Convert videos to iPad 2 format

Recorded programs on my MythTV are in a lossless HD mpg format, which doesn't play well on my iPad2 using AirVideo Server over wlan (via wine). So, instead of having AirVideo Server converting it through the wine abstraction layer (which requires more CPU/memory, and uses ffmpeg.exe anyway), I just run this user job from my MythTV server to convert the files that I care to watch on my iPad.

Step 1:
Create this file which I call /usr/bin/mythconverttoipad. If you have an issue with "too may threads," remove -threads 16. I am using this script on a 3 core machine, the -threads option speeds things up a bit.

#!/bin/bash
DIR=$1
FILE=$2

echo $DIR
echo $FILE

ffmpeg -y -i $DIR/$FILE -ab 320kb -vcodec libx264 -b 3200kb -s 1280x720 -threads 16 $DIR/$FILE.m4v


Step 2:
Make the script executable.

chmod +x /usr/bin/mythconverttoipad

Step 3:
Add script as user job within MythTV.

Within mythtv-setup add the following user job:

/usr/bin/mythconverttoipad %DIR% %FILE%

Step 4:
Enable it within rules.

Within a program recording rule (within mythfrontent), enable this user job to be run post-recording.

Step 5:
Access the files from Air Video client or other player.

If you have questions, please comment.

Bring Netflix streaming to Linux!

Considering there are a host of devices (PS3, Roxee, TiVo, LG Blu-Ray players) that run Linux internally and support Netflix Streaming, it should be an easy technical transition to bring this to Linux.  Sign the petition to bring Netflix streaming to Linux. I am promoting it so I can use Netflix Streaming on my MythTV server and enhance the MythTV experience with Netflix streaming.

http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html

Dates within crontab

If you want to add dates to backups or logs, like mythtvDB27062008.sql within crontab, do the following:

0 0 * * * /usr/bin/mysqldump -u mythtv -pPassword mythconverg > /mythtv/recordings/mythtvDB`date +%d%m%Y`.sql

The key is the backquotes around the `date +%d%m%Y` command. This will backup a MythTV MySQL database to a file like this: /mythtv/recordings/mythtvDB27062008.sql every night at midnight.

Mythweb at its best

Mythweb, a component of MythTV, allows you to stream your own recorded videos, shows or movies from the Internet in a YouTube-like interface. Here is an example. One more reason MythTV beats the socks off TiVO.