Hi all.

First of all - Happy New Year!

I'm looking at completely re-writing the mythburn stuff as the scripts are becoming messy and confusing.

The other major reason is the huge changes to MythWeb, the SVN version of this is totally changed and the current mythburn scripts/php pages dont work with it. I've re-written most of the pages already but have yet to release these as they are not heavly tested.

Anyway, back to the point, what features should be added (or removed!!) to the new mythburn so far my thoughts include:

Apply TCREQUANT after the commercial cutting is done
Dont use BASH scripts, pain to work with MySQL and text handling is terrible - perhaps use python instead ?
Command line arguments are a pain to work with - perhaps an XML file to specify input parameters?
Allow user to pick capacity of DVD-R media (eg. dual layer)
Simple transcoding from AVI/MPEG4 to MPEG2 (just use mencoder etc.)

Do any of you actually change the background menu images yourself, or the music? This feature could disappear and just be replaced with a single image/music and therefore a single identify of what a mythburn recording looks like?

I'd be happy with just tcrequant being applied after the commercial cuts, and the ability to choose the capacity of the DVD-R. Anything else you would choose to add would be icing on the cake.

If you're REALLY bored and have nothing else to do, I do have one feature request. Would it be possible to use an audio clip from the recorded movie/show as the menu music instead of the current generic clips?

I'm actually quite happy with the scripts as they are. They're the number one reason I'm using MythTV instead of some other PVR solution. Thanks for all the work you've done.

Sorry, didn't realize my post got sent twice.

I change the music and backgrounds myself. I like to make each recording unique, that way when I throw the disc in I know exactly what shows are on it. Although, for some reason, my discs won't play in normal DVD players, only on computers or my knoppmyth box.

Tcrequant after commercial cutting = good idea. My box is setup to transcode after cutting commercials so requantizing them after all this is done makes perfect sense.

I wouldn't mind having transitions between the chapter select and the actual videos playing. Something like a fade/wipe or a blur zoom or anything. Keep it short, 3 seconds max, with sound. A selection of these from the menu would be cool also. Maybe make it look like the chapter menu is on one side of a cube and the cube rotates to play the show on another side when you select a chapter. Of course, you would use a fade out/fade in to mask the transition, I don't expect a rendered frame from the chapter on the cube side as it rotates.

I have already posted a way of selecting target size although if you are going to rewrite this in pyhton my work is now in vain.

1 It would be nice if you could select items from the video collection to include on compilations too. (i currently keep files recorded with my d box in here! .ts dvb stream files)


2 It would also be nice if you deselect the extra audio tracks so only the primary track was recorded. it is posible to work

3 it is posible to work out a good guess target size for each file it would be nice to see that on the selection page so you could work out wich recordings would fit without a requadrent.

_________________
Running:-
Intel 930 3GHz dual Core
Thermaltake Fanless CPU Cooler
Asus P5GS
Samsung 750G Sata HDD
8400 512m Video Card
2 * jetway DVB-t
1 * Haupage DVB-S2 Card
Samsung Sata 16x DVDRW
2048M Ram
1 * Netop Ion 330

My only request would be it would be nice if I could select items from my /Videos directory as well.


Craig

The option to create a DVD without menus. (Great for kids, just pop the dvd in and it plays).

spit', thanks for asking. I would like to see:
1) Better argument parsing
2) A rewrite in Perl

These are slightly related - let me expand further. The current argument specification is positional. First argument has to be pal or ntsc. Fourth thru sixth are yes or no. This is OK, but it would be tidier (and more Unix-like) to just have a default for all of them. There are standard Perl routines to do this sort of thing. I also think that the defauult for cut/nocut should apply to all following filenames. would use cutlists in two of the three files.

I can probably prototype a mythtvburn.pl and check it in to CVS. (though, you would need to re-email me my account details)
Would this be the sort of direction/help you want?

I actually see integration with the UI (i.e. MythBurnUI) as the biggest need. The MythBurnUI is good, and I would like it to be an official module, but it is a bit specific to your scripts. Having a more generic command interface could enable it to be used with a script to, say, burn an Audio CD.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Apply TCREQUANT after the commercial cutting is done or the ability to turn this off for a single burn.

I second this vote. Not only good for kids but anyone who doesn't want to hassle with anything (grandparents, parents, ME) This would be great.

I've only used mythburn a couple of times (with excellent results), so these may already be implemented but here goes anyway....

1) Better error handling. At least my default knoppmyth had some permissions problems on directories so mythburn didn't work out of the box. I didn't really get any useful feedback when it failed. (I just started going into /myth/mythburn and /myth/mythburn/temp and setting directories to 777 until I had success). Just something like "couldn't write file <x>. Check permissions on directory /myth/mythburn/blah" would be a big help for novices. Then again, most of this probably falls into the projectX yard.....

2) An option to delete the .iso when finished. Unless there is an option that i'm missing (a definite possibility) after a successful burn i have to go delete the .iso by hand off the hard drive.

3) An option to burn mythvideo files would be awesome.

Keep up the good work --- mythburn is great stuff!

j

4 The ability to merge files !!! more and more nowerdays films especialy have the news or some other c**p in between then so you en up with two recordings the first half of the fill and the second it would be be nice to merge these into a single film before writing. I know this is a pain i use a workaround at the moment by telling myth to record the first half only and extend the record time till after the second half finishes, the cut list then leaves me with no news.

5 The ability to stop at the end of the remplex stage ie just be left with edited clean mpeg movies which we can then dump in our video directories. i think this may be a bit too much to ask, but that way effectively a first pass would generate mpeg videos and second pass which would be optional would be to make an iso and write them to disk?

I think the generation of an xml to controle the whole process is an excelent idea especialy if on the web page that generates it you have the option not to process it. ie it woluld generate dvdinfo.xml which would contain the filenames of the video the titles and program descriptions the amount of tcrequadrenting the target media etc etc. then would invoke a single command mythburn dvdinfo.xml that way the user could edit the xml before processing ie edit the film description down to a particular size etc.

_________________
Running:-
Intel 930 3GHz dual Core
Thermaltake Fanless CPU Cooler
Asus P5GS
Samsung 750G Sata HDD
8400 512m Video Card
2 * jetway DVB-t
1 * Haupage DVB-S2 Card
Samsung Sata 16x DVDRW
2048M Ram
1 * Netop Ion 330

If you are looking to upgrade from bash, I vote python. I'll admit I learned some bash features I never knew existed while doing some of my little patch mods. But I have been playing with python at work, and think is pretty cool.

I already sent spit' a patch that includes a pre-transcode step for non-MPEG2 files using mencoder. (I needed that to get mythburn working!)

It would be neat to point at a particular directory of sound files, and have it automatically read that the next time you pull up the mythburn page, and dynamically offer those as your sound clips. I was speculating on embedding a Rush song as my DVD intro music.

Thanks for your replies!

I always forget how popular these scripts seem to be ! I dont use them much myself

MythBurnUI is a powerful step forward but I dont have time to develop this part (or the willingness to learn the c++ internals of MythTV!) - any volunteers fancy this challenge? Its working pretty much as it is thats to other developers submitting patches etc.

I'll take your considerations into account when I'm looking into the next version of these scripts - keep the good ideas flowing!

Thanks for these patches, I'll see what I can do to add them to CVS.