Archive for November, 2009
Google Chromium OS – I was right!
So, the first build of Chromium is released and as I predicted, it is simply a super-fast web-browsing platform, no more, no less. All those people who are criticising it for not being an MS killer are totally missing the point of it. It is meant to allow you to quickly and easily access the web and Google’s services, using devices manufactured by certain partners. Why would it try to compete with the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora, when both are so advanced and well supported already?
There will be a lot of disappointed people out there, when they see what Chromium is, but that is only because there are lots of people out there who don’t understand what Google wanted to achieve and were, as usual, being unrealistic about what it could achieve.
MythTV Recordings: Rename, Move and Delete From The Database
So, I have been using MythTV for a while now and it is a.w.e.s.o.m.e.. However, I had one problem, since I transcode and store all my videos on my Ubuntu server and not my MythTV box (which is off most of the time via mythwelcome) I had to manually transfer recorded files to my Ubuntu server via mythweb.
I thought this was a bit of a hokey solution, so I asked around if there was a script that allowed you to rename MythTV recordings (to a more human readable version), move them to another location and remove them from the MythTV database. There were some solutions out there, but they all involved the recorded files being kept in the MythTV database.
So, I wrote my own script. This script renames the MythTV files to a nice human understandable version using mythrename.pl, it then moves the recordings to a folder of your choice (in my case a mounted samba share on my server), it then uses myth.find_orphans.pl to delete the moved recordings from the mythTV database (I don’t know if it will still remember that these files were previously recorded so it doesn’t rerecord them or not, I guess time will tell).
So, without further ado, here is the script, in lovely Bash (the script is called mythtvremodel (mythtv REname MOve DELete, geddit?):
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: mythtvremodel
# Required-Start: $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs dbus
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: rename, move delete recordings
### END INIT INFO
# script to rename files recorded from mythtv and then to move them and delete them
#made by prupert.co.uk
#creative commons licence, whichever is the most FREE (as in beer)
#lets put in some variables so others can use this
#location of log file, you can choose anything and any name
log=/path/to/mythtvremodel.log
#this is the full path to mythrename.pl
mrename=/location/to/mythrename.pl
#this is the full path to your recordings folder
record=/var/www/mythweb/data/recordings/
#this is the extension your recordings are stored as, usually mpg or nuv
ext=mpg
#this is the full path to where you want your files moved to
dest=/path/to/folder/to/move/recordings/to/
#this is the full path to myth.find_orphans.pl
morphan=/path/to/myth.find_orphans.pl
#mythtv database password for myth.find_orphans.pl
pass=yourmythtvdatabasepassword
# first, run mythtvrename to get nice names for the recordings
echo starting mythtvremodel on `date "+%m/%d/%y %l:%M:%S %p"` > $log
perl $mrename --underscores --format %T-%S-%d%m%y >> $log
# use find to search for all recorded files in the recording folder and move them to the TV folder
find "$record" -name "*.$ext" >> $log
find "$record" -name "*.$ext" -exec mv {} "$dest" \; >> $log
# use mythorphan to remove the now missing recorded files from the database
perl $morphan --pass=$pass --dodbdelete >> $log
#that should be it
echo stopping mythtvremodel on `date "+%m/%d/%y %l:%M:%S %p"` >> $log
exit 0
And there you have it. Now, since I run mythbuntu, I have put this script in /etc/rc0.d (thats rc zero . d) and have named it K03mythtvremodel, thus it is run when my system shuts down, but before all the samba shares and drives are unmounted. As I said, since I use mythwelcome to shutdown my machine when idle, this seemed like the best solution.
Hope it helps someone!
MediaCenter: PS3 No, XBMC YES!
So, for many months I have been slaving away with my PS3 and server, getting Mediatomb to work well and finding a setting for ffmpeg that my PS3 will like. What a waste of time!!
The fact that the PS3 only supports UPnP or locally stored videos is a joke, I mean, come on Sony, Windows Shares are where it is at. Mediatomb is great at what it does, but the interface of any UPnP device is just SO horrible.
However, the interface on XBMC is just liquid gold, that can be further customised via skins like Aeon or Mediastream. Both look truly beautiful and put the PS3 to shame. I would dearly love to run XBMC on my old Xbox, but sadly it just hasn’t got the processing power to play my .x264 encoded mp4 videos, so I will use it just as my Music player (still using XBMC on it though). Thus my HTPC, which primarily runs MythTV will now also be used to view my videos via XBMC. It seems rediculous to me that a machine as powerful as the PS3 comes with such an ugly and limited Media Player interface as the UPnP protocol. I guess because Sony are shortly to release Video Store to stream and download Videos, they want that to be the main way PS3 users access videos, and not ones they already own. At the end of the day, it is all about new revenue streams 
Still, all I can say is that XBMC rules, and I wish I had an Acer Revo with the new Nvidea Ion platform to truly appreciate the full power of XBMC without worrying about messing up my MythTV set-up 