Gallery Doesn't Show Videos

[kbocek]

Just made the jump from 0.27 to 29.1. Trying to figure out the new Gallery function. It shows *some* of my home videos but not all. I've gone around with hide/show. I have a combination of AVI, MP4 and MPG files. According to the wiki:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Gallery

Visibility is set by the video player. Is there something I'm missing? Is there a global "show all" option somewhere?

Thanks

[dizygotheca]

Check the video file extensions aren't being ignored in
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Configuring ... File_Types
and rescan.

[kbocek]

Nope. No exclusions. Weirdly, I got videos to show up in one directory but not the other. However, I have no idea what I did.

[kbocek]

Okay, by selecting Hide Pictures I can see that Gallery is only displaying MPG files. I have lots of MP4 and AVI. I went into file associations. MP4 had use default player selected. I set command to Internal and deselected default player. MP4 still do not show up.

[dizygotheca]

There is no standard list of file extensions for videos, so the Gallery uses the MythVideo list.
As long as the extensions appear, I didn't think the other settings mattered.

However it appears they do - AVI didn't work for me either until I deselected default player & entered "Internal". (Ignore doesn't matter!)
That's dubious.

More importantly, the file associations only get read at startup. So after changing them you'll have to restart the backend for them to take effect.
Then rescan.

BTW, don't use symlinks. They won't be followed.
And be wary of using spaces in filenames of your home videos. I'm not sure if 29 generates previews properly for those.

[kbocek]

Well, I'll try it again. My *videos* broke last night and wouldn't play. And the only change I made was what you described -- deselect default and enter "Internal" under command.

In searching for answers I found some postings regarding this from 2010 by... ME! I had tried to address this a bunch of years ago. In fact, the videos that *do* come up are mp4s renamed to *.mp4.mpg. They display and play just fine. It's certainly an easy "find" command to rename all the other files. But seems like a hacky answer.

Thanks for the restart warning. I wasn't doing that.

[kbocek]

The videos break was because I had set the default player to "internal" instead of "Internal." The capital I is important.

Still no display of MP4 or AVI. My VideoTypes table looks like:



I have tried both settings on "use_default." Still can't get MP4 to show up in Gallery.

[dizygotheca]

According to that, it shouldn't be detecting mpg files either.

You definitely need 'use_default' unchecked (0) and to restart the backend after doing so.
avi needs "Internal" as well.

My associations are all Internal, 0, 0 and avi, mp4, mpg all work in both Gallery and MythVideo.

Could it be file permissions ? The backend needs read/execute permissions.

There may be clues in the backend log. The scanner logging can be enabled with:

Code: Select all

mythbackend --setverbose -v file
mythbackend --setverbose --loglevel debug

Then rescan.

Reset logging with:

Code: Select all

mythbackend --setverbose -v general
mythbackend --setverbose --loglevel info

[kbocek]

Well thanks dizygothea. I carefully reset all the file types (except for txt and log) to Internal,0,0 and restarted the backend. MP4s are now displaying in Gallery. I swear I tried this before but maybe I didn't restart the backend.

Man, the thumbnail generation in Gallery is slow! And videos won't play until the thumbnail is generated. It would be nice if it was a one-time thing. But looks like it happens every time I open Gallery.

But thanks again.

[dizygotheca]

It should be a one-time thing.
You haven't mentioned how many images/videos in your library, but it can take a long time to generate thumbnails, particularly for videos (which are done last because they are so slow).
So, on first-time use, it can appear sluggish because the backend is so busy serving the frontend on-demand whilst also building the thumbnail database.

Eventually it will settle down and you should see a full set of thumbnails on the backend in {BACKEND_USER}/.mythtv/tmp/Images/Photographs/
Performance should improve then. If it doesn't, start a new thread.

Thanks for finding the 2 bugs regarding file associations. I will address them in v31. They relate to MythVideo's (old?) ability to use external players.
Using non-default/"Internal" is an alternative to use_default that produces the same behaviour, so the work-around shouldn't affect anything else.

[kbocek]

I have around 22,000 photos and videos in my collection. The backend is on a pretty capable server. 16gb memory, dual cpus with 8 cores and an array for storage.