| Selection | Setup (Jac / Iris) | Testing | Software (Jac / Iris) | Top |
As much as possible, I tried to copy the working configurations from Aurora onto Iris. Here is a laundry list of software subsystems that had to be dealt with.
Specifically the watchtv user. [Done.] Plus the /home/video directory with saved media files. These were copied in bulk using rsync, and for the final cutover they were synced again, which went very quickly because there were few changes since the bulk copy.
Issues here:
Without /etc/X11/xorg.conf, it picks the radeon
driver,
which is correct. I want the X-server to be able to start with
no mouse or keyboard. Formerly for this it was necessary to
use xorg.conf and provide devices with the void
driver.
Now with xorg-x11-7.6_1 it will use this configuration
automatically, and xorg.conf can be omitted. The mouse and
keyboard are recognized when hotplugged later.
The names of the outputs (for radeon) are:
HDMI-0: Connected to TV, EDID screen size
1920x1080px, 148.5MHz dot clock.
Display dimensions 1600x900mm (this is a lie from the EDID).
No DPMS capability reported but the driver enables DPMS.
The physical
screen size is 508 x 285mm; I'm not
sure where this comes from, but it's another lie.
The measured screen size is 1094 x 613mm.
A lie that would produce 96DPI would be 423 x 238mm.
DisplayPort-0: No EDID, not connected.
3D graphics: It's using the r600 driver for DRI and VDPAU. AIGLX and GLX have initialized this driver. It's using 339Mb of video RAM, so it says. This is xorg-x11-7.6_1 from OpenSuSE 13.1; in former releases the 3D graphics could not be made to work, requiring a forced upgrade to this Xorg version.
The X.org Radeon feature cross-reference says that audio is (no longer?) on by default; you need a module parameter of audio=1. You can make this happen by putting radeon.audio=1 on the kernel command line, or by putting a file in /etc/modprobe.d . The name is semi-arbitrary but I used 50-radeon_audio.conf with this content: (radeon space audio, not radeon dot audio)
options radeon audio=1
For me there's a perennial problem: I like to stick X-Windows on VT2 (/dev/tty2). But if there's a getty on that tty, the X-server will go into an infinite loop flushing the tty and getting an I/O error. With sysvinit I needed to remember to edit /etc/inittab to deactivate the getty on VT2 when in runlevel 5. But with systemd, gettys are activated on demand, only when you flip to the relevant VT in text mode, so the issue should not come up with systemd.
Sound card numbers change randomly when you reboot. Review
/etc/udev/rules.d/26-soundJ.rules which assigns fixed IDs to
the sound cards, specifically HDMI
to the HDMI channel.
[Done.]
HDMI audio output, will the TV perform it? Yes! See the discussion above with 3D graphics, for how to turn it on. The ALSA device is hw:HDMI,3.
AC'97 audio output, 3.5mm stereo jack in front. Works, and the TV will perform it while showing HDMI video. The ALSA device is hw:SB,0.
Infrared does not work out of the box. See my writeup on setting up the remote control.
Server is running. But that's just the beginning.
logrotate: error: skipping /var/log/mysql/mysqld.log because parent directory has insecure permissions. The provided /etc/logrotate.d/mysql in fact does not have create permissions set at all. I needed to copy over my hacked file from Aurora.
I decided that, rather than carrying forward the database from Aurora and upgrading from 0.26 to 0.27, I would wipe the database and set it up afresh.
The first step was to rename /home/mysql and make a new one, 750 mysql:mysql. There is a symlink from /var/lib/mysql to this directory.
Before starting the server you need to execute (as mysql):
su -s /bin/sh -c "mysql_install_db" mysql
Now start the server and run their cleanup script:
systemctl start mysql
/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation
The latter script is interactive; do not capture the output
by piping through tee
because the buffering is wacked.
These are the steps:
Now you need to load the timezone tables. Make sure that package mysql-community-server-tools is installed; you don't get it by default. Do this as any user but you need to give the MySQL root password. A few timezones from Saudi Arabia were rejected; ignore.
mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -p -u root mysql
Available but not enabled, pending MythTV setup.
For putting the machine to sleep. Works, with either suspend style (mem or disk).
First testing with no DVB (TV capture) devices.
You do not need s2ram --force
;
this chipset is listed in the quirks database.
With rtcwake -v -m mem -s 10
it suspended to RAM and resumed
20 times with no errors, and the display was functional afterward.
Suspending is nearly instant and waking takes about 2 seconds.
Suspending to disc with a similar command, it succeeded 5 times with
no errors and a functional display. It takes about 30 seconds to
wake, and 8 seconds from executing the command to power off.
Now what happens with the DVB device? Testing with the Hauppauge HTC-950q, but the HTC-1950 behaves similarly on Aurora and likely will be similar on Iris. If you execute s2ram it goes through the whole procedure, then stays shut down for about 130 usec and wakes up again. Hiss, boo! DVB is functional afterward. On Aurora it's necessary to unload 14 modules in a specific order, and reload them in a different order (not the reverse of unloading), to get it to suspend to RAM, and even then the DVB locks up too frequently. I'm going to use suspend to disc, at least for now.
If you execute s2disk -r /dev/sda2 (not unloading any modules) it suspends, taking about 8 seconds, and it takes about 40 secs to wake. Likely the HTC-950q takes about 10 secs extra due to uploading firmware, which is ridiculously slow and has to be re-done every time you open the device. The DVB is functional afterward. This is the mode I'm going to use, despite the extra time versus RAM to sleep and wake. You need to specify the resume (swap) device with -r because it seems unable to find it by itself.
The suspend style, module unload list, etc. are configured in
/etc/sysconfig/suspend which is read by /usr/diklo/sbin/susp2ram which
is called by /usr/diklo/sbin/cronj.sleep . Mythbackend is supposed
to call ~watchtv/bin/waketime2 %H %M to set the wakeup time (by
depositing an at
job at that time), and waketime2 -s to actually
go to sleep (by writing a CronWake request to doze
). Cronj
handles the details by calling cronj.sleep.
It is surprisingly hard to determine whether the DVB (TV capture device) is functional. Here are the steps I went through:
Channel scanning: You need a channel.conf file in zap
format, which translates channel names and numbers to tuning parameters
for the DVB. Use this command. It takes about 5 minutes to do the
scan, and it gives an error message when it tunes to a potential
channel that has no signal. This is with Bourne shell syntax to
capture separately the error messages and the channels.conf file.
If you have cable, or are not in the USA, look in /usr/share/dvb for
a channel frequencies table for your region.
scan /usr/share/dvb/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB > channels.conf 2> scan.errs
Tuning the DVB: Use this command line (azap --help to see all options). It looks by default for channels.conf in $HOME/.azap/channels.conf, or use the -c option if it's elsewhere.
azap ${NAME}
azap "KhmerTV"
If the channel name has spaces, quote it. It takes about 10 secs until the first status report due to uploading firmware, which is ridiculously slow. Then once per second it gives a status report with values in hex. BER = block error rate, UNC = uncorrectible errors; these should be low, like zero. When the DVB locks onto the signal the phrase FE_HAS_LOCK will appear. Kill the process when you have seen enough. The output is not line buffered, which makes it useless in scripting.
To monitor the DVB: Assuming it is already tuned and running, e.g. by azap, you can use femon (use --help to see all the options). This command line will produce status reports once per second in decimal and percents (-H option) and exit after 3 reports (-c 3).
femon -H -c 3
dvb-check script: I wrote a script to run azap and femon together. It's in ~watchtv/bin/dvb-check .
Copied, except I missed /usr/share and hence backed up a zillion bytes of crap. Fixed.
Which graphics driver am I going to use? This is a comparison of radeon vs. fglrx. Note: fglrx was not actually tested on the fit-PC3 Pro; results (such as they are) come from the Zotac Zbox with Radeon HD 6310. The radeonhd driver was excluded because it does not support the HD 6320 GPU. It is also deprecated. Lines with a pair of percentages show the CPU utilization on each of 2 cores (100% - idle fraction).
| radeon | fglrx | |
|---|---|---|
| Political Status | Open Source | Proprietary |
| Supports AMD HD 6320 | Yes | Yes |
| KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) | Required | Forbidden |
| 2D Graphics | Perfect | Perfect |
| glxgears | 3% + 4% | Perfect |
| mesademo fire | 25% + 10% | Perfect 157 fps |
| Play Theora (CPU utilization on each core) | 45% + 38% | 25% + 25% |
| Play MPEG-2 | 64% + 58% | 12% + 12% |
| Play MPEG-4 | 55% + 45% | 6% + 6% |
| HDMI audio | Works | Works |
| Suspend to RAM | 20x OK | N.T. |
| Suspend to disc | 5x OK | N.T. |
Notes for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 playback:
1. Wikipedia article about MPEG-2 for digital television and DVD. The video component is designated as ITU-T H.262 or ISO 13818-2. Audio is similar to MP2 but extended to 5.1 channels. MPEG-2 AAC is an alternative audio format. Transport (container) stream is ITU-T H.222.0.
2. Index of test clips for Apple QuickTime in various formats: H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, 3GPP.
3. To test, I played the Apple test clips for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 in repeat mode using Parole which uses the GStreamer engine.
With this chipset the open source Radeon driver is functional for video playback, although I think it is not using hardware rendering, or is not using very much hardware acceleration, compared to fglrx on the less powerful Zbox. But compiling and installing the ATI proprietary module fglrx is always traumatic and messy. I'm going to stick with the Radeon driver. MythTV has a VDPAU interface and it may do better than these tests.
ALSA sound is the most frustrating of all Linux subsystems due to arcane configuration and fungoid evolution of the design. Here's what I did t get ALSA sound under control.
First, on this system there are three sound devices.
ATI HDMI audio. This is a single virtual object sending S/PDIF over the HDMI interface, on device number 3 (there is no device 0). It usually but not always becomes card 0. It is simiar to Intel Azalia and uses the snd_hda_intel driver.
Onboard ATI SoundBlaster emulation, similar to Intel Azalia and using the snd_hda_intel driver. This device sends to the rear 3.5mm stereo jack; analog levels are suitable for headphones or line out, and this jack has an optical S/PDIF port. It also captures from the rear 3.5mm microphone jack. This device usually but not always becomes card 1.
C-Media Electronics, Inc. CM102-A+/102S+ Audio Controller (marketing name Turtle Beach) using a Realtek audio chip (can't tell which one). Although this device can accept up to 7.1 channel surround sound, its output is one 3.5mm stereo jack with levels for line out and/or headphones. Its driver is snd_usb_audio. This device usually becomes card 2.
The normal default audio device of hw:0,0 exists only rarely. Numerically based card assignments are subject to change without notice. This situation of course is unacceptable for daily use. The goal at this point is to specify the three sound devices using keys that are unique and immutable. Here is what I did to bring some sanity to the sound configuration.
If your sound devices are each served by different modules, the easiest way to nail them down is to specify the index parameter of each relevant driver; this parameter determines the card number(s). Following forum postings I tried (unsuccessfully) the following method. Look in /etc/modprobe.d . Files therein have the form: number hyphen basename .conf, e.g. 50-radeon_audio.conf . In this file I put:
options snd_hda_intel index=0,1 options snd_usb_audio index=2(Use e.g.
modinfo snd_hda_intelto determine which drivers have the index parameter.) These settings were obeyed, and if each driver served only one device this fix would have been sufficient, but I have multiple devices on the Intel driver, so I had to use a different solution. It is possible to specify a
modelparameter on the Intel driver, but I could not get it to cue on the IDs.
Next, let's look at /proc/asound/cards .
0 [Generic ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
HD-Audio Generic at 0xfeb44000 irq 44
1 [SB ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
HDA ATI SB at 0xfeb40000 irq 16
2 [Device ]: USB-Audio - USB Sound Device
C-Media INC. USB Sound Device at usb-0000:06:00.0-2.4, full speed
The integers are the card numbers, determined by the drivers' index parameters,
or the order in which their respective driver modules are loaded (if the index
is unspecified), which occurs in parallel threads and so is not deterministic.
The third column, e.g. USB Sound Device, comes from the idProduct attribute on USB, and I can't find it for PCI. The last whitespace separated word of this attribute gives the value for the
idattribute, which appears in the second column of /proc/asound/cards . These values are kind of lame and could easily be non-unique.
If your ID values are not satisfactory, use this solution to set the ID attributes to something consistent and unique, by a udev rule. Do this for each sound device. Pick a device inode associated with each sound device: /dev/snd/controlC2 (substitute each card number) always exists. Now do:
udevadm info --attribute-walk --name=/dev/snd/controlC2Find its ancestor that has the
idattribute, which you're going to change. The output will say something like ATTRS{id}=="Device". Now look for one grand-ancestor with unique attributes, like the vendor and product. Finally you will assign ATTR{id} (singular) (one = for assignment, 2 for comparison). Here are my rules, in /etc/udev/rules.d/26-soundJ.rules .
ATTR{id}=="*" ATTRS{vendor}=="0x1002" ATTRS{device}=="0x4383" ATTR{id}="Azalia"
ATTR{id}=="*" ATTRS{vendor}=="0x1002" ATTRS{device}=="0x1314" ATTR{id}="AMD_HDMI"
ATTR{id}=="*" ATTRS{idVendor}=="0d8c" ATTRS{idProduct}=="0103" ATTR{id}="TurtleBeach"
Explanation:
idattribute. ATTR not ATTRS. Singular keywords refer to the object being modified; plural ones are for the ancestor.
If you have multiple devices with the same vendor and product codes, you need to find another unique attribute to cue on. Some devices have a serial number. I believe the KERNEL uniquely identifies the port or slot that the device is plugged into, so it will be satisfactory as long as you do not move the device, which can be a problem with USB.
To make this rule effective, remove all the sound driver modules like this:
lsmod | grep ^snd_
modprobe -r -v snd_usb_audio # (pick an unused driver)
modprobe -r -v snd_hda_intel
etc. etc.; repeat from the lsmod step until all are gone.
Then reload the keystone drivers. Instead you might simplify your life by rebooting, just like on Windows. Check your work by inspecting /proc/asound/cards and make sure your ID values are now shown in the second column.
Now that you have useful ID values, you can use them like this. For the user who is going to play the sound, change to its home directory (the value of the HOME environment variable when the sound program executes). For MythTV I have a special user called watchtv. ALSA is configured from these files:
ati_hdmiis arbitrary, but avoid sleeping dragons and don't try to replace a system-defined PCM.
pcm.ati_hdmi {
type hw
card AMD_HDMI
device 3
}
ctl.ati_hdmi {
type hw
card AMD_HDMI
}
# The ! is important; without it, ALSA lib gets an error.
pcm.!default pcm.ati_hdmi
You need to define both the pcm and ctl devices (mixer). While the card is normally specified as an integer, you can give the ID attribute as appearing in /proc/asound/cards . With this default override, the sound generating program will send output over HDMI no matter how the module order is randomized at boot time.
This is what I did to set up MythTV 0.27 from an empty database on Iris-3
(the fit-PC3 Pro). See the
initial installation instructions on the MythTV wiki. Skip to
post-install tasks
.
The database engine should be running, and security setup steps should be done. You need to have done these additional steps.
identified by 'its_password'clause and it is not necessary to set the password in a second step.)
The installation page (see link above) has the exact command lines to do the database items. You will need to give the password of the root database user, which you set during the security setup.
It's a pain to crouch on the carpet in front of the TV and use the keyboard and mouse. Instead, on a desktop machine get a SSH connection to Iris. Authenticate as the MythTV user (for me, watchtv). Then run these commands for the respective setup steps.
mythtv-setup -geometry 640x480-0+3 -O ThemePainter=qt
mythfrontend -w -geometry 640x480-0+3 -O ThemePainter=qt
You can make the window larger if you want. Despite the geometry specification the window will migrate to the upper left corner of the screen. The resulting window is borderless, and the mouse cursor is erratically visible (but usable) when inside; MythTV is designed to be controlled by the keyboard. Don't try to perform video because it's a total slug with no 3D acceleration.
Run mythtv-setup using the command line above. It creates the file ~/.mythtv/ It wants you to pick your language; en_US is preselected and you can just hit Save. It fails to connect to the database (duh) and asks where it is. You can take all the defaults, i.e. database on localhost, except the user and the password, which likely you will want to customize. Then hit Next.
Finally, settings can vary among hosts and so the frontend's hostname is used to differentiate them. You could use a different identifier, but I didn't. Since my frontend, backend and database engine run on the same host, it's meaningless to wake up the database server, but in a more complex situation this may be useful. Hit Finish.
It started mythtv-setup, but hit a SQL error, referring to a table that did not exist. It went back to the first step, language selection. I killed it. Probably I didn't have to; if I had just gone through the whole process again, it would have picked up.
I started mythtv-setup again. This time it wanted to upgrade the database schema (from 1307 to 1317). Having done this, it was able to start the setup GUI.
Host Address Backend Setup: The defaults are to refer to everything on localhost. In the future I may have a second frontend, so I want my backend to use the server's LAN address (IPv4 and IPv6). Use the dropdown lists to pick the addresses; they aren't editable. It will know it is the master if the Master Backend setting exactly matches the local IPv4 address and port. Specify the security PIN as 0000 to allow any client to connect.
Locale settings: In the USA with over the air (antenna) signal, take all defaults, which are: format = NTSC; VBI = NTSC; frequencies = us-bcast. This is my situation.
Miscellaneous Settings: Take all defaults.
EIT Scanner Options: Take all defaults. This is to extract program listings transmitted by the stations. But these are notoriously unreliable.
Shutdown-Wakeup Options: This is all for my power management scripts.
Backend Wakeup Settings: Since the frontend, backend and database server are on the same machine, there is no need to wake up anyone. Take all defaults, which do not wake up anything.
Backend Control: So the frontend could start or stop the
backend. I have a script, mythbackend.ctl, which can do this, but
if the backend is going to die, I think it's best to investigate what
killed it, rather than letting the frontend get into worse trouble.
So I changed both of them to /bin/true
.
Job Queue: Take all defaults. Also the following pages: Global and Job Commands.
Program Schedule: Take all defaults.
Presently the Hauppauge HTV-950q is connected to Iris. Later
I will move over and configure the HTV-1950. On the Capture Cards page,
hit New Capture Card
. (Not with the mouse; you have to use
arrow keys to scroll to it, then press return.) Give it about 10 secs
because it has to upload firmware, which is slow.
The program auto-discovers the card(s) and presents them in the first
drop-down list. Ours is a DVB-T tuner card, which was auto selected.
However, instead of /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0 I want to use a symlink
that is specific to that card, when there are several. So how do I edit
the device name? Click in the DVB Device box. Delete any one letter.
This will go very slowly, be very patient. Once you have a nonexistent
device specified, you can click and drag to delete all text after /dev/.
Now type in the symlink pathname followed by frontend0. In my case:
/dev/htv-950q/frontend0
. When you type the final 0 there will be
a 10 second delay while it opens the device, uploading the firmware for
the Nth time.
The defaults will probably be satisfactory for the two timeouts.
Now hit Recording Options (another delay, this time for at least 3
minutes). I turned on Open DVB card on demand
, so when the machine
goes to sleep the backend will not have the card open, which would
probably mess it up totally. I also turned off Active EIT Scan, because
the card would be used continually, with obvious consequences when putting
the machine to sleep. The other items I left at the defaults.
Hit Finish on the two screens in progress. Press Esc to exit from the Capture Cards section.
I actually did not change anything for the recording profiles.
This refers to how and where you are going to get program listing
data. Hit New Video Source
.
Antenna Los Angeles.
Select each of your capture cards in turn. On the resulting page, fill in these items:
Schedule Orderand
Live TV Orderchange the more preferred device to a lower number (but not 0) or change the less preferred device to a higher number. I will do this on the HTV-1950, but later.
In the past I have always done the channel scan, but it takes time and usually misses some of the more obscure channels. I tried Fetch from Listings, but it did not seem to import any channels. You're warned that it takes a long time but it's only about 5 secs. Reverting to Scan: you get the Scan Configuration page.
You don't need to edit channels unless you messed something up.
MythTV doesn't know where you want your video content stored, so
you have to tell it. Select the Default group. I didn't mess with
separate storage groups for the various categories. On the page that
opens, hit Add New Directory
. Type the toplevel directory pathname.
For me, /video is a symlink to my big disc partition. You could have
several directories. Content categories are stored in subdirectories,
e.g. /video/tv. Hit Esc on 2 pages to return to the main menu.
You can cause a program to be executed when certain events happen. I've heard of people using this effectively, but I don't have any such programs to run.
At the main menu, hit Esc to escape. It reminds you to download
your program guide data. To do this, execute (as the watchtv user)
mythfilldatabase
. For my channel lineup it took about 2 minutes.
Ignore the error that it could not connect to the master backend, which
is not yet running.
Start the backend and give it a minute to start up. Now start mythfrontend using the command line given earlier. Select the Setup toplevel menu choice. To use the Setup Wizard effectively you need to be executing on the actual TV, so skip that and come back to it later.
It has a lot of pages. Here is what I set.
Database Configuration 1 and 2: It copies the setup from what you gave for the backend. No need to change anything.
Settings Access: Leave blank. This is to lock your kids out of the setup menu.
General: No need to change anything.
Media Monitor: The frontend will be aware when a disc (etc.) is inserted in a drive and potentially could be played. If you have any removable drives that never contain playable media, you can specify them here.
Remote Control: The modern way to handle it is as a keyboard, not via LIRC, which won't be running, so blank out the LIRC daemon socket. If you want to use Mythmote on Android as a remote control, you need to enable network control. Leave the ports at the defaults: network control is 6546/tcp (Telnet), and mythutil uses 6948/udp.
AirPlay Settings: This is a proprietary protocol belonging to Apple, to send media from a server and perform it on a client, such as an Apple TV. I do not have one, so disabled the protocol.
Shutdown/Reboot settings: I left these at the default, which has been satisfactory.
These are the pages for controlling how the display looks:
Theme and Screen: It knows that the Qt paint engine is being used, and proposes that. Change it back to Auto. I'm leaving the rest at their defaults. If your TV overscans you can fit the GUI and video image to the accessible screen, but I have a flat panel TV.
Video Mode: Leave alone (same mode for GUI and TV).
Localization: I changed the time format to e.g. 21:45, and left the others at their defaults.
We have no LCD display device. This would be for program titles and the like.
We have used the Media Center theme and will continue to do so. It may look dumb, but none of the other themes really attract me either, to make the investment in user training to use a new theme. Pick a theme that matches your display's aspect ration, 16x9 or 4x3. Hit Esc to return to the main menu.
To set up the rest of the items effectively, you need to exit from your remote session and start up the physical console (TV). Crouch on the carpet with your keyboard; some of them need typing file paths.
Audio Output Device: I'm not sure where it's getting its list of
ALSA PCMs, but it does the equivalent of aplay -L
and the Radeon
HDMI PCM that I configured is not in the list. Nonetheless, I tried
ALSA:hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0
and it played the test sound (white
noise) on each of the TV's speakers. With DEV=3, which is the expected
device from hardware settings, there is no sound.
When on the test page I turned on Use Highest Quality Mode
,
the sounds had a lot more high frequency energy, but only played on the
left speaker, so I turned this off again.
On the next page, leave Use Internal Volume Controls
turned
on. This lets MythTV control the volume.
This has several pages:
General: I didn't change anything here.
Program Guide: No changes. There is a feature so that if you hit Select on a future program it will schedule a recording, but only if it is 16 minutes or more in the future (configurable).
Playback: (Page 1:) You could tell it to exit from live TV if idle for N minutes.
Recording profiles are on page 3. There are preset variants for Normal, Slim and High Quality, but for the most part they are identical unless you edit them. Profile categories are these; the first item is the decoder and the second is the video renderer.
I didn't make any changes on the other pages.
At this point I backed out and ran the Setup Wizard again. Its first screen is for reporting your hardware profile (not done; it had an unspecified problem); second is audio setup, with identical settings and results to the main audio menu; and finally video setup. It lets you try out (but not edit) all the recording profiles. I'm trying just the Normal variants of each one. Reported numbers are the percent CPU usage of each of 2 cores (100% - idle). It needs to download two video samples (once); be patient. Profile SD 480p HD 1080p Normal 86 78 89 0 Choppy playback on HD OpenGL Normal 65 65 24 24 OpenGL Slim 71 64 64 0 Choppy playback on HD OpenGL High Q 65 65 22 26 VAAPI 74 78 13 13 VDPAU Cannot initialize
Conclusion: we're going with OpenGL Normal. The usage fractions go up and down by ±10% so small differences in usage should not be considered significant. But OpenGL relies on generic video access support while VAAPI uses an API specific to ATI cards, and I think the OpenGL is likely to be more stable when software is upgraded.
Playback OSD (on-screen display of program metadata), Playback Groups, Channel Groups, Recording Priorities: No changes to any of these categories.
This is for video files rather than TV programs recorded by MythTV. The first section is also called Videos Settings.
General Settings 1: Fill in the actual directories where your content is (or will be) stored. I pre-created these directories in /video/Video/{Content,Trailers,etc} and I filled in the directory names in the appropriate entries. I didn't change any of the other General Settings. When Mythfrontend notices that a DVD has been inserted it will show the MythVideo menu which, among other things, lets you play it.
Player Settings: I didn't change anything. It's using the internal player for all mime-types and for the DVD. I also didn't change Metadata Settings or File Types. It will use the internal player for all mime-types. It recognizes file extensions of 3gp, asf, avi, divx, evo, f4v, flv, img, iso, log (ignored), m2ts, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg, mxf, nut, nuv, ogg, ogm, ogv, qt, rm, swf, ts, txt (ignored), vob, wmv,
In MythArchive Settings, the only thing I set was the MythArchive temp directory, to /video/tmp. It warns that a lot of free space will be needed, so there is no default. The file extensions eligible for archiving are mpg, mov, avi, mpeg, nuv.
The MythArchive section mentions the possibility of using ProjectX, but we do not have this package. I believe all the options that require it are turned off.
System Event Handlers: left alone.
Artwork and Metadata Sources: It uses The MovieDB.org and TheTVDB.com to get information and artwork. I left these alone.
Edit Keys: The procedure to get MythTV to obey the remote control is documented in my MythTV Usage and Cheat Sheet.
With this setup, MythTV is operating well, as well as it did on Aurora. MythWeb is also doing its job, including streaming delivery of programs to a player (totem) using GStreamer-1.0. The remaining issues are:
Wakeup problems: With the Hauppauge HTV-950q TV capture device connected and operational, it has severe power management problems. Suspending to S3 (RAM), it sleeps for about 130 microseconds, then wakes. Suspending to S4 (disk), it appears to go through the procedure, but fails to turn power off. As a stopgap I'm suspending to S5 (complete reboot), but I haven't finished debugging the control scripts. I would really prefer S3 but it's going to take some hacking.
MythVideo: We have some content from previous generations of the MythTV server, which we want available. A major goal is to get these indexed and usable.
MythGreeter: This is a login manager adapted to the limitations of the TV remote control. I would like to try it, and if successful, to junk the not completely successful kludges I have in PAM for use with the standard greeter.
DVD playback: I need to once again go through my movie DVDs and find out which ones MythTV can play, and what codecs it's using.
| Selection | Setup (Jac / Iris) | Testing | Software (Jac / Iris) | Top |