I finally got mythburn to work pretty well for me, except the menus don't seem to function properly, I think it's entirely related to this issue that I see in my mythtvburn.log:



As you can see, in the middle, there's that message about the sceneselectionbutton1.png file missing. I don't understand why this would be. I know that file is actually generated, b/c I commented out the 'rm' commands that clean it up near the end of that script/*.sh that creates it. And it's there, I've viewed it and it looks fine.

But evidently, when the process goes to build the DVD menus, it can't find it. Permissions all look fine on it ('r' for everyone), so I'm at a loss. The rest of the menu looks fine, except b/c of that breakage, I can't navigate the normal way through the menus.

Has anyone run into this? I'm running CVS as of a few days back. I also (later) added that patch that tries to do the tcrequant'ing taking into consideration space savings hit from cutting the commercials, but that's not causing the problem b/c I've had the same problem before and after applying that patch.

I'm also using ProjectX 0.90.3, which is allowed also due to that same patch (previously, I was using 0.82.1, as recommended), so I don't think that's causing the problem.

I know most of you must *not* be having this issue because I've not found anything referencing the problem via Google.

Thanks for any help.

I'm having the same difficulty. I *am* using the earlier ProjectX, so that's definitely not it. I also echoed all the return codes, and don't see anything returning a non-zero code. I've also upgraded dvdauthor to the newest version.

The only further information I can offer is that the images pulled from the video stream aren't right in my case -- I just get uniform green rectangles. It does appear that menubars and logos and other text are being correctly added, and that the thing is correctly calculating chapters. I'm suspicious of a problem with ImageMagick, which is not supposed to work in later versions unless you use a latest/greatest dvdauthor (which is why I installed one).

I don't get functional menus, by the way -- I get a DVD that seems to have everything it should, but won't play, because there's no way to activate the menu items.

Any progress at your end? As I write this I'm thinking that there's something in the ImageMagick/dvdauthor thing worth looking at. What drives me crazy about working with this is that nobody ever tells you *why* two pieces of software won't work together -- just that they don't. It's like trying to map a minefield with a broomstick.

I know man, it is frustrating working with this (especially new) stuff. You just want it to work, and it often times doesn't work quite perfectly.

Unfortunately, I've made no new progress on that front. Hoping someone will see our posts here and swoop in with the answer.

I'm running Gentoo and here are some of my package versions:

dvdauthor-0.6.11
imagemagick-6.2.4.2-r1

I am also having this problem, with mythburn from CVS. I'm running Debian, with dvdauthor 0.6.11, imagemagick 6.0.6.2. I'll try dist-upgrading to see if this fixes anything.

Another clue...

dvdauthor-0.6.11-1.2
ImageMagick-6.2.5-5

Using the web interface, you pick your options, then kick off the script. When the DVD burn process starts, the bottom of the initial log file display screen shows the exact command that was started.

If I build a DVD via the web interface, apache runs it, and I get green thumbnails and a green scene selection background.

If I copy that command and paste it into a shell prompt...logged in as root...everything works perfectly. The thumbnails and background are correct.

What's the difference running as root vs running as apache? Got me... Permissions seem fine, I'm tweaking the PATH setting in the mythtvburn.sh script to match what root has to see if that helps.

BTW, to test the result without burning a DVD, uncheck the 'delete VIDEO_TS' box (and the make ISO and burn DVD boxes), and after the image is built, use xine to play the result:

xine dvd:/local/video/mythburn/temp/DVD/VIDEO_TS/

(adjust the path to your needs...)

patman:

A promising tip. I was also able to get appropriate menu pix by running as root. I suppose that diffing the log files might provide a clue as to what's different -- so would running strace, but life is too short.

However, I'm no closer to having anything playable -- can't click on or select buttons in the menu and have anything happen, either on a burned CD or by running xine against VIDEO_TS (which is a helpful tip too, I must say).

Any progress at your end?

No progress.

I discovered that I had both the .11 and .12 versions installed, and depending on what path was in place, it would pick up a different one. Root was finding the .11 version, so I moved the .12 stuff out of the way hoping that would fix it...nope.

It occurred to me later that the PATH is set by the mythtvburn.sh script, so the PATH environment should end up the same for both, regardless of what it was set to beforehand. So...the PATH is back where it started.

My problem is just the green images...the DVD navigation works fine for me.

The green problem is originating in what happens in the mythburn/scripts/createscenemenu.sh script, so I'm going to dive in there next.

As for diffing the logs, been there, done that. Only difference I can see (other than timestamps and such) are tc_memcpy messages from the root (working) log that don't appear in the apache (nonworking) log:

Extracting video thumbnails for animated menu
tc_memcpy: using sse for memcpy
[decode_mpeg2.c] libmpeg2 0.4.0b loop decoder
[decode_mpeg2.c] libmpeg2 acceleration: mmxext
Return value is 0
----- datestamp=27-01-2006 23:29
Building Scene Selection Menu for recording Dream Car Garage Shades of Black submenus: yes
/local/video/mythburn/scripts/createscenemenu.sh /local/video/mythburn 1 1 53817 1035_20051224093000_20051224100000.nuv /local/video/mythburn/temp/tempdvdauthor2.xml 29.97 720x480 whitebox.png yes nocut


EDIT: forgot another difference I spotted.

In the apache environment, LANG=C, and as root, LANG=en_US.UTF-8
That seemed to be yielding some different messages near where your error message is occuring. It's not terribly good form portability-wise, but I added the LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to the top of mythtvburn.sh to eliminate that difference.

EDIT:
Never mind, red herring. Turns out that's a routine warning.


This one was obtained by monkeying with extractthumbnail.sh so that transcode's warnings aren't being dumped to the bit bucket:

Extracting thumbnail image from time frame 00:06:42.20-00:06:42.21
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.9 for DVD access
libdvdread: Can't open file VIDEO_TS.IFO.

This would appear to be our permissions problem. Except that there's absolutely nothing keeping transcode from VIDEO_TS.IFO as far as I can tell, permissions-wise that is.

Investigating further.

t

Your problem wouldn't be fixed by modifying those "flip_thumbnails" and "blueface" options in mythburn.conf would it? (Yes, I notice you said green, but I thought it might be related).

If so, check this out:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=MythTVBurn_Scripts_HowTo

@ the "Problems with transcode while extracting thumbnails" section.

Thanks for the tip, but...I'm not getting distorted images, just a solid green image. I don't think those apply. As I said, this works fine run as root, and I only have a problem if I run it as apache (which is what happens when you use the web interface)

Gotta be a permission problem, I'm trying to repro the error accessing .IFO message that tbruce found.

Also, I suspect that the tc_memcpy messages are just informational, but I just find it curious that they print when root runs, and not when apache runs...

I altered the extractthumbnails.sh script, and changed the transcode argument -q 0 to -q 255 instead.

I figured out why there is a difference in the tc_memcpy messages:

< (probe.c) V magic=0x0, A magic=0x0, V codec=0x10000, A codec=0x50
< (probe.c) V magic=, A magic=, V codec=MPEG-2, A codec=MPEG layer-2
---
> (probe.c) V magic=0x0, A magic=0x0, V codec=0x0, A codec=0x0
> (probe.c) V magic=, A magic=, V codec=unknown, A codec=unknown
208c204
< [transcode] V: import format | MPEG-2 (V=vob|A=null)
---
> [transcode] V: import format | unknown (V=null|A=null)

Note that for the root session (<), it knows what codec to use...for the apache session, it doesn't. The tc_memcpy info message only comes out on the root session because...the mpeg2 codec is only being loaded on the root session.

Now the question is if the codec is failing to load (LD_LIBRARY_PATH issues maybe?), or if it can't open the input file to decide with the right codec to use is (permissions on the input file?)

I'm not seeing the libdvdread messages at all.

Yeesh. Following up on your discoveries, patman, I took a look at the probe.c source code, and found that it's actually calling tcprobe, apparently as its own process, rather than using library routines or some such. Go figure.

This led to the most recent experiment, in which I found that tcprobe run from the command line as either a non-root user or as root yield the same output (for tcprobe -i $blahfile). However, inserting a call to tcprobe -i into extractthumbnailwhatever does not produce any output about the video stream. I am starting to wonder if this is some FC4 security thing involving subshells and the apache user.

Looks like we're not alone:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.vide ... user/15172

This fella appears to have investigated pretty thoroughly. I've got mail out to him and will report any response.

Interesting...

I took a look at the source too, and spotted the tcprobe call there. I did the same thing and tried it under different authorities, and it always seemed to work.

Just for giggles, I did a 'chmod +s mythtvburn.sh' to make it run as root, but...no joy, still the same problem.

You may be on to something with the subshell issue. At this point I'm thinking of turning tcprobe into a function, and just calling it directly instead of exec'ing it as a new process.

That other thread looks very familiar...it *should* work, but...

I've resorted to running mythtvburn.sh from a command prompt (logged in as root) to get my DVDs burned. I love the results...just gotta work on the mechanism a bit.

Just had an idea...I renamed tcprobe:



...and then created a new /usr/bin/tcprobe:



That will do an strace (as mentioned in that other thread) of what tcprobe is doing and dump the output to a file.

I'm running mythtvburn.sh as root from the command line, and then I'll run it again as apache via the web interface, and see what the difference is.

As far as I can tell, the tcprobe is where things start falling apart. As root, tcprobe correctly identifies the file content...but as apache, it fails.

Keep your fingers crossed for some useful differences....

if *that* doesn't show anything useful, we can try the same trick on transcode (although it would be tons more output to sift through)

EDIT: fixed arg passing in script...oops...