Hi:

Not sure this is exactly the right forum but it it's not, my apologies in advance and please let me know.

I finally managed to get DVDs playing from within Myth-sort of.

I only have one DVD to test and it is commercial. I installed what I needed to install
to take care of that fact. That DVD plays just fine from within Xine.

Because the DVD has menus, I used this tip from the KnoppmythWiki to get the DVD
to play from within Myth:
"Changing MythTV config to launch xine instead of mplayer"
"Once xine is installed, you also need to configure MythTV front end to launch xine
instead of mplayer. Go to Setup->DVD->Playback in MythTV's front end menus and
enter the following line:"



Now, if I log in as root, the DVD plays fine, except for the fact that it doesn't take up
the entire screen-it sits in a Xine window.

OTOH, if I log in as mythtv, then the Xine GUI playback progress bar slides,
I heard sound eventually, but no window displaying any picture shows up (not even the window).
Anyone have any ideas? I had to recreate my /dev/dvd link, so could this be an owner/ permissions issue?

Oh, and a tangential question: On DVDs with menus, will mplayer play the content,
and just not show the menus,
or will it just crash/refuse to play anything etctera.

Thanks in advance.


shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

The dvd link should be owned by root with group audio I believe it is. I'm not at a box right now, but searching should find that answer for you. and mythtv should already be in group audio.

as for mplayer yes it will play the movie, and just ignores the menu's.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

- Run the following script: This should fix your links and permissions.

- Make sure that mythtv belongs to the cdrom group.

- Search for more details. There are a couple ways to screw this up, but given the keywords I've mentioned you should find dozens of threads with full diagnostic walk throughs on this. It seems like we go through this about once a week with someone. As a matter of fact there is a parallel diagnostic thread with Coma right now.

tjc:

Thanks for that. I actually did do a search, but the problems seemed different. In fact, I pretty much always do a fair bit of searching before posting here.



I'll do that. Thanks.

shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

Thus the new keywords to try. Kind of like the old fisherman telling you "under these conditions a white or yellow jig with a pork rind tail is the ticket" and then handing you one.

There are actually only about a dozen common reasons behind the "I can't access a CD/DVD" type of issues. Correct device names, correct permissions/ownership, correct group membership, correct drivers and libraries, system recognition of the device, ... Read two or three diagnostic threads and I'm betting you'll see nearly all of them covered.

tjc:

Thanks.



It doesn't seem to find that file on my system.

Also, you didn't really make it explicit as to which keywords you were referring to.
I did a search of the forums for "permissions" and "DVD" and couldn't find any posts
with symptoms at all similar to mine. The posts I saw were people who couldn't access
their DVD drives at all. I found one of your posts stating that your /dev/dvd
has owner:root ; group:root . That is what I have, along with rwx permissions,
the same as yours.

My DVD is symlinked to hdc. I just finished double-checking that my DVD drive jumper
was set to master, and is definitely on the second channel.

Could this have anything to do with my hdc symlink recently having been fried and
my having to subsequently recreate it? I figured not, since I can play DVDs directly
from Xine, but just thought I'd ask


thanks

shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

It should be in; /usr/local/bin/cd_link.sh if it isn't then something is broken or the install got botched.

The keywords were the name of the script itself "cd_link.sh" (5 matches) "dvd cdrom permissions" (7 matches) "mythtv cdrom group" (15 matches), if that doesn't fill your stringer then the fish must just hate you. Don't forget to click the "Search for all terms" radio button.

The /usr/local/bin/cd_link.sh script will set things up for you to look more or less like this:

When you're dealing with an ownership or permissions problem all being able to access something as root proves is that the hardware works.

Hmmm....that script exists nowhere on my machine.

The other keywords you suggested yielded 15 results. All were related to not being
able to play videos at all in Myth, or similar. None had anything to do with my symptoms
listed above. The closest useful thread was entitled "How can I play Xvid with a filelist
from a DVD/CD?" so it's no wonder I didn't check that one.

In that thread, you described checking automount settings in the Myth setup.
I tried both on and off, restarting mythfrontend each time, and nothing changed.
Again, I think that does not address my symptoms, as I am getting sound and progress
bar moving with no video.

Any other suggestions?

shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

If you're running R5A16 as you indicated and don't have that script there is something wrong with your install. You can always boot with the CD in rescue mode, mount the HD and copy it over, but heaven only knows what else is missing... (Cecil has posted directions on this somewhere around here) Another optionis to do the re-download, re-burn, backup and upgrade dance.

You can also try searching for postings by me that include the strings "chgrp" and "cdrom" but that's going to require you to adjust the directions on the fly to match _your_ hardware setup. Cecil & Dale provided the cd_link.sh script to automate this.

I'm not running R5A16. I'm not sure where you got that idea. I'm running R5A12.

I dont' understand. Why is it necessary for me to run that script if I already have basic DVD functionality in Linux? Does it make modifications for DVD functionality in Myth as well?

DVD and CDROM are already set to the same thing you specified in your other posts.

DVD/CDROM = Owner: root ; group: cdrom
/dev/dvd--->/dev/hdc

What else needs to be done?


shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

Mostly because it's the current version and you didn't say what you were running in this thread. Sorry, but with the number of people asking similar questions it's REALLY hard to keep straight who you've asked what, and what people have said elsewhere.

No need at all then, but I swear you said earlier that the ownership was root:root rather than root:cdrom. Again maybe I've just answered too many of these this week and can't keep them straight any more.

Try setting the DVD player command to

OBTW - What does this return?

What, you mean with the 50 or 60 problems you help people solve every week,
you don't know them off by heart?

Can't remember if I said that earlier, but it's now root:cdrom .



I assume that last character at the end of the command was a lower case "L"?
It's sometimes hard to tell with these small fonts. That Xine command line is already
specified in my Myth settings.

Thanks again, BTW.


shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick

Heck that's just here... You should see my timesheet by the end of a week at work.

OBTW - Is there anything interesting in you log files at the time?

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=374472&id=29&artlang=en

My, but there's a whole lot of data in that logfile! Thanks for telling me about that file-
I hadn't heard of it before.

Heh. sometimes in computerland, part of the solution is right under your nose. Just on
a hunch, I right clicked on the Xine interface, and in the menu there, the second item
was "Show video window". So I clicked that, and guess what...a picture. Now, why would
Xine defaulting to not showing the video window, and more importantly, how can I fix that?

There's now another problem-I seems to to lose control of the mouse and keyboard
in Xine. If I then run Top, and kill Xine, eventually, hitting ESC sometimes brings cursor
control back. Is this the infamous "menu focus" issue or is it something entirely different?


shplad

_________________
KnoppMyth R5C7
Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
Hauppauge PVR-150 + PVR-150MCE
nVidia Geforce 6600GT
Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB
NEC ND-3520A DVD
Seasonic Super Tornado 350
BTC 9019URF Wireless Kbd. w. Joystick