I literally tried every menu and I could never get it to import the files. The only I got close to doing it was the archive menu where I could browse the file system and then go to /cdrom and see my files like Simpsons301.avi and they had checkboxes so I checked them off and I dont know what to do. I do recall that when I popped in the cd, a menu showed up showing big thumnails of the 4 video files I had on the cd and on the left was a small menu of "slideshow" and some other menus. I could pllay the videos from here but I wanted to import them and have them stored on the HD. I exited this menu, and I have no idea how to even get back to that menu of the 4 thumbnails.

So how do I import those files?

you can copy the files from the cd to the /myth/video directory from an xterm

from memory I think you need to do the following

mount /cdrom
cp /cdrom/*.avi /myth/video

This assumes you have an entry in fstab for /cdrom and the privs to mount it, and that you want to copy all the avi files on the cdrom to the hard disk


Having copied the files you go to the setup->video manager within the myth front end and it will scan the hard disk for new content and index it

Having done that the new content will appear in media library under videos

Thanks Dclanh!

1. So there is no menu option to scan a cd to import files right?

2. How do I get to the menu where I can view the files on my cd? The menu come sup when I pop in the cd, but once I exit I cant figure out how to get back?

Q1: No not that im aware of
Q2: Did you try ejecting the cd and putting it back in, probably the easiest way

thanks and for the last question

1. Is the import CD menu, the only menu allowing you to actually import something off a cd? For example is there a game menu that will import game zip files off a cd into the correct directory? Or something for videos as well?

This is something that has annoyed me for ages. Such a simple feature missing from mythtv - importing media files from CD/DVDs within the menu and without using a keyboard/xterm.

You can import picture files from CD to mythgallery using the menu options on the left of the mythgallery screen. Mythgallery will open up any CD even if it is just full of videos. So you could (in pure cowboy fashion) import video files to mythgallery and then create a symbolic link from myth/video to myth/gallery --- something along the lines of



You would then see a folder in the myth-video folder called mythgallery and it would redirect you to mythgallery where your video files are imported to.

Or you could use mythgallery to just import and then periodically move video files across to mythvideo where they belong using an x-term.

CD import is more like a CD rip - ie AUDIO track CD ripping to OGG, or MP3, then resulting files being available to MythMusic

DVD import is more like a DVD rip - ie DVD titles ripping to avi, VOB, or ISO then resulting files being available to MythVideo.

The MythTV menus are just XML files could create a custom menu item that would "cp /mnt/cdrom/* /myth/video" with some bash scripting make it more complex like not copying if exist.

See /usr/share/mythtv/knoppmythmenu.xml for example of commands run from the XML menus.

If someone know more about programming could always write something more complex in C with status and file selections and submit it to the MythTV devs.

I did try doing a script and putting it into XML a while ago. First problem (as best i can recall) was that knoppmyth doesn't startup logged in as root... but you need root permission to write to the /myth directory.

When I did log in as root, it would take a few mins to copy a CD's worth of media and you just don't know whether or not it is doing it or whether it has crashed, you need to have a "progress bar" "1/13 files copied" etc