace conversion routine for intel Macs resulting in lower CPU usage.

  • The Apple Remote code was included in 0.20, and provides basic control in the standard frontend.
  • The 'enable Altivec colorspace conversion' option was changed to 'enable vector optimized colorspace conversion' to include MMX/SSE in intel based Macs.
  • Make sure the vector optimized colorspace option is enabled for Intel Macs. Without this enabled, video output may be distorted.

Current Functionality

MythTV frontend functions properly. HD MPEG2 video can be played on a Core Duo 1.66GHz Mac Mini. AC3 Pass-through (Dolby Digital surround sound on some digital broadcasts) works with current (Feb'07) svn version.

Couple things to watch out for:

  • Make sure your configuration is set to use vector accelerated colorspace conversion, otherwise video may show corrupted.
  • Set 'QT Style' to "Windows" in the frontend setup. Otherwise, some QT menus appear to have messed up colors, making them difficult to read. For example, when exiting mythtv, the "are you sure" menu shows up as white text on a light gray background, which is very difficult to read from viewing distance.

Development In Progess

Here are some tickets that are of interest to Mac x86 users. They are all 'in progress' and may have significant drawbacks or stability issues compared to the standard code base.. So, try them at your own risk. The URLs listed below have patches which you can use to build and test these new features.

  • [2381] Core Video display module. Use Mac OS X 10.4 / Tiger's new 'Core Video' API for video output. This currently offers about the same functionality as the Quartz output, but may allow for GPU offload of things like deinterlacing and colorspace conversion in the future. http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2381
  • [2539] Enhance Core Audio code to handle AC3 S/PDIF passthrough. This has been applied, but if passthru is set and you don't have appropriate hardware, may do strange things. http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2539
  • [1279] MPEG2 Hardware accleration for Mac OS X. This has been partly integrated into the SVN releases, but is still very much a work in progress. This feature is probably more relevant on underpowered PowerPC system, like the G4 Mini, or maybe even the G3s. http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/1279

MythVideo Plugin

MythVideo is working well, here are some tips to get you up and running.

If you want to use mplayer with MythVideo then install the MPlayer MacOSX binary (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) but then create a symlink to the command-line player as per the help instructions for MPlayer:

  Unless you have darwin ports installed, you might need to create /usr/local/bin :
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
  For Intel Mac :
  sudo ln -s "/Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer_intel.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer" /usr/local/bin/mplayer
  For PowerPC Mac :
  sudo ln -s "/Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer_ppc.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer" /usr/local/bin/mplayer

Specify this symlink as the video player in MythVideo using the full pathname: /usr/local/bin/mplayer

If you want to automount a Windows/Samba share from another server that stores all of your videos, then try this guide: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031022164821984

Note that you must configure the automount entry while logged in as your mythtv user.

Changes Needed for older builds

Here's a brief summary of changes needed to build MythTV on an Intel based Mac system:

  • Update QT version being used. 3.3.4 doesn't compile with gcc 4.0; 3.3.5 compiles but generates a bus error when displaying Myth menus. Using a development snapshot of 3.3.6 seems to work. Replace the QT url in osx-packager with the following: ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/snapshots/qt-mac-free-3.3.6-snapshot-20060311.tar.gz (these snapshots are changed frequently, pick a current one from that directory)

A.Weder (18.03.2006): I had to remove "-no-style-mac" from the qt-mt conf options in osx-packager.pl, since I got compile errors about QMacStyle not being defined in widgets/qtabbar.cpp. This is for the qt 20060317 snapshot of qt-mac 3.3.6, but also seems to hold for earlier snapshots.

  • Override Host for sourceforge? I found the availability of packages to be spotty on the default host, if it fails, replace the hostname with a working host.
  • libdvdnav: Endian byte swapping missing from src/dvdread/bswap.h The following can be added to use Apple-supplied routines:

Template:Box file

Note that this is not required with the latest version of the mythtv source and osx-packager.pl, because that library is not built.

  • libexif: compile failed. replace 'static ExifSShort' by just 'ExifSShort' in libexif/exif-utils.c near line 83. The latest osx-packager.pl uses the latest libexif and auto-applies a small fix for it to compile.
  • libdvdread: Endian byte swapping missing from dvdread/bswap.h See bswap.h changes above.


MythTV changes:

  • Update osx-packager.pl to add configure parameters used in building MythTV. In the section "configure mythplugins, and mythtv, etc", the 'mythtv' portion should look something like this:
 'mythtv'
 =>  [
       '--disable-distcc',
       '--disable-mmx',
       '--arch=pentium-m', 
       '--extra-cxxflags=-msse -msse2 -msse3', 
       '--prefix=' . $PREFIX,
     ],
  • Adding '--disable-firewire' may be needed, if you get an error about a missing "AVCVideoServices" framework.
  • This diff, against the released 0.19 codebase, fixes a crash and allows video to work:
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/liba52/resample.c /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/liba52/resample.c
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/liba52/resample.c       2006-01-05 15:19:29.000000000 -0800
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/liba52/resample.c       2006-03-16 13:31:42.000000000 -0800
@@ -13,14 +13,14 @@
 
 #include "resample_c.c"
 
-#ifdef ARCH_X86
+#ifdef HAVE_MMX
 #include "resample_mmx.c"
 #endif
 
 void* a52_resample_init(uint32_t mm_accel,int flags,int chans){
 void* tmp;
 
-#ifdef ARCH_X86
+#ifdef HAVE_MMX
     if(mm_accel&MM_ACCEL_X86_MMX){
        tmp=a52_resample_MMX(flags,chans);
        if(tmp){
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/msmpeg4.c /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/msmpeg4.c
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/msmpeg4.c       2006-01-15 23:14:43.000000000 -0800
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libavcodec/msmpeg4.c       2006-03-16 13:25:10.000000000 -0800
@@ -725,7 +725,7 @@
        necessitate to modify mpegvideo.c. The problem comes from the
        fact they decided to store the quantized DC (which would lead
        to problems if Q could vary !) */
-#if (defined(ARCH_X86) || defined(ARCH_X86_64)) && !defined PIC
+#if defined(HAVE_MMX) && (defined(ARCH_X86) || defined(ARCH_X86_64)) && !defined PIC
     asm volatile(
         "movl %3, %%eax         \n\t"
         "shrl $1, %%eax         \n\t"
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/videoout_quartz.cpp /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/videoout_quartz.cpp
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/videoout_quartz.cpp      2005-11-26 08:38:42.000000000 -0800
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/videoout_quartz.cpp      2006-03-16 13:59:53.000000000 -0800
@@ -1315,10 +1315,12 @@
     data->windowedMode = gContext->GetNumSetting("RunFrontendInWindow", 0);
     data->correctGamma = gContext->GetNumSetting("MacGammaCorrect", 0);
     
+#ifdef HAVE_ALTIVEC
     if (gContext->GetNumSetting("MacYuvConversion", 1))
         data->yuvConverter = yuv2vuy_init_altivec();
     else
-        data->yuvConverter = NULL;
+#endif
+        data->yuvConverter = yuv2vuy_init_plain();
 
     if (!CreateQuartzBuffers())
     {
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.cpp /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.cpp
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.cpp      2006-01-19 21:04:02.000000000 -0800
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.cpp      2006-03-16 14:06:33.000000000 -0800
@@ -682,7 +682,6 @@
     }
 }
 
-#ifdef HAVE_ALTIVEC
 static void non_vec_yuv420_2vuy (uint8_t * image, uint8_t * py,
                                  uint8_t * pu, uint8_t * pv,
                                  int h_size, int v_size,
@@ -717,6 +716,13 @@
     }
 }
 
+yuv2vuy_fun yuv2vuy_init_plain(void)
+{
+       return non_vec_yuv420_2vuy;
+}
+
+#ifdef HAVE_ALTIVEC
+
 // Altivec code adapted from VLC's i420_yuv2.c (thanks to Titer and Paul Jara) 
 
 #define VEC_NEXT_LINES()                                                    \
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.h /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.h
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.h        2005-04-21 07:14:28.000000000 -0700
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmythtv/yuv2rgb.h        2006-03-16 14:01:06.000000000 -0800
@@ -50,6 +50,7 @@
                               int vuy_stride, int y_stride, int uv_stride);
 
 yuv2vuy_fun yuv2vuy_init_altivec (void);
+yuv2vuy_fun yuv2vuy_init_plain(void);
 
 typedef void (* vuy2yuv_fun) (uint8_t * image, uint8_t * py,
                               uint8_t * pu, uint8_t * pv,

  • This fixes audio in v0.19. More recent versions (e.g. 0.19-fixes and 0.20) already have this fix:
diff -ur mythtv-0.19/libs/libmyth/audiooutputca.cpp /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmyth/audiooutp\
utca.cpp                                                                                               
--- mythtv-0.19/libs/libmyth/audiooutputca.cpp  2005-10-10 17:30:51.000000000 -0700                    
+++ /Users/ogre/src/mythtv-0.19/libs/libmyth/audiooutputca.cpp  2006-03-16 15:01:02.000000000 -0800    
@@ -107,8 +107,13 @@                                                                                   
     bzero(&conv_in_desc, sizeof(AudioStreamBasicDescription));                                        
     conv_in_desc.mSampleRate       = audio_samplerate;                                                
     conv_in_desc.mFormatID         = kAudioFormatLinearPCM;                                           
-    conv_in_desc.mFormatFlags      = kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsSignedInteger                              
-                                     | kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsBigEndian;                               
+    conv_in_desc.mFormatFlags      = kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsSignedInteger;
+#ifdef WORDS_BIGENDIAN                                                                                
+    conv_in_desc.mFormatFlags     |= kLinearPCMFormatFlagIsBigEndian;                                  
+#endif                                                                                                
     conv_in_desc.mBytesPerPacket   = audio_bytes_per_sample;                                          
     conv_in_desc.mFramesPerPacket  = 1;                                                               
     conv_in_desc.mBytesPerFrame    = audio_bytes_per_sample;                                          

The following steps are necessary in 0.19 to re-enable the MMX code (in conjuction with the changes to osx-packager.pl documented elsewhere on this page.

  • Add "-read_only_relocs,warning" to the QMAKE_LFLAGS line in the MythTV build config. Without this change, I get an error: "ld: resample.o has local relocation entries in non-writable section (__TEXT,__text)"
  • Apply the patch found at this link. This changes involve mostly syntax revisions, to appease Apple's choice of tools.
  • For 0.19-fixes: I got "Undefined Symbols" errors in the MMX assembly code, related to the "relocation entries" errors above. The only way I could get it to compile is to remove the "MANGLE" macros in the assembly code in libavcodec. To 'mangle' the variables by hand, just add an underscore before the name. So the code would change from '"movq "MANGLE(magicF2W)", %%mm7 \n\t"' to '"movq _magicF2W, %%mm7 \n\t"'. The files affected are:
  libs/libavcodec/i386/dsputil_mmx.c
  libs/libavcodec/i386/motion_est_mmx.c
  libs/libavcodec/i386/simple_idct_mmx.c
  libs/libavcodec/liba52/resample_mmx.c

The MANGLE macro was fixed in the 0.20 svn code. So, a simpler solution would be to add those updates. I'll try to go back and do a clean build, with the 0.20 svn updates, and revise the info here.

Enabling MMX

The frontend will run fine without MMX, but you can save a lot of CPU overhead by re-enabling the MMX optimizations in the MPEG2 decoding code, especially for HD video. Faster iMac or MacBook systems may be able to get by without this. To do HD video on the Mac Mini, the MMX patch is probably necessary.

  • Enable MMX and memlign_hack in the configure options in osx-packager.pl
 'mythtv'
 =>  [
       '--disable-distcc',
       '--disable-firewire',
       '--enable-mmx',
       '--arch=pentium-m',
       '--enable-memalign-hack', 
       '--extra-cxxflags=-msse -msse2 -msse3', 
       '--prefix=' . $PREFIX,
     ],

Enabling Apple Remote for 0.19

  • To get the apple remote working, apply the patch attached to this mythtv trac ticket. This patch is for the 0.19.fixes branch. The 0.20 release contains this code already.

Front Row integration

  • mt-daapd is a DAAP server that will let iTunes (and therefore FrontRow) see the mp3's you have on your myth backend. http://www.mt-daapd.org/ Movies are also served via DAAP, but mt-daapd doesn't support that yet.

With myth using all the remote buttons, you won't be able to activate Front Row. If you want to still be able to launch Front Row with mythtv running, you can save this bit of applescript somewhere like /usr/local/bin (compile it with applescript editor)

 tell application "System Events"
   key code 53 using {command down}
   delay 0.5
   key code 53
 end tell

Then add this section to the myth menu in programs/mythfrontend/library.xml

  <button>
    <type>MUSIC</type>
    <text>Front Row</text>
    <action>EXEC osascript /usr/local/bin/frontrow.scpt</action>
  </button>

(I like to add it to the "Media Library" menu...)


Useful Links

  • Links on the IR receiver / remote included in the last iMac G5 and all intel based Macs. Basic integration, passing arrow keys, ESC, enter to mythfrontend should be feasible.

http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?UsingTheAppleRemoteControl
http://www.osxbook.com/software/iremoted/

  • Apps to extend the functionality of the Apple remote:

http://www.iospirit.com/index.php?mode=view&obj_type=infogroup&obj_id=23
http://www.filewell.com/iRedLite/

  • Core Video Programming Guide All Intel Macs support Core Image / Core Video, which can be used for optimized video playback and offloading effects such as de-interlacing to the GPU.
  • CocoaMySQL - Excellent MySQL database GUI. Allows easy tweaking of MythTV settings in backend.
  • MythGrowl - A handy Mac OS X application to notify you via Growl when your backend starts or finishes a recording.
  • DVB and ATSC drivers for MacOS - Might allow porting of the backend at some point.