Revision as of 17:56, 12 November 2009

Synopsis

MythVideo allows for cataloguing and playback of a variety of video file formats. It can perform automatic meta data look ups on themoviedb.org or The TV DB as well as retrieve poster, fanart, banner, and screenshot artwork. You can also add your own Meta data to your own videos and add custom poster artwork to videos.

It features four different "views" on your collection:

Browse View
Tree View
Gallery View
Manage View

MythVideo can use MythTV's internal media player, to play back the video files, by specifying "Internal" as the player. Optionally, it can be configured to use external players such as Xine or mplayer.

Installation

MythVideo is a plugin module for MythTV. It is installed by default with Myth focused distributions like MythBuntu. If you install MythTV manually, the plugin modules are not automatically installed. You can see that MythVideo is not installed because the 'Watch Videos' menu item is missing from the Media Library sub menu.

Instructions For Specific Distributions

Debian derived (Ubuntu etc)

From a command shell or konsole window, type or paste this command

sudo apt-get install mythvideo

Then restart MythTV. It should load available modules.

openSUSE 11.1

Add the packman repository if you haven't already (this should have been done to install MythTV though).

 zypper addrepo http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1 Packman

Install it:

 zypper install mythvideo

Create the movie poster directory. NOTE: tv is the name I have chosen for the user who will be running mythfrontend, substitute whatever user ID you will use.

 mkdir ~tv/.mythtv/MythVideo;chown -R tv ~tv/.mythtv

Common Instructions

Now read MTD, which you'll also need.

Configuration

Setting up Video and Image Folders

Storage Groups

Videos in Myth can now be stored on the backend and streamed to the frontend without a NFS or Samba mount. It is critical to note that the Storage Group implementation is not complete, and to take that into consideration when weighing whether to move to MythVideo Storage Groups. Hopefully the transition to Storage Groups will be complete for MythTV .23, so this should be taken as a technology preview release only.

Advantages

Adding new frontends means zero configuration for videos, recordings, and metadata images.
Can dynamically add space to your video library without using RAID or LVM. Loss of one drive does not mean loss of the entire library.
Can spread video hosting across many/all backends.
No need to set up network mounts of any kind.

Disadvantages

External Video Players (mplayer, xine, VLC) will not work with videos hosted on an SG. (Fix planned for .23)
ISO/VIDEO_TS Playback does not presently work in Storage Groups (Fix planned for .23)

Setting Up Video/Image Storage Groups

On the backend to host the videos, stop the backend process and run mythtv-setup.
In Storage Group configuration, set up directories for each of the following: Videos, Trailers, Fanart, Banners, Screenshots, and Coverart.
Optional Step: If you would like to use a combination of Storage Group and locally hosted video, you can do the following. On the frontends, go to Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->General. Change "Directories that hold videos" to point at a directory that is not the same as the one the Storage Group points at. If the local video setting and the Storage Group setting point at the same path, MythVideo will prefer the Storage Group path and ignore the local one.
Enter MythVideo. Press the "M" (MENU) key and choose "Scan For Changes."
You will find that your metadata is reset, but should see all of the Storage Group videos. You will need to regrab metadata, but there are multiple new options to grab it all quickly in .22, as explained below.

Local Video Storage

If you choose not to use Storage Groups then simply don't define any of the above mentioned Storage Groups and set up your directories for videos and artwork on each individual frontend. On remote frontends the directories will need to be mounted locally via NFS or Samba. As always, the mount points need to be identical on all frontends. Then go to Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->General and point to the appropriate directories for Videos, Trailers, Fanart, Banners, Screenshots, and Coverart.

Folder Images

You can place a file named folder.(png | gif | jpg) into a folder that is accessible to MythVideo and it will be used when the gallery view is displayed instead of a plain folder icon. As a fallback, you can place any image in the folder and it will be used. In absence of one of these images, myth will descend into the directory and find the first valid poster on an item contained within and use it as the folder image.

Internal Player

The MythTV Internal player is the default (and recommended) player for Video and DVD. It will also play DVDs and DVD isos with full menu and subtitle support. It uses the same OSD, settings, remote bindings and audio configuration as playback of recordings making it much easier to setup and use than an external player. It supports almost all video formats and content including High Definition and in addition a wide range of easily accessible features including configurable aspect ratios, picture fill modes, timestretch, bookmarks, video editing, automatic locale based or manual selection of subtitle and audio streams and much, much more.

Rebuild seek table

Some files require a seektable in order to skip/seek properly. To create a seektable, run the following command on the file:

 mythcommflag --rebuild --video filename.ext

The symptoms are the internal player not displaying the correct time in the OSD, not seeking at all, or restarting playback on any attempt to seek.

Scanning for Videos

When you add new videos to your storage directories, you can trigger a scan from any MythVideo view by choosing MENU->Scan For Changes.

Parental Controls

Configuration of Parental controls is found at Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->General.

MythVideo supports the ability to limit what videos maybe viewed without a password/pin. There are 4 different levels to choose from. You can select a default level and a password/pin for each level. Any videos/files at or below the current level will show up in the list. You can modify Parental Levels on-the-fly from within the Edit Metadata menu in MythVideo itself. Note that if you set the parental level to a high value, when someone enters MythVideo, even if they fail the PIN prompt, they will get that parental level. Thus, it is best to set the parental level to the lowest level you want publicly accessible.

To change parental level within MythVideo, Press the numeric value of the level, from 1-4. If you have set a PIN for that value, you will be prompted it at that time.

MythVideo remembers that you entered the pin for 2 minutes, so once you've entered the pin for a given level, you can freely switch between that level and all lower levels without a pin until that two minutes is up, after which you'll need to enter a pin again to switch to a higher level.

External Player Configuration

Configuration of Parental controls is found at Utilities/Setup->Setup->Media Settings->Video Settings->Player Settings.

This screen is largely self-explanatory. You can configure default players for Videos, DVDs, VCDs, as well as (optionally) an alternate video player.

Trailer Playback

From the Player Settings screen, you can enable randomized trailer playback before a film. For a Theater-like experience, enable this option and select the number of trailers to see before the film.

Editing Video Metadata

To edit video metadata, highlight any item in MythVideo. Then press INFO->Metadata Options->Edit Metadata.

For films that have no listings, home movies, or films whose metadata simply needs some "massaging," MythVideo provides an Edit Metadata screen. Which options are offered will vary slightly by theme, but editing basic metadata is possible in all themes.

The edit metadata screen is fairly simple. It provides a series of text edits, spinboxes, and button lists to modify the metadata for the selected item. You can also enter a specific player command for an item if necessary, a file to play afterwards, toggle whether an item is visible, and toggle the items watched status.

Change the metadata as you wish, and select "OK" or "Done" (varies by theme) to commit your changes. If you wish to cancel, press Escape of the Back key on your remote.

Metadata Lookup

MythVideo comes bundled with some cute scripts to look up details about your film over the internet. When you're in the Video Manager, hit i to bring up the info screen. Here you'll see an option to Search IMDB. Hit enter, and the script will tootle along over to the Internet Movie Database and retrieve details about the film as well as a poster of it.

Please note that the IMDB script relies on you having accurate filenames; if your film is named "@ f1lm 2 l0ng", the script isn't going to work. In this case, you can either use the Edit Metadata function to rename the movie within MythVideo and then re-attempt the Search IMDB option, or you can rename the file within the actual Linux OS. Alternatively, you can enter the IMDB reference number manually. You can get this number by looking up your film on the IMDB website, and noting the number in the URL that follows the tt. For instance, Akira http://imdb.com/title/tt0094625/ has an IMDB number of 0094625. If you type this into the Manually Enter IMDB # input, the IMDB grabber script will shoot off and grab the data for you.

In case the IMDB grabber script gets confused - sometimes different films have very similar names - the results are returned in order of popularity, as well as having their year of release shown in brackets. This should be enough for you to work out which is the correct entry.

It's also important to note that certain versions of MythVideo have issues when trying to fetch movie information with the included IMDB Script. If you aren't getting the plot, director, ratings, etc, then you are probably going to want to fix this. The steps provided below have been copied from this site. The fix is pretty simple:

First create a backup of the original script

 sudo cp /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts/imdb.pl /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts/imdb.pl-orig

Download the SVN Copy (now in an older Revision 18604)

 wget "http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/export/18604/trunk/mythplugins/mythvideo/mythvideo/scripts/imdb.pl" -O imdb.pl

Replace the old script with the new one

 sudo cp imdb.pl /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts/imdb.pl

Make the new script executable

 sudo chmod +x /usr/share/mythtv/mythvideo/scripts/imdb.pl

You should be all set after that.

Have updated link to older revision of imdb.pl, but this section still needs updating referencing the new equivalent Python script.

Custom Movie Artwork

You can select artwork in the Edit Metadata screen. Click on the button to browse the configured directory for fanart, banner, screenshots, etc. You can use custom artwork for an item by placing it in one of these directories and selecting it from the file browser.

Using MythVideo

To view or play your videos, navigate to Media Library->Watch Videos.

If you don't see any videos, you probably need to scan. If you still see no videos, you probably haven't properly set up your folders or storage groups.

Screenshots

Watch Video: Video Information
Watch Videos: Tree View
Watch Videos: Browse View
Watch Videos: Gallery View
Watch Videos: Menu
Video Manager: Video Configuration
Video Manager: Movie Art
Video Manager: Video Information
Video Manager: Browsing
Video Manger: Menu

Media Shares

Mediashares gives a simple walk through of how to export your media directory so its accessible from your other remote Mythtv systems.

Importing DVDs

There are multiple ways to import DVD's to your MythTV system.

To import a DVD, select "Import DVD" from the "Optical Disks" Menu. For more information see the DVD Ripping page.

@@ Line 159: / Line 159: @@
 ==Custom Movie Artwork==
-MythVideo looks for artwork downloaded from IMDB in ~/.mythtv/MythVideo.  You can put custom artwork here and then in Video Manager->Edit Metadata->Cover Art you can select your custom art from the dialog box.
+You can select artwork in the [[MythVideo#Editing_Video_Metadata|Edit Metadata screen]].  Click on the button to browse the configured directory for fanart, banner, screenshots, etc.  You can use custom artwork for an item by placing it in one of these directories and selecting it from the file browser.
 = Using MythVideo =

Difference between revisions of "Video Library"