Installation of VDR and plugins

Before installing VDR, I downloaded dvd-apps and made a channel scan with following command:

scan -o vdr -e 4 fi-Oulu > /video/channels.conf

I need to do that again when I'm in Kokkola so I get Kruunupyy's channels to the conf-file.

I installed VDR 1.6.0 and the followin plugins:

• Softdevice
• Burn
• DVD
• MP3
• EPGSearch
• Femon
• SkinEnigmaNG
• Text2skin
• TvOnScreen
• TtxtSubs
• OSDTeleText

In addition to the plugins I patched VDR with liemikuutio patch which includes UI-tweaks etc. I also copied bash scripts from my own VDR: vdrd.sh, vdr_errorlogger.sh and vdr_shutdownscript.sh to name them. First of them starts the VDR and makes sure that it is running. Second one follows the syslog for driver errors (now empty for this project as I don't know which kind of error Artec will give). Third one is the script that VDR calls when it initiates shutdown. I need to update that to set the Mini to sleep and use /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm instead of /proc/acpi/alarm.

I also teached the remote buttons for VDR, and tweaked VDR a bit for the remote, but I will make a own post about that.

Before installing the plugins I added Livna repository to get some extra packages:

su -c 'rpm -i http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm'

I also already knew that Burn plugin will need Java, so I installed JDK by following these instructions.

Softdevice plugin:

Softdevice needs ffmpeg to work so I installed quite new SVN version that I had on my MacBookPro's hard drive. Softdevice version is 0.5.0 and I'm using it with xv output currently.

Burn plugin:

I checked out the plugin from CVS.Burn plugin needs also quite many other things, so here's a short list of the dependencies and how I got them:

• Burn plugin conf-files from my own VDR
• Old CVS version of ProjectX from my own VDR
• bbe for burn plugin fix about letterbox bit in IFO-files
  
• yum install dvdauthor
• yum install dvd+rw-tools
• yum install mjpegtools
• requant from URL provided in Burn plugin's readme file
• pxsup2dast from URL provided in Burn plugin's readme file

Then I modified installation paths from vdrburn-dvd.sh for requant etc. and configured ProjectX.ini in /video/plugins/burn to handle teletext subtitles.

Because Fedora 9 is using Gcc 3.4 some additional patching was needed for the plugins. Mostly it was adding #includes to header files. , and were the most common ones between the plugins. I haven't tested the burning yet, so it is in todo list.

MP3 plugin:

MP3 plugin version I use is 0.10.1.MP3 plugin needed the followin packages to be installed:

yum install libmad

yum install libsndfile

yum install libid3tag

Also it requires mplayer but it got installed with mjepgtools mp3sources.conf file in /video/plugins which defines the path for the media files. I haven't tested this plugin either yet.

DVD plugin:

DVD-plugin's name already tells what it does, I also fetched this from CVS. It needs following packages to gain full functionality (read: able to play copyprotected DVDs):

yum install libdvdnav

yum install libdvdcss

yum install a52dec

yum install xine-lib-extras-nonfree

Actually the last one is not needed, but I installed it as it provides the support for Kaffeine DVD playback which I used to test the DVD playback first. As Mini doesn't have eject button for DVD I defined a command to /video/commands.conf to eject the disc:

Eject DVD: eject -r

I tested DVD playback and it worked otherwise ok, but commercial DVD didn't have sound. A bit of research revealed that Dolby Digital sounds were enabled in VDR settings and after disabling it audio was played from internal speaker. Also DVD's created with VDR didn't show default language subtitles (fi), but commercial DVD did show, so there is something wrong with Burn plugins. Subtitles appears anyway when I press 2 two times.

Text2skin plugin:

Fetched from CVS. I installed Text2skin plugin and patched it, but probably I'm not going to use it as I found the skinEnigmaNG which doesn't need text2skin. Anyway I installed ImageMagick.

yum install ImageMagick-c++-devel

SkinEnigmaNG:

As I wrote above, I'm going to use EngimaNG as the skin for the VDR, version is 0.0.6. Logos and channel logos I put under /video/plugins/skinenigmang. I still need to make the channel logos for the Finnish channels as it seems that they are either old or does not exist at all.

EPGSearch:

EPGSearch version is 0.9.24. It has patch included for VDR called MainMenuHooks which enables replacing the Schedule option in the VDR's main menu, so I applied the patch. There was also GCC problems described earlier so I needed to do some patching also by myself.

OSDTeletext:

Version is 0.5.1 and it needs patching that can be found from somewhere :) I had the patch on my own VDR so I just used it. Not tested yet because I don't have good reception

Other plugins:

I installed and patched TvOnScreen 1.0.141, but I'm not sure if I'm going to use that or not. Ttxtsubs 0.0.5 are also included now, patched with raastinrauta-edition, but I haven't tested the subtitles yet and I don't know if there is something wrong with the settings as now the main language is fi_ and it is giving input field if I edit it. Secondary and the third language can be selected from list so there's something funny there. Femon is working ok, version is 1.6.0.

Basic functionality is now reached and the tweaking starts.