How does mythtv call mplayer?

[cormanaz]

I am (still) trying to debug a problem with video freezing up on playback. The problem is related to VDPAU somehow, so I want to play a video recorded by Myth on mplayer so I can see what console messages might be getting produced. I'm pretty sure Myth does use mplayer for playback. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'm right does anyone know what parameters Myth calls mplayer with? I want to try and reproduce the playback environment as exactly as possible.

mplayer -vo vdpau filename

Does not do it.

Thanks,

Steve

[fromans4]

MythTV by default uses mplayer to playback files you have ripped from DVD, I don't know what it uses to playback recorded TV. You should try launching the Mythtvfrontend in a terminal, and check the log info after you exit. You can increase detail of the log by launching with "-v" option.

mythtvfrontend -v

[PhilB]

Don't you need:

/usr/bin/mythfrontend --service

for logging to /var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log?
Phil

[wagnerrp]

MythTV does not use mplayer for anything. Playback of recordings has always been through the internal player. MythVideo formerly called mplayer, but as of 0.22, has defaulted to the internal player.

'--service' is not a valid command line flag to pass to mythfrontend. If you want to log to an external file, either use '>' or '>>' to redirect the console output to a file, or the '-l' or '--logfile' to have mythfrontend log directly to a file.

[PhilB]

I was certainly puzzled when implementing mythwelcome to find that the startup file ~/.config/autostart/mythtv.desktop had the line:

Exec=/usr/bin/mythfrontend --service

but that /usr/bin/mythfrontend --help made no reference to --service.

A sanity check of my 9.04 Mythbuntu system shows that there are actually 2 versions of mythfrontend:

1. /usr/bin/mythfrontend is a link to /usr/share/mythtv/mythfrontend.sh
If you examine it you'll find that it is a wrapper for mythfrontend.real and it has a references to --service which I concluded was there to invoke logging.

2. The version /usr/bin/mythfrontend.real which is 'hidden' behind the wrapper does indeed document (via --help) and I'm certain will respect the --logfile parameter to which you refer.

So, I suppose you need to check which version of mythfrontend you are using. This is fun!

Phil