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1. I downloaded Freevo and tried running it, but it crashes with [some exception]. What version of Python does Freevo require?
2. I'm getting an error when trying to run Freevo. It says: "ImportError: No module named utils"
3. I'm getting an error when trying to run Freevo. It says: "ImportError: No module named pygame.locals"
4. How do I play (S)VCDs?
5. How do I play CD audio disks?
6. When I insert a DVD Freevo doesn't recognize / can't play it
7. I have an old computer with a processor less than 400 Mhz, will it be able to do all functions in Freevo?
8. I'm using distribution X will that work with freevo?
9. I'm running Freevo on a Matrox G400 in framebuffer mode. Why is the screen "squeezed together" horizontally. I have black bars about 1" (3 cm) on either side of the TV screen!
10. If I watch a movie that has a different aspect ratio than the TV/monitor (i.e. is letter-boxed, e.g. 16:9), the movie is displayed at the top of the screen. In other words, it is not vertically centered.
11. /dev/dsp doesn't work under KDE, it complains that the sound device is busy.
12. Can you recommend a tv card that really works under linux?
13. My G400's TV Out is really dim, can I fix that?
14. How do I set up XMLTV to get TV listings?
15. How do I use freevo with my dxr3 hardware mpeg decoder?
16. Freevo cannot be started without a mouse in the Framebuffer mode
17. What is the recommended hardware (video out and in) when putting a box together from scratch?
18. Mplayer cannot be controlled using the normal keys
19. How do I program freevo/mplayer to make custom skips in a movie with a remote control? / How do I re-map remote buttens to custom events?
20. Why does my screen keep going blank? Even if I disable the X11 screensaver?
21. Why can't I get any sound when I'm watching TV?
22. Why are the TV programs I've recorded totally silent?
23. How do I use DMA audio to play or capture sound via the PCI bus?
24. I configured the movie directory like this: DIR_MOVIES = [ ('Movies on /data', '/data') ] and now freevo does not start anymore. What is wrong?
25. How do I disable an item in the main menu, i.e. if I don't have a TV card?
26. I discovered in the documentation I can rip audio cd's in mp3/ogg format. How can I enable the cdaudio backup/ripping plugin?
27. What kind of TV-in card should I buy?
28. I have digital cable, can freevo record programs by tuning it directly?
29. Why is the audio out of sync for watching TV, but working ok everywhere else?
30. Why is that my scheduled recordings never actually record?
31. What is the minimum hardware I should get for a low-power media set-top box, using mini-itx?
32. Does Freevo support multiple simultaneous TV inputs? Can I record 2 things at once or watch TV while recording on another channel?
33. I have a "Windows" Handycap... Any plans for a windows version?? (ducks ;-)
34. My media files are on a Windows share and I would like to use them
35. I updated my channel listings in freevo_config.py but they don't update in freevo
36. I want freevo to appear as a session in Redhat 9's session list. how do i do that OR How do i make freevo work with GDM?
37. The black borders are shown at the bottom of the video (not above and below the video) when viewing movies with MPlayer from fullscreen freevo
38. I get and error about libpng.so.3 trying to start freevo setup
39. Mplayer only shows a blank screen or there are fullscreen problems
40. dxr3 cards and recorded TV show is jumping/flickering
41. How do i fix: TypeError: cache_dir() got an unexpected keyword argument 'callback'
42. Why can't I navigate using the DVD menu
43. Pygame Error Message: font module not available
44. Render failed, skipping : surfarray module not available error message
45. XMLTV Error / tv_grab_na: check postal/zip code or www site
46. How do I get it to put out video on my video card that also has a video output?
47. When running setup i get: Inconsistency detected by ld.so: rtld.c: 1175: dl_main: Assertion `_rtld_local._dl_rtld_map.l_prev->l_next == _rtld_local._dl_rtld_map.l_next' failed!
48. I upgraded Mplayer and now I can't play movie or music files!
49. Does Freevo support using the mouse?
50. Is there an easy to follow dvb-s setup together with freevo howto available somewhere ?
51. My VCDs all have the same chapter menu. The first VCD I tried seemed to get a correct chapter menu, but every one after that shows the same number of chapters and chapter timings as the first one.

# 1 I downloaded Freevo and tried running it, but it crashes with [some exception]. What version of Python does Freevo require?

As of Freevo 1.5, the recommended python version is Python 2.3 for providing proper Unicode (non-English language) support. However, presently (June 19, 2004) the freevo-runtime 0.3.1 is still based on python 2.2, so instead of using freevo-runtime, you'll need to install all system dependencies in addition to having a system-installed freevo in order for it to work properly.

WARNING: Don't mix a freevo-runtime based installation with the system-installation method, it'll probably result in unexpected errors.

For earlier versions of freevo (1.4.x), try using the freevo-runtime instead. Development and testing was done using that. Report the problem if it still occurs.

To run Freevo 1.4.x without the runtime you need Python 2.2 with a number of additional libraries installed. Just use the runtime unless you want to spend a significant amount of time installing and patching stuff. There's some docs (INSTALL.deps) about doing it, but we put together the runtime just so that people wouldn't have to struggle with it (and us spending too much time answering the same questions over and over)...

# 2 I'm getting an error when trying to run Freevo. It says: "ImportError: No module named utils"

You're missing a required library that is required by Freevo.

You need to install Python XML. You should either get the package for your distribution or fetch the upstream version and build it yourself.

You can get it from: http://www.python.org/sigs/xml-sig/

# 3 I'm getting an error when trying to run Freevo. It says: "ImportError: No module named pygame.locals"

You're missing a library required for Freevo. Despite it's name, pygame isn't just for games but provides an interface to the SDL layer which Freevo uses to draw the interface. You should either get the package for your distribution or fetch the upstream version and build it yourself.

You can get it from: http://www.pygame.org

# 4 How do I play (S)VCDs?

Make sure local_conf.py is properly setup (MPLAYER_ARGS_VCD). Test the same commandline from the shell to make sure it can be played. Use "VCD" in Freevo to play it. You need to use the Freevo function for opening and closing the tray to mount the disk.

# 5 How do I play CD audio disks?

Freevo should autodetect your CD devices depending on the structure of your /etc/fstab. If it doesn't find one, add an entry like this to your local_conf.

`ROM_DRIVES = [ ('/mnt/cdrom','/dev/cdrom','CD')]`

If you have problems with stuttering audio, make sure you have your hdparm settings set up correctly. I had to do the following to get acceptable audio playing on my machine:

`hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 -c1 /dev/cdrom`

# 6 When I insert a DVD Freevo doesn't recognize / can't play it

In freevo config, your ROM_DRIVES setting will look something like:

`ROM_DRIVES = [ ('/mnt/dvd', '/dev/hdc', 'DVD') ]` }

Thats 'mountpoint', 'device name', 'what we call it'. In order for freevo to recognize the dvd it mounts it, looks at the files on it, then unmounts it. It uses the mountpoint that you tell it in ROM_DRIVES to do this.

From the shell type: `mount /mnt/dvd` }

now ls /mnt/dvd (if the mount was successful). If you see files there you are halfway there. If the mount failed then you need to setup your /etc/fstab to have an entry for your dvd drive, like:

`/dev/hdc /mnt/dvd iso9660 defaults,user,noauto,ro 0 0`

Ok, unmount it, umount /mnt/dvd.

Now before you try to play the dvd in freevo make sure you can play it with your copy of mplayer. Do: "mplayer dvd://" ("mplayer -dvd 1" in older versions) if that worked you are almost there. If it didn't work then you may need to build your own mplayer binary or download an rpm from somewhere, you need dvd support.

Try all this stuff first, and if that works hopefully you can play your dvd from freevo.

If all of this fails, try creating the file freevo-rebuild-database in your Freevo cache directory. On Debian, the command: `touch /var/cache/freevo/freevo-rebuild-database` should work, if run with sufficient privileges.

# 7 I have an old computer with a processor less than 400 Mhz, will it be able to do all functions in Freevo?

No. The core application will work on slower machines, as well as image viewing and MP3 playback. But video/DVD playback and recording requires around 400 MHz, and simultaneous video record and playback requires an even faster machine, especially for higher resolutions. We'd recommend something over 1 Ghz if you want to use that feature when it comes out (based on the hardware needs of mythtv). If you only want video playback, less than 400 Mhz may be enough, please check the mplayer doc about this (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/).

# 8 I'm using distribution X will that work with freevo?

Most distributions should work with freevo. The freevo_runtime and freevo_apps packages contains all the external dependencies for Freevo (Python, SDL, Freetype, MPlayer, etc). You might have to get a different version of MPlayer depending on your system (for instance, the freevo_apps MPlayer doesn't support Alsa).

Freevo is distributed both as RPMs and ".tar.gz" files. The RPMs do not always work on all systems, so please try the ".tar.gz" files before asking for help on the mailing list. The main webpage and the Wiki DocumentationPage documents how to do the installation.

# 9 I'm running Freevo on a Matrox G400 in framebuffer mode. Why is the screen "squeezed together" horizontally. I have black bars about 1" (3 cm) on either side of the TV screen!

The SDL library that Freevo uses resets the framebuffer settings. This is fixed by re-running the "fbset" command, which is done using the scripts in matrox_g400/mga_[ntsc|pal]_*. There is an option to run a script like this automatically after startup, see OSD_SDL_EXEC_AFTER_STARTUP in local_conf.py.

# 10 If I watch a movie that has a different aspect ratio than the TV/monitor (i.e. is letter-boxed, e.g. 16:9), the movie is displayed at the top of the screen. In other words, it is not vertically centered.

This is a known problem with the X11/Xv display in MPlayer, hopefully this will be fixed later. UPDATE: This info is misleading, or perhaps just outdated. In the local_conf.py file (/usr/local/freevo/local_conf.py) change the option from MPLAYER_USE_WID = 1 to MPLAYER_USE_WID = 0 that should fix the problem. I don't know the advantage for using window mode, but disabling it fixes the "window at the top" problem.

# 11 /dev/dsp doesn't work under KDE, it complains that the sound device is busy.

Try setting AUDIO_DEVICE in local_conf.py to '/dev/dsp1' instead. You may also find that /dev/dsp is being used by artsdsp (you can find out by typing "fuser -v /dev/dsp", assuming you have fuser installed in your distro). If this is the case, then type "killall -9 artsdsp" and then try running freevo. If freevo then works, then you can choose to either no longer use arts, or see if one of the other sound devices might work for you instead eg "ls /dev/ds*". If you're lucky, your sound card might be able to use a digital interface to talk to the video capture card - you can find out which by typing "dmesg|grep dsp" - note that even if you do see a digital device, it might not work with your sound card. Further to this, you might want to check out what I did at GentooInstallation....

# 12 Can you recommend a tv card that really works under linux?

The Hauppauge WinTV works great, at least the Analog PCI-ones. Radio works great too! There is currently no support in linux for hardware mpeg-encoding which comes with the more expansive cards. However software encoding works fine for CPUs faster than 400Mhz. Check http://www.hauppauge.com

Note: The latest haupauge Cards use the newer chipset conexant 2388x, which is not fully supported yet. http://bytesex.org/cx88/ The newest Pinnacle PCTV Cards have a bttv 878 chip but their MT2053 tuner is not supported yet. I had good results with the Terratec Cinergy 600 TV it has a saa7134 chip which is supported by v4l http://bytesex.org/saa7134

(see Video for Linux resources http://www.exploits.org/v4l/ for more)

# 13 My G400's TV Out is really dim, can I fix that?

Yes, see G400Notes for information on adjusting the card's registers for optimum picture quality.

# 14 How do I set up XMLTV to get TV listings?

Please see the DocumentationPage.

# 15 How do I use freevo with my dxr3 hardware mpeg decoder?

Have a look at the main documentation.

# 16 Freevo cannot be started without a mouse in the Framebuffer mode

This is a shortcoming in SDL. Try setting the environment variable "SDL_NOMOUSE" to 1 before starting Freevo. A full set of SDL enviroment variables can be found at ftp://ptah.lnf.kth.se/pub/misc/sdl-env-vars

# 17 What is the recommended hardware (video out and in) when putting a box together from scratch?

TV Out: Matrox G400, DXR3 / Hollywood+, nVidia (roughly in that order, nvidia does not have very good signal quality) Video In: Any BTTV Based Card will do. IE. Hauppauge WinTV

# 18 Mplayer cannot be controlled using the normal keys

Freevo has its' own keybindings. You can see the list of keys if you press 'h' in X11 mode.

# 19 How do I program freevo/mplayer to make custom skips in a movie with a remote control? / How do I re-map remote buttens to custom events?

This description applies to freevo version >1.3.2 (full release) To make mplayer skip 10 minutes forward and backward in a movie for example we have to modify local_conf.py:

    EVENTS['video']['PREV'] = Event(VIDEO_SEND_MPLAYER_CMD, arg='seek -600')
    EVENTS['video']['NEXT'] = Event(VIDEO_SEND_MPLAYER_CMD, arg='seek 600')

That way we let freevo know what to send to mplayer to do what we want and assign the commands to the names PREV and NEXT. Now, we need to modify /etc/freevo/lircrc to use the commands PREV and NEXT. Example:

    begin
        prog = freevo
        button = 7
        config = PREV
    end
    begin
        prog = freevo
        button = 9
        config = NEXT
    end

With these two sections we assign the buttons "7" to skip 10 minutes backward and "9" to skip 10 minutes forward.

http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/documentation.html#commands is a list of the commands mplayer supports. You can use these to make further customizations or get detailed descriptions. UPDATE: Above link seems broken...is the this one meant? http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/control.html#ctrl-cfg-commands

# 20 Why does my screen keep going blank? Even if I disable the X11 screensaver?

The Linux kernel has a built in screen blanking routine, which is enabled by default. You can disable the kernel's blanking by using the 'setterm' application. Freevo also includes a script called 'blanking' in the helpers directory. You can run it like this:

    su root -c "./blanking"

from within the Freevo helpers directory. It will disable screen blanking in the kernel for all the virtual terminals.

If you continue having the same problems in X you may find you can fix it with xset

    xset s blanking
    xset s off
    xset -dpms

# 21 Why can't I get any sound when I'm watching TV?

For watching tv in linux using a tv-tuner card the most common way of getting the tv sound input is by using a short audio cable that connects on one end to the tv card and the other end to the line-in jack on a sound card. This way there is always audio data being pumped to the sound card's line-in. The most common problem is that the tv-tuner audio output is not connected correctly to the sound card input (usually line-in). Alternatively, the line-in has been muted, or the volume turned all the way down.

Note that freevo upon startup will mute the line-in and set the volume to zero. You should make sure that TV audio is indeed working properly outside of freevo before attempting to debug it within freevo.

In order to verify that tv audio is indeed being received by your sound card, use a mixer program (e.g., aumix, alsactl) and manually unmute and set the volume for the line-in. Then try viewing the TV channel from outside of freevo using either mplayer (you'll need to figure out the command line parameters), tvtime or xawtv / fbtv (for framebuffer mode) and determine if the sound works correctly. Alternatively, connect the tv audio output from the tv-card directly to the speakers (be careful about the volume!) if nothing else seems to be working.

# 22 Why are the TV programs I've recorded totally silent?

Now that you've managed to view TV programs correctly from within freevo, the next step is to try and record it. However, a common problem with recordings is that there's video, but the audio is silent. The line-in levels are set to a high value, and everything seems fine, right?

Unfortunately, in order for the recording program to actually record the sound you're hearing so well via the speakers, you also need to set another parameter: the "Capture Input". This is toggled using the space-bar from within the mixer program. In alsamixer, it appears in Red as "CAPTUR" above the audio input that you want to capture ("- - - - - -" otherwise). In aumix, it toggles between a Red "R" (capturing) and a green "P" (not capturing).

You MUST enable the capture input even though you can hear the audio clearly through your speakers.

As an aside, Capture and Muting are two separate things. Mute refers to output to the speakers, while Capture refers to input that's sent to /dev/dsp (or whichever device is used in your system) in order for the audio recording to work. The Level determine the loudness of the audio that's captured or sent to the speakers.

You should try recording manually from the command line to verify that the mixer settings are set correctly before trying to debug it in freevo. The most common problem is that freevo resets the input levels automatically, causing the recording to be silent. Please read the RecordingInfo section for more details on controlling the mixer input levels for scheduled recordings.

Note: There's a variable in local_config.py "CONTROL_ALL_AUDIO" that can be set to zero to prevent freevo from muting and resetting input levels automatically. However, this will cause the tv audio to be heard via the speakers during a recording (which is probably not what you want).

# 23 How do I use DMA audio to play or capture sound via the PCI bus?

For watching tv in linux using a tv-tuner card the most common way of getting the tv sound input is by using a short audio cable that connects on one end to the tv card and the other end to the line-in jack on a sound card. This way there is always audio data being pumped to the sound card's line-in. Any programs used to play or record this audio must be configured to get the stream from the line-in channel of the sound card's DSP resource (ie: /dev/dsp0).

The btaudio kernel module provides an alternate method of recording or playing sound from bt878 tv-tuner cards directly via the PCI bus, bypassing the sound card input and potentially results in better A/V sync. This is termed 'DMA Audio'.

For tv-tuner cards using other chipsets (e.g., Phillips SAA7134, Conextant cx88) there are equivalent capabilities available.

SAA7134-based cards do not need any additional kernel modules, an insmod option 'oss=1' will enable the DMA audio capture capability. This maps the DMA audio to the next available /dev/dsp? device (and may reorder the device numbering if the sound card module is loaded after the saa7134 module has loaded). It is advisable to load the saa7134 module only after the sound card modules are loaded to avoid this problem, as well as to specify the device number using mixer_nr and dsp_nr options. Go to http://bytesex.org for more information.

Note that SAA7130-based cards do not have this capability and can only capture audio via the sound-card.

From the linux kernel documentation:

        Audio DMA support for bt878 based grabber boards.  As you might have
        already noticed, bt878 is listed with two functions in /proc/pci.
        Function 0 does the video stuff (bt848 compatible), function 1 does
        the same for audio data.  This is a driver for the audio part of
        the chip.  If you say 'Y' here you get a oss-compatible dsp device
        where you can record from.

Please also read Documentation/sound/btaudio from the linux kernel source! It has some valuable information.

So, if you think your tv card has this capability then try it out. You will probably have to build your own kernel / this module yourself but may be lucky enough to have it included in your linux distribution. There is another module that is called tvmixer which provides access to the sound mixer capabilities of these cards as well. Both of these modules can be found in the sound section of the linux kernel configuration.

Once you have these modules compiled it is time to try them out. The btaudio module has some important options. If you read 'Documentation/sound/btaudio from the linux kernel source' you will see that btaudio may provide access to both a digital and analog audio source. My tv card is capable of 16 bit stereo sound so I use the digital one. For the record I am using an ATI TV-Wonder (regular edition) as my tv card. Btaudio also has a 'rate' option which defaults to 32kHz so you will most likely not need to change this option but you should be aware of it.

To load btaudio I do the following:

    # modprobe btaudio analog=0 digital=1

If I then type 'dmesg' to display the kernel messages I see:

    btaudio: driver version 0.7 loaded [digital]
    PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:0b.1
    PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:01.1
    PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:0b.0
    btaudio: Bt878 (rev 17) at 00:0b.1, irq: 5, latency: 32, mmio: 0xe9026000
    btaudio: using card config "default"
    btaudio: registered device dsp1 [digital]

For tvmixer (needed by btaudio only, not necessary for saa7134-based cards) you probably do not need to use any options so simply:

    # modprobe tvmixer

Likewise:

    i2c-core.o: driver tv card mixer driver registered.
    tvmixer: debug: MSP3445G-B8
    tvmixer: MSP3445G-B8 (bt848 #0) registered with minor 16
    tvmixer: debug: Philips NTSC_M (MK2)

Ok, with any luck you now have these modules loaded. It is time to try them out. If you have a silly audio patch cable going from your tv card to your sound card remove now because you won't be needing it! But first please read caveat below.

Not all programs are capable of capturing audio using DMA audio via the PCI bus. Notably, most TV viewing programs (such as tvtime, mplayer, xawtv 3.x) are not able to use the DMA audio input for live viewing. This situation may change in future as DVB (digital video broadcast) capture cards become more common.

The tvtime FAQ notes a workaround for live TV viewing without the audio patch cable. See http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/help.html#noaudio

Hence, DMA audio capture is currently limited to recording TV programs for later viewing. A few requirements come to mind. You must be able to tell the program to capture at a sample rate equal to what btaudio is providing. The default for btaudio is a rate of 32000 Hz. Most programs will try to capture at a rate of 44100 Hz so if you can't tell them otherwise what you hear will sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks :). For saa7134-based TV-capture cards, the audio rate must be set to 32000 Hz or you won't get any sound!

Also you will need to specify which DSP resource to capture from, and sometimes which channel (line-in). For me the DSP for my digital btaudio device is /dev/dsp1 as shown in the above kernel messages. There are also some other problems that occur when it comes to programs using a btaudio device. Programs use functions called ioctls to control hardware and the btaudio device does not have all of the same functions that an OSS or ALSA driver will provide. Therefore some programs will simply 'break' while attempting to access a btaudio device. Some of the time this can be worked around by patching or editing the source code of the offending program.

Current versions of mencoder (1.0preX) has support for DMA audio. Another program that needs some help is mp1e. There is a quick patch that can be applied to mp1e and it can be found in Aubin's freevo WIP directory, 'freevo/WIP/Aubin/mp1e_btaudio.diff'.

For encoding I am quite fond of the nvrec tools, http://nvrec.sf.net and find that ffmpegrec and divx4rec both work great for use with btaudio. My command lines for each of these programs is as follows:

    mp1e:  mp1e -v -m3 -p/dev/dsp1 -r14,100 -S32 -a0 -c/dev/video0 -s640x480 \
                -b3 -o file.mpeg

           key parameters: -p/dev/dsp1, the btaudio device
                           -r14,100, the line and volume %. 14 is line-in
                           -S32, the audio sample rate in kHz.
                           -a0, Audio mode 0 = stereo

    ffmpegrec:  ffmpegrec -input Television -norm NTSC -vb 1500 -vq 100 -w 640 \
                          -h 480 -vp 1 -d /dev/dsp1 -r 32000 -b 16 -s -ac mp2 \
                          -ab 128 -ap 1 -ff mpeg -o file.mpeg

           key parameters:  -d /dev/dsp1, the btaudio device
                            -r 32000, the sample rate
                            -b 16, 16-bit sound
                            -s, stereo sound

    divx4rec:  divx4rec -d /dev/dsp1 -r 32000 -b 16 -s -ab 128 -input Television \
                        -vb 1400 -vq 100 -w 480 -h 360 -o file.avi

           key parameters:  -d /dev/dsp1, the btaudio device
                            -r 32000, the sample rate
                            -b 16, 16-bit sound
                            -s, stereo sound

    mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:input=0:norm=NTSC:channel=2:chanlist=us-cable:\
    width=320:height=240:outfmt=yv12:device=/dev/video0:adevice=/dev/dsp2:\
    audiorate=32000:buffersize=64:forceaudio:forcechan=1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:\
    vbitrate=1200:keyint=30 -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128:cbr:mode=3 -ffourcc divx \
    -o /mnt/video/06-08_07:30_-_Seinfeld.avi
           key parameters:   adevice=/dev/dsp2 - analog btaudio
                             audiorate=32000 - proper sampling rate
                             forceaudio - needed for mencoder to force recording of audio
                             forcechan=1 - try 2 for stereo mode if your capture card supports it

There is since 1.0.0rc2 an equivalent of btaudio for alsa: snd-bt87x module. I use the following /etc/asound.conf:

    pcm.emu10k1 {
               type hw
               card 0
            }

            ctl.emu10k1 {
               type hw
               card 0
            }

    pcm.bt87x {
               type hw
               card 1
            }

            ctl.bt87x {
               type hw
               card 1
            }

For using mencoder with ALSA, you must specfy the option 'alsa' and as device try 'bt87x' or 'emu10k1'. bt87x doesn't work for me (just like btaudio didn't), but emu10k1 works fine. Not using OSS has the advantage for me that I can record from line-in with volume control muted, hence ENABLING timeshift recording. My record script, this is for a creative labs Soundblaster Live 5.1 :

    #!/bin/bash

    # use with this VCR_CMD:
    # VCR_CMD = ('/usr/local/freevo_data/tvrecord/tvrecord %(channel)s %(seconds)s "%(filename)s"')

    CHAN=$1
    TIME=$2
    NAME=$3

    WIDTH=320
    HEIGHT=240

    MENCODER=/usr/local/bin/mencoder
    AMIXER=/usr/bin/amixer

    NICE="nice -n -20"

    AUDIO="-oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128:mode=3"
    VIDEO="-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1200:keyint=30"
    DSP="alsa:adevice=emu10k1"
    TV=" -tv driver=v4l:width=$WIDTH:height=$HEIGHT:outfmt=yuy2:input=0:device=/dev/video0:norm=PAL:chanlist=europe-west:channel=$CHAN:$DSP:forceaudio:forcechan=1:buffersize=64"

    $AMIXER -q sset Line 87% mute
    $AMIXER -q sset Capture 87%
    $AMIXER -q cset numid=63 4      # select capture source, 63 is capture source control, 1 = CD and 4 = line
    $AMIXER -q cset numid=64 1      # set capture source switch to 1 (= on)
    $NICE $MENCODER tv:// $TV $VIDEO $AUDIO -endpos $TIME -ffourcc divx -o  "$NAME.avi"
    $AMIXER -q sset Line 87% unmute   # unmute cd again to hear sound when using watching tv after recording

For saa7134-based cards, the command for recording is a bit simpler. The v4lctl program which comes with xawtv is used to set the audio input level, since the saa7134 mixer device is OSS only and aumix doesn't provide sufficient control over the volume.

The following is placed in the /etc/freevo/local_config.py file under the VCR commands section (for freevo 1.5.x). Note that I'm using /dev/dsp1 for my AUDIO_INPUT_DEVICE. I left the mixer settings alone since the default works fine. If you're inclined to change the mixer settings, use 'aumix -d /dev/mixer1 [...] (saa7134 options mixer_nr=1 used to specify mixer number). Note that 'v4lctl volume XX' only affects the analog audio level for input via the audio patch cable into your soundcard, and is not needed for DMA audio recording.

    VCR_AUDIO = (':adevice=%s' % AUDIO_INPUT_DEVICE +
                 ':audiorate=32000' +         # 44100 for better sound
                 ':forceaudio:forcechan=2:amode=1' + # Forced stereo for bug in my driver
                 ':buffersize=64')             # 64MB capture buffer, change?

    VCR_PRE_REC = ('')
    VCR_POST_REC  = ('')

    VCR_CMD  = (CONF.mencoder + ' ' +
                'tv:// ' +                      # New mplayer requires this.
                '-tv driver=%s:input=%d' % (TV_DRIVER, TV_INPUT) +
                ':norm=%s' % CONF.tv +
                ':channel=%(channel)s' +        # Filled in by Freevo
                ':chanlist=%s' % CONF.chanlist +
                ':width=%d:height=%d' % (TV_REC_SIZE[0], TV_REC_SIZE[1]) +
                ':outfmt=%s' % TV_REC_OUTFMT +
                ':device=%s' % TV_DEVICE +
                VCR_AUDIO +                     # set above
                ' -ovc lavc -lavcopts ' +       # Mencoder lavcodec video codec
                'vcodec=mpeg4' +                # lavcodec mpeg-4
                ':vbitrate=1200:' +             # Change lower/higher, bitrate
                'keyint=30 ' +                  # Keyframe every 10 secs, change?
                '-oac mp3lame -lameopts ' +     # Use Lame for MP3 encoding, must be enabled in mencoder!
                'br=128:cbr:mode=3 ' +          # MP3 const. bitrate, 128 kbit/s
                '-ffourcc divx ' +              # Force 'divx' ident, better compat.
                '-endpos %(seconds)s ' +        # only mencoder uses this so do it here.
                '-o %(filename)s')              # Filled in by Freevo

If someone has btaudio working with mplayer and/or mencoder please add your information to this document.

The next step is to play the resulting mpeg or avi and see if you get correct sound. If it doesn't work you may get no sound at all or chipmunks sound. Good luck!!

# 24 I configured the movie directory like this: DIR_MOVIES = [ ('Movies on /data', '/data') ] and now freevo does not start anymore. What is wrong?

Use 'Movies on data' instead of 'Movies on /data' otherwise the python interpreter will fail.

# 25 How do I disable an item in the main menu, i.e. if I don't have a TV card?

The latest pre-release of Freevo uses plugins for all kind of things. The tv item is also a plugin, which can be removed by putting plugin.remove(plugin_tv) in your local_config.py.

# 26 I discovered in the documentation I can rip audio cd's in mp3/ogg format. How can I enable the cdaudio backup/ripping plugin?

try these Instructions

# 27 What kind of TV-in card should I buy?

The simplest answer is any card with v4l or v4l2 drivers. The developers have had good experiences with the BTTV family of cards, produced by Hauppauge and Aver. They are typically the best supported under Linux, though the WinTV PVR cards from Hauppauge are not completely supported yet. Keep an eye on ivtv.sf.net if you're interested in hardware MPEG-2 encoding via those cards.

# 28 I have digital cable, can freevo record programs by tuning it directly?

Digital Cable in the United States has not been standardized. There are currently no support for tuning digital tv natively in freevo at the moment. Depending on your hardware (whether you have a serial or a port for recieving IR signals (looks like a headphone jack)) you might be able to use scripts to tune your digital cable box but these scripts will unfortuneately be hardware specific. Another option maybe an IR signal sender like IRblaster but again custom scripting will be required. Digital Cable users in Europe might be able to use linuxtv.org.

# 29 Why is the audio out of sync for watching TV, but working ok everywhere else?

The problem is to do with how mplayer grabs video, versus audio for playing television. Mplayer grabs the video from the TV card and runs it through it's own layer before putting it on the screen, the audio, on the other hand, is passed through a cable from the TV card to your sound card (in most cases) and thus there is a delay, depending on the speed of your machine between the audio, and the video showing up the screen since the video must pass through mplayer first.

A number of solutions for this are being examined; if you have a fast machine, this probably won't occur, but for slower machines, we should have a workaround shortly.

# 30 Why is that my scheduled recordings never actually record?

One error that prevents scheduled recordings from actually recording is as follows, check for this in the logfiles in /var/log/freevo/ NOTE: dont bother, add the fix anyways if it doesn't record. the errors sometimes never show up.

    sh: relocation error: ./runtime/dll/libc.so.6: symbol
    _dl_debug_files, version GLIBC_2.2 not defined in file
    ld-linux.so.2 with link time reference

The fix for this error is adding the following inside of src/tv/record_daemon.py. Add the following line after "import os".

    import os
    os.environ['LD_PRELOAD'] =  ''  # Add this line to stop GLIBC_2.X preload errors

# 31 What is the minimum hardware I should get for a low-power media set-top box, using mini-itx?

This is a very hard question. There are 3 main factors here. Your CPU power, how much video acceleration hardware is available and what kind of video capture card you have (if any). The best thing to do is searching the freevo-user mailing list. Freevo users are quite fond of small/silent machines and much of the generally available "minihardware" has been tried & tested. You probably will find an answer there.

The Epia M10000 Mainboard is a good way to start, powerfull, and quiet. It can play DVD's and DivX using software only, but the M10000 features a hardware decoder wich can increase DVD performance further. For a complete guide to set up your Epia box go here EpiaWiki

# 32 Does Freevo support multiple simultaneous TV inputs? Can I record 2 things at once or watch TV while recording on another channel?

You can have multiple capture cards in order to watch tv and record simultaneously. Recording simultaniously is not implemented (yet?).

# 33 I have a "Windows" Handycap... Any plans for a windows version?? (ducks ;-)

No need to duck. This can be answered without shotguns.Theoretically the answer is "it should be possible". All main components of Freevo (python, sdl, mplayer) have windows ports in some form or another. SDL and Python for windows is no problem, mplayer & probably some python modules will be much more of a problem. Mplayer will require at least Cygwin, and is far from as mature as its linux version. So somebody with insane patience and good knowledge of freevo, it's components, and the windows opensource ports could do it i think. Even if it would ever run on windows, you would miss out on the community and general knowledge of the freevo user/developper base.

Practically : it's way faster, better, easier and cooler to install linux and run freevo like it was intended to run.

# 34 My media files are on a Windows share and I would like to use them

I got a new machine and installed Linux and Freevo, but my MP3s and videos are shared on my Windows box and I want to keep them there. How do I get Freevo to connect to the share?

You need to install and configure Samba (sometimes known as SMB). Most Linux distributions support this and come ready out of the box. Check that you have Samba installed and that your kernel has support for the smbfs module. If not, you may need to install Samba and/or recompile the kernel. Next, create a mount point. As root, type in `mkdir /mnt/computername` where "computername" is the name of the Windows machine. Next, tell your Linux box that the share is available and should be grafted into your filesystem at /mnt/computername by editing (also as root) the file /etc/fstab and appending the following line:

    //computername/sharename           /mnt/computername          smbfs    username=toto,password=tutu,owner,user,_netdev         0 0

If the share does not require a username and password, change the "username=blah,password=blah" to "guest". The share should now be automatically mounted next time the machine is booted, or can be manually mounted with `mount /mnt/computername`

Finally, add the mountpoint to freevo_conf.py to make Freevo aware of it.

Be advised that audio will stream over a Samba share pretty well, but video files might be a little choppy, depending on the speed of your network and how your other machines are using it. It is highly advised to upgrade to a fast (100 megabit) ethernet and turn off bandwidth-hogging applications (P2P file sharing) if you will be watching large, high-quality, movies over a file share.

# 35 I updated my channel listings in freevo_config.py but they don't update in freevo

please remove /var/cache/freevo/TV.xml-0.pickled or /tmp/freevo/cache/TV.xml-0.pickled after chaning TV_CHANNELS

# 36 I want freevo to appear as a session in Redhat 9's session list. how do i do that OR How do i make freevo work with GDM?

first you need to cd to /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions. then create a file called Freevo with the contents:

    #!/bin/bash

    cd /usr/local/freevo
    exec ./freevo

you can then select this from the sessions menu when you login.

# 37 The black borders are shown at the bottom of the video (not above and below the video) when viewing movies with MPlayer from fullscreen freevo

I'm running Freevo in 800x600 fullscreen but my desktop has a resolution of 1280x1024. When playing a movie in Mplayer that is scaled and black borders are applied to the video to fit the screen there is only one big black border at the bottom of the screen.

The following steps fixed that problem:

- set MPLAYER_USE_WID to 0 in local_conf.py
- change MPLAYER_ARGS_DEF: supply "-screenw 1280 -screenh 1024" to the other options (so MPlayer knows the size of your desktop resolution - replace values with your desktop resolution)

Now when opening a video, resolution is changed back to normal and MPlayer plays centered fullscreen video.

# 38 I get and error about libpng.so.3 trying to start freevo setup

If the error looks similar to:

    # ./freevo setup
    ./runtime/apps/freevo_python: error while loading shared libraries: libpng.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Then you need to install libpng 3. The problem here is that libSDL is trying to load a library and ignoring our LD_PRELOAD. This will hopefully be fixed by SDL in a future release

# 39 Mplayer only shows a blank screen or there are fullscreen problems

Some windowmangers cause that kind of problems. To avoid it, use Freevo as windowmanger. Start Freevo with the option -fs and you get a new X-Window and the problems should be gone.

This may cause troubles with started application because there is no windowmanager. A different solution is to set MPLAYER_VO_DEV to 'sdl'. Different SDL applications seem to work with sharing fullscreen. Yet another solution is to tell your windowmanager to grab focus on all new windows. <TODO: what are the settings for tvtime, xine, etc. to do that>

Debian doesn't let us start up a new X-server by default from inside X (e.g. from Eterm). To allow that, the file /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config has to contain the following: allowed_users=anybody It must be readable by everybody as well. (to be continued)

# 40 dxr3 cards and recorded TV show is jumping/flickering

If your recorded TV show is jumping a little bit up and down, when you are using the dxr3 card as output device, you have to add :norm=4 to MPLAYER_VO_DEV_OPTS in your freevo_config.py. The 4 behind the norm= is for PAL60 output. Other options are: 5 = NTSC 3 = PAL 2 = Autodetect between PAL and PAL60

# 41 How do i fix: TypeError: cache_dir() got an unexpected keyword argument 'callback'

You need to update mmpython to the current version. Basically this means freevo tried to use a function that doesn't exist in older versions of mmpython.

# 42 Why can't I navigate using the DVD menu

The DVD menu navigation requires xine to be installed. Also, not just any xine, one need xine-lib >= 1.0 and xine-ui (Or just called xine) >= 0.9.22. Note for RedHat 8 users. xine-lib 1.0rc2 and higher will not compile with your gcc compiler so you will want to get rc1 or update your compiler or try later versions of the lib...

# 43 Pygame Error Message: font module not available

You did not properly install the libsdl_ttf package prior to installing pygame. Uninstall pygame, install libsdl_ttf and then re-install pygame.

# 44 Render failed, skipping : surfarray module not available error message

This error appears in the main log, and the text for larger TV listings will not appear. If this happens you are most likely missing the python numeric package. Install it and this error should go away.

# 45 XMLTV Error / tv_grab_na: check postal/zip code or www site

Are you getting the following error message for tv_grab_na? Upgrade to XMLTV 5.23 or higher.

    checking provider information for postal/zip code 87123, be patient..
    zap2it gave us a page with no service provider options
    check postal/zip code or www site (maybe they're down)

# 46 How do I get it to put out video on my video card that also has a video output?

You may want to look at this page http://freevo.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/NvidiaPage

or this one http://sourceforge.net/projects/nv-tv-out/

# 47 When running setup i get: Inconsistency detected by ld.so: rtld.c: 1175: dl_main: Assertion `_rtld_local._dl_rtld_map.l_prev->l_next == _rtld_local._dl_rtld_map.l_next' failed!

This means that the compiled runtime that is distributed with freevo does not match your system. Unfortuneately since we can not make a runtime that works everywhere users who get this message will have to install freevo dependancies using their distro version of the dependancy packages or install them from source.

# 48 I upgraded Mplayer and now I can't play movie or music files!

The newer versions of mplayer have replaced the underscore '_' in options with a dash '-'. Change the options in your MPLAYER_ARGS_DEF in freevo_config.py to reflect this (i.e. change '-stop_xscreensaver' to '-stop-xscreensaver'). Talk about nitpicky....

# 49 Does Freevo support using the mouse?

Not offically however there is a patch in the TipsAndTricks section

# 50 Is there an easy to follow dvb-s setup together with freevo howto available somewhere ?

# 51 My VCDs all have the same chapter menu. The first VCD I tried seemed to get a correct chapter menu, but every one after that shows the same number of chapters and chapter timings as the first one.

If you make your own VCD BINs with GNU VCD Imager and then burn them to CDs using cdrdao it is possible that all of your VCDs will have the same creation date and label. (Apparently the creation date of the BIN file is used by cdrdao and if the BIN file is overwritten rather than created new each time every CD you burn would have the same creation date.) Unfortunately, freevo uses the creation date and label to name files holding metadata about the CD, so it assumes that every CD with the same creation date/time and label is the same CD and it will not bother creating new metadata for it. However, there is a way to work around this. In local_conf.py set MMPYTHON_CREATE_MD5_ID = 1. This will cause the filename of the metadata to include an md5 of the first byte of the disc and should make it more difficult for two CDs to share the same metadata file. It would also be a good idea to delete old BIN files (rather than overlay them) and create unique labels for VCDs that you burn.

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