Talk:MythTV on Mac x86

Page tidy-up

Isn't a lot of the information on this page redundant now, since 0.20 is out, and builds with additional patches? I think I'll try a tidy up in a few hours, if I've the time.

Plugin Support

How do you get plugins installed on this frontend?

(nigel) The osx-packager.pl script bundles up all the plugins that currently compile.

Apple Remote Support

Just wanted to check if there has been any progess on making the apple remote work? Would it be possibly to some how use a different remote with the built in IR port with LIRC or something?

UPDATE: This is now possible using Remote Buddy

(kraney) I've created a patch that adds native support for the apple remote to mythfrontend. The patch and a more detailed description can be found in the mythtv trac ticket

Binary Packages?

File	Version	Options	Download link
1 (Tux541)	0.19-fixes	without MMX	www.wipzradio.com mythfrontend
2 (tji)	0.19-fixes	With MMX	www.wipzradio.com MythFrontend-MMX
3 (mmead)	0.19	With MMX	www.goof.com Mythfrontend-0.19-intel-mmx.dmg.bz2
4 (mmead)	0.19-fixes	With MMX	www.goof.com Mythfrontend-0.19-fixes-20060407-intel-mmx.dmg.bz2
5 (mmead)	0.19-fixes	With MMX and Apple Remote	www.goof.com Mythfrontend-0.19-fixes-20060407-intel-mmx-remotepatch.dmg.bz2

Performance

(mmead) (file 3 above) Using a Mac mini intel duo core 1.66Ghz, I see ~85% CPU use by mythfrontend when playing 1080i with bob deinterlacing over nfs and ~68% when playing 720p over nfs.

(tji) That's similar performance to what I'm seeing.. I got between 85-95% with 1080i filmed material, and 95-99% with 1080i sports video. I think that's because of the field/frame rate of the source material. With 720p, I also got around 70% cpu.

In looking at the performance info via 'shark', the two biggest CPU users are the yuv420-2vuy colorspace conversion, and for 1080i, the deinterlacing. The deinterlacing is already MMX accelerated. But, the colorspace conversion is not. If we can find/create mmx code to do that, we can probably save 5-10% more cpu time.

(flaggz) I'm getting very choppy performance on a 1.66GHz core duo with the MMX enabled binaries linked below. This applies to both 1080i content, and scaled 480i content, which I found pretty strange. For comparison, the latest trunk builds of VLC play these same files perfectly over the network, so the machine is clearly capable.

Interestingly, if I turn off 'Scale Video as Necessary' in TV Settings->Playback, then the problem goes away, at least for the 480i content. There is a corresponding impact to the profile information that Shark reports. The difference appears to be the YUV422_UC_ToRGB32BitColorBGRA QuickTimeComponents function, which is the primary consumer of cycles in everything except the '480i, do not scale video' case. Checking/unchecking the scale video setting has no effect on the performance of 1080i playback.

(tji) I don't see the YUV2RGB conversion at all on mine, that is done in hardware. What kind of system is this? Is it running an unaccelerated video driver? Is it non-Apple hardware?

(flaggz) It's a 1.66GHZ core due Mac Mini w/1GB RAM. The video hardware is the internal Intel GMA 950 that comes on the Mini. I only see the issue when my screen resolution is set to 1920x1080, which is weird because no scaling whatsoever should be required (it's 1080i material). I'm currently running at 1600x900 and the issue seems to be gone (performance is acceptable, but I haven't run shark to see if the YUV2RGB function drops out of the profile data at this res, yet). Obviously, I'd prefer to be at 1920x1080. tji and others, what resolution are you running on this hardware? Can you try 1920x1080 and see if you can reproduce what I reported above?

(nigel) The 1920x1080 material might actually be 1920x1088 or similar. They sometimes do that to make it divisible by 16 for the macroblocks or something.

(justin) I see very choppy performance at 1080i with file 4 on a 1.66GHz Core Duo mini. Turning off scale video as necessary results in much better performance, but standard def video becomes postage stamp sized.

Build Status

(tji) My current status:

• 0.20 Release:

Builds without any need for modifications, using the osxpackager.pl script. Performance is improved with the new mmx colorspace code, and the Apple remote works by default.

MySQL

(Gaspode) Yes I have the same problem as (tji) - the Mac frontend communicates with the linux backend - and the linux backed responds - but the frontend does not seem to receive it.

(tji) Do you get complete failure of communication, or partial? On mine, I can view Live TV, and navigate some menus, but viewing the recorded program list fails, and navigating into setup menus fail.

running "mythfrontend -v all" from the command line shows more debugging info. When I try to access the recorded programs menu, it just scrolls the same message "MSqlQuery: SELECT icon FROM channel WHERE chanid = '1020' ;" I did a network sniff, and verified the communication is working, and the response appears to be okay, but the frontend doesn't accept it.

I'm wondering if it's a version incompatibility between MySQL client libs and server..

(Tux541) I had the same problem with mine, but only once. The very first time I tried to connect my frontend to my backend, after that it was fine.

(TTT_Travis) I opened the app it showed the setup screen so I set it up and then when I open it it just hangs sorta, icon just bounces and bounces for like minutes then closes

(Tux541) Try running it from a terminal. That happened to me when it can't connect to your database. If you run it from a terminal you will see it sits there trying to connect, then times out after 60 seconds, then tries again. If so try rm -rf /Users/*username*/.mythtv. This will blow out your settings, then try it again. This might be related to some of MySQL problems were seeing. By the way... What version of MythTV are running on the backend and what version of MySQL.

(Gaspode) Partial failure - Live tv works - menus work (except menus that trigger an sql query - (eg. setup, recorded programs) I used ethereal to sniff the network and the backend does respond to the front end. Also logged in to the backend mysql using the client on the frontend and verified that communication works.

I don't think it is a version problem (I have the same mysql version on the backend and the frontend) .It's either QT doing something strange to the data or the frontend itself.

(tji) Good info.. I'll try a newer version of QT, once I go back to messing with 0.20. I used the '20060321' snapshot of 3.3.6 with MythTV 0.19-fixes, and it worked fine there.

(Gaspode) Sorry , I should clarify that - I think it's either QT doing something strange to the data, or it is something in the frontend code.

(Bailey) Has anyone successfully built 0.20 yet (without experiencing the MySQL issues)? I'm going to have another crack at this evening, and see how I get on.

(tji) I just built 0.20 svn today (6/5/06), and got it to compile okay. But, I just get the background image, no menu options. I am using Qt 3.3.6 from ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/qt-mac-free-3.3.6.tar.gz.

(tji) I built 0.20 yesterday (7/19/06) using the mods described on the main page, and it works well. The menus are fine, video playback is fine..

Front Row Integration

(~kraney) You can get the music on your mythbackend to show up in iTunes and Front Row using mt-daapd.

Macs also use DAAP to serve movies, but mt-daapd doesn't support that yet.

What would be nice is DAAP and DPAP support that get metadata from mythbackend or directly from mysql. It should be possible to get all of the myth music/gallery/video/tv content on the backend to show up directly in Front Row as 'shared' content.

Instructions for adding a "Front Row" menu item to myth are now on the Myth_on_Mac_x86 page.