Having problems ripping DVDs with the latest version of mythtv (mythvideo) from Packman. Seems it can’t handle anything that has to be post-processed with transcode. (I’d like to use this to rip my DVDs and encode off-air material for my Popcorn Hour Video Tank.) This is under OpenSUSE 11.1. The previous version of mythtv worked fine with 11.1. Tried rebuilding the -19 version that worked before, but it depends on a libjack2 package that’s no longer available on Packman. (It appears the person doing those builds got some nasty e-mails for her efforts and she removed all the packages she’d posted to Packman.) And since Packman doesn’t appear to have any CM system there’s no way to get previous versions of anything. (It also appears that some packages get posted without any serious testing.)
Does anyone have some ideas or suggestions on how to get a working version of mythtv up and running on 11.1?
I am having issues too with mythvideo. It seems to be connected with the MTD daemon dying mid-rip. I can’t figure out why, but I’m going to look into it over the weekend. The MTD daemon seems to be a fickle beast in OpenSuse 11.1.
If you figure it out, please post an answer. I will do the same.
EDIT You should try LemonRip as a workaround until this is fixed. LemonRip is a super easy program to use, and it seems to work for me in OpenSuse 11.1 64bit. (Now that the xvid libraries are working properly).
I’ve tried copying the transcode command from the mtd.log file and running it on a Perfect DVD rip and that seems to work. This leads me to believe that mythvideo isn’t getting transcode started for some reason. The command line arguments changed but that problem was apparently resolved with the -20/21 builds.
My attempts to rebuild the last working version (-19) have hit a brick wall over the libjack2 issue. If I can’t figure out how to reverse engineer the libjack2 build I may just try moving on to trying a build of the current mythtv (0.22) from source.
The problem is an incompatibility between mythvideo 0.21-20 and transcode 1.1.0 in the way arguments are passed on the command line to transcode. Arguments --print_script and --color aren’t support and the default Divx encoding isn’t fully supported in this version. It may work if the proper shared libraries are present, but they aren’t listed as required in the Package so by default they don’t get installed.
I’ve got a partial workaround using a script wedged in between mythvideo and transcode. I’d have preferred just rebuilding mythvideo but that’s not possible without the libjack2 Package that has also been removed from Packman.
sigh I wish “programmers” would learn that a clean compile doesn’t mean the code will execute. There’s a reason for doing regression testing before releasing new packages (and deleting the previously working versions).
I’m not surprised that transcode is the issue. The transcode package seems massively borked in 64bit 11.1. You can’t rip a DVD from K3b for the same reason, transcode complains that K3b is passing bad commands to it.
Do you think that compiling the latest transcode yourself would fix it? I’d try it, but I just got nuvexport to work with transcode (which I really, really need) and I’m afraid to mess with it now.
Problems like this are rare in the BSD community with these applications given the way their packaging system works. The methods the Linux communities use to build, distribute and maintain packages could benefit from some improvements in CM and QE.
My system is 64-bit capable, but when I tried installing 11.1 on it I found so many missing pieces and broken packages I was forced to revert to the 32-bit version. Even there I have found many annoying networking issues, but most I’ve found workarounds for.
Do you think that compiling the latest transcode yourself would fix it? I’d try it, but I just got nuvexport to work with transcode (which I really, really need) and I’m afraid to mess with it now.
I’m going to look into that as soon as I figure out what all the missing pieces are. I’m new to Linux and I’m still on the steep side of the learning curve, especially on the RPM system.
OK, I’ve patched the latest version of transcode to include the two depreciated arguments that mtd is still passing in and things are working again! I can put the updated RPMs on an FTP server if anyone is interested. I haven’t built a 64-bit version, but with the source RPM anyone can build a copy if they need it. I sent some info to the person maintaining the package on Packman, so he may do an official update there too.