[SOLVED] MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

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Vaska
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[SOLVED] MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by Vaska »

Hi,

I'm trying to make MythVideo use mpv to play my mkv files. In Setup/Media Settings/Video Settings/File Types I changed the command field for the mkv extension to

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/usr/bin/mpv %s
(I've tried with and without the quotes) but then when I try to play a .mkv file in MythVideo it doesn't play, the play button is visibly depressed but then nothing happens.

Do I have the command wrong? I've also tried just

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mpv %s
but that didn't work either. MPV is otherwise working fine for me and I can play the same video file from the command line with

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/usr/bin/mpv /mnt/videos/video.mkv
Thanks,
Vaska.
Last edited by Vaska on Wed Nov 03, 2021 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vaska
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Re: MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by Vaska »

I tried switching from mpv to vlc using "vlc %s" and I now get this error:

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Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the URL file://myth://Videos@myhostname/movie.mkv".
I can ping/resolve myhostname so I don't think it's DNS related.
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paulh
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Re: MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by paulh »

You must be using storage groups which do not work with external players.
Vaska
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Re: MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by Vaska »

Thanks paulh. I do have a path specified for my "'Videos' storage group directeories" setting. Could I simply add a new path like "/mnt/movies" to the "'Default' Storage Group Directories" to get around this issue, or is that still a storage group that won't work with an external player?
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paulh
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Re: MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by paulh »

I don't use an external player and always use a storage group so I don't have to setup NFS on all my frontend.

I think you would have to remove the directories under the Video storage group and set the Directory to hold videos to point to where your videos are otherwise you will get the myth://Videos@myhostname passed to the player command which is never going to work.
Vaska
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[SOLVED] MythVideo - External player for .mkv files? What's the command?

Post by Vaska »

Thanks PaulH - I didn't realized I didn't need to define the video files location via storage groups when I did it years ago. I had no intention of ever using NFS and the backend and frontend are both on the same machine. I deleted the defined storage group folder setting in mythtv-setup and then reconfigured it in the Frontend under Setup/Media Settings/Video Settings/General settings/Directories That Hold Videos.

I expected the change to take effect automatically after the change in the frontend, but then realized I had to do a "Scan for Changes". The change unfortunately resulting in losing all my videos' metadata, so I'm slowing re-adding that, but using mpv as teh the external player now works great! As a side note, I've also now discovered irxevent since mpv doesn't natively support lirc. Pretty cool stuff...

Many thanks for the help,
Vaska.
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