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Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 12:21 am
by paulh
I'm slowly working on MythQML a new MythTV frontend client based on Qt's QML engine and using the MythTV services API mainly for my family and I to use but thought I would share an early pre-release so MythTV users can have a little fun using the advent calendar.

Everything is still in early stages of development but wanted to share the 'Advent Calendar' which I've created for the last 2 years for the family and thought there may be some MythTV users who would appreciate it.

Basically you open each window to reveal a Christmas themed video. All the video's are currently from YouTube although it could play anything playable by FFMpeg or LibVLC which I use for playback. I normally just create one advent calendar with a mixture of Christmas themed videos that would appeal to the family but this year I've created 4 different ones each with a theme. There is a train/railroad themed one, a music video one, a kids one with mainly cartoons and a more general one with a mixture of Christmas themed videos including some thought provoking short films. All the video's are family friendly and shouldn't offend anyone.

INSTALLATION
============
Ubuntu users can install it using my PPA. I have packages for Bionic, Disco and Eoan, There are more instructions on the MythQML website here but it's as simple as

Code: Select all

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mythtv-paulh/mythtv-qml
$ sudo apt install mythfrontend-qml
Users of other distro's will have to install from source, there are some basic instructions here but once you have the build dependencies installed it's the usual Git/Qt build process

Code: Select all

$ git clone https://github.com/paul-h/mythfrontend_qml.git
$ qmake
$ make -j4 
$ sudo make install
SETUP
=====

The advent calendar doesn't require any special setup once MythQML is installed it should work out of the box. If you want to try other stuff like LiveTV, or playing videos from MythTV then you need to tell it what the IP address of the master backend is and some things still requires access to the MythTV DB so check those settings as well, if it can find a valid config.xml it will use those settings to access the database. There's lots more information available on the website including how to optimize a setup for using MythQML as it's intended as a dedicated HTPC.

Please read the FAQ before complaining or asking questions I've hopefully anticipated most questions although the website is still a WIP.

I would value your thoughts and constructive comments but please be aware this is still work-in-progress and many things don't work as expected or will be improved in later versions. It's still very much a pre-release experiment to see what can be achieved with QML but wanted to share the advent calendar, which is obviously time critical, since the family love it and the most positive feedback by far I've received is from my Christmas MythTV themes :)

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 1:29 pm
by pvr4me
In the fullness of time, what platforms do you intend to support with this? Clearly you've put a lot of time and energy into this project. Why this and not, say, flesh out the WebFrontend?

Craig

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 6:47 pm
by paulh
pvr4me wrote:
Thu Nov 28, 2019 1:29 pm
In the fullness of time, what platforms do you intend to support with this?


I guess you are asking will there be a Mac version :?: Main focus is Linux, specifically Ubuntu since that is what I use. A Windows build would be handy since there are times I have to use WIndows PC's but not looked to see how easy that would be. As for Mac I've never owned one so know nothing about developing for them. I guess it should be easier to get MythQML working than MythTV but that's just a guess. I have no immediate plan for other builds but If someone wants to donate a suitable machine or throw a donation my way that could change things ;)
Clearly you've put a lot of time and energy into this project. Why this and not, say, flesh out the WebFrontend?
The Webfrontend uses HTML not QML development on it has stalled and may well be completely dead. I don't think you could achieve what I want with it anyway.

I started the QML frontend as a personal project with specific goals in mind and never intended to make it official but in the interest of open source software I thought I'd tentatively make it more widely available.

I wanted a frontend that could mix video with the GUI and have multiple video feeds like Picture-in-Picture or Picture-By-Picture or Quad screen layouts or ... I also wanted a more modern look and feel than the current frontend with animated window transitions, sliding panels and other transition effects, video backgrounds, sound effects etc. I know some of the other MythTV devs have expressed a dislike for some of these things which make it harder to add them to the official frontend even if it was possible with MythUI.

At the end of the day working with QML is fun and the big advantage for me is I have full control so if I want animated pop-up dialogs for example I can have them :lol: As long as the family is happy then I'm happy :D

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 1:39 am
by heyted
Sounds very interesting. A MythTV frontend that can run on Windows would be appreciated by many people.

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 1:20 pm
by pvr4me
Thanks Paul. Re platforms, I literally don't know what platforms can be supported with QML. iOS and Android? iPad? AppleTV and other streaming boxes? To me, that is (was?) the major opportunity with the WebFrontend--the potential to be able to access recordings from any device which could understand HTML. Personally, I think this lack is one of the things that makes Myth seem "old" to a lot of people out there.

BTW, does your frontend re-encode Myth's recordings or does it expect the network to keep up?

Craig

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 12:06 pm
by paulh
For streaming from MythTV I use the same mythcpp library that Kodi uses which uses the Services API and the mythprotocol for communication with the myth backend. So you get the raw un-encoded source from the backend no re-en-coding necessary. I want MythQML to be a replacement for the regular mythfrontend but with added extras that I want. It's not a web client or anything like that.

My philosophy is to re-use existing software where possible, why re-invent a UI library when you have Qt/QML, why re-invent a decoding library when you have FFMPEG and libVLC the VLC SDK etc.

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:55 pm
by justinh
As you might be aware I was a prolific creator of themes for mythtv back in the day (til I burned out).

It's sad that mythUI development seems to have stalled in recent years. Yes it's being maintained to keep up with changes in other code but the UI is absolutely crying out for smooth scrolling lists & niceties we''ve all become so accustomed to in other applications. QML is one way to get this stuff & loads more besides, I know - and I also know it's no small undertaking to essentially write a new frontend so Paul, even if your motivation is primarily based on your own needs - well done for kicking this off.

I played with adding drawing effects (rotation, blur, widgets with rotating elements eg analog clock.. ) to MythUI a long time ago but other devs' insistence on making them available to all painters really put me off - I wasn't against the idea in principle but it sure as anything made the work harder for a goal I wasn't a fan of. My reasoning was that it was the 21st century - who the heck still uses framebuffers for goodness' sakes?! Anyway had I continued we might have got nice analog style widgets and the aforementioned smooth scrolling lists. I don't even have the code I came up with anymore :( And now, only quite recently infact - the reliance on anything that doesn't support GL based rendering is gone apparently. FINALLY!

FWIW I probably wouldn't want multiscreen video stuff or pages with video backgrounds (wait -isn't that essentially what a video playback window is? Heheh) - off the top of my head all my family really needs is to be able to schedule/record/play TV & watch videos - but the beauty of theming - especially with QML - affords a lot of freedom in that regard I think. I'll keep an eye on this if you don't mind ;)

Re: Who fancies a video Advent Calendar exclusively for MythTV users?

Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 1:33 am
by paulh
justinh wrote:
Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:55 pm
As you might be aware I was a prolific creator of themes for mythtv back in the day (til I burned out).
Of cause I remember you one of the original three theming musketeers Justin H., Stuart M. and Robert M. :D

You did a few of the intro video's for MythArchive for me.

It's sad that mythUI development seems to have stalled in recent years. Yes it's being maintained to keep up with changes in other code but the UI is absolutely crying out for smooth scrolling lists & niceties we''ve all become so accustomed to in other applications. QML is one way to get this stuff & loads more besides, I know - and I also know it's no small undertaking to essentially write a new frontend so Paul, even if your motivation is primarily based on your own needs - well done for kicking this off.
Yeah my development of MythUI stalled after the "Animated Popups Gate". Not sure if you know what happened there? I added an animated zoom effect to the popup dialogs like the menu's to MythCenter-wide and it didn't go down well. There was apparently at least two dev's wives threatening to cut of their dangly bits if they didn't put them back to how they were :lol: so the change got reverted and needless to say the chance of any bling being added to MythUI or the default themes was somewhat stifled after that :roll: Wow just looked at the commits history can't believe that was in 2012 :o Don't think much has changed in MythUI since then :(

I played with adding drawing effects (rotation, blur, widgets with rotating elements eg analog clock.. ) to MythUI a long time ago but other devs' insistence on making them available to all painters really put me off - I wasn't against the idea in principle but it sure as anything made the work harder for a goal I wasn't a fan of. My reasoning was that it was the 21st century - who the heck still uses framebuffers for goodness' sakes?! Anyway had I continued we might have got nice analog style widgets and the aforementioned smooth scrolling lists. I don't even have the code I came up with anymore :( And now, only quite recently infact - the reliance on anything that doesn't support GL based rendering is gone apparently. FINALLY!
QML is really great for creating modern looking UI. You can easily move, change the size, rotation, color, opacity etc of any item or group of items and what's more you can easily animate the effects to create the effect you want. You're only limited by you imagination. I really like how you can create a general purpose video widget that can be used on any screen anywhere not just for the background so for example I have a channel editor that allows you to test a channel is working right there in the editor for a particular source. That sort of thing is imposible with MythUI.

I remember you creating the analog clock using GL :) This is my QML version :P https://github.com/paul-h/mythfrontend_ ... /Clock.qml

FWIW I probably wouldn't want multiscreen video stuff or pages with video backgrounds (wait -isn't that essentially what a video playback window is? Heheh) - off the top of my head all my family really needs is to be able to schedule/record/play TV & watch videos - but the beauty of theming - especially with QML - affords a lot of freedom in that regard I think. I'll keep an eye on this if you don't mind ;)
I do understand not everyone wants the same thing. It's one reason I've been hesitant to make it public.

The video backgrounds allow me to create seasonal themes with videos and sound to match the season or event (the family seem to love them). I have themes for Christmas, Easter, Autumn, Halloween, Fireworks (for Bonfire Night) etc.

For me being able to create screen layouts with multiple video feeds is pretty cool. For example before Christmas when I was waiting in for various deliveries I could watch TV in 3/4 screen and have a couple of PIPs showing my CCTV camera's keeping a lookout for them coming to the house or watch a YouTube video while keeping an eye on the North Pole web cam feed for Father Christmas and keep an eye on the CCTV for the Amazon Prime guy. Try doing that in mythfrontend :!:

If you or anyone else have any ideas how for example the Watch Recordings screen should look like I'd be glad of any thoughts.