CD playback takes much time to start

[Bogo]

Hi all,

I use MythTV since 14 years now, but only recently I added a DVD drive to my frontend box. Mostly to play CDs.
I tried different settings (but the internal Mythmusic always) without having access:
When I insert an audio CD, Mythfrontend switches to Mythmusic automatically as expected. But then it just hangs. Sometimes playback starts after 10 minutes, sometimes after 90 minutes, sometimes it never starts playback.
I couldn't find any hint in the logs - neither backend nor frontend. Maybe someone has an idea?

OS is Gentoo Linux
Mythtv version is 30.0_p20190808-r3

Any help welcome.

Best
Bogo

[paulh]

My guess would be the CDDB lookup is either taking a long time or I have heard the service we use is may no longer be working.

Why not just rip the CD's so you don't need to bother playing the actual CD?

[Bogo]

Thank you for your answer.

Can the lookup beeing switched off then?

I have ripped all CDs I own. That is the way I used it the last 14 years.
But the family makes heavy use of our public library and it is annoying to have to rip every CD before they can listen. Often, ripping and setting up the playlist takes more time than they spend skipping from track to track.

[mythbuntubox]

I'm not on the latest version of MythTV, but I simply added an entry to the menu called "Play CD" that opens up an application to play the CD, in my case Audacious. That plays the CD just fine, finds the song titles and in most cases even lyrics just fine online and avoids me having to use the built-in MythTV facility for this, which I agree is really not well suited for just playing a CD. You should not have to rip every CD just to listen to the music on it.

You can find info on how to go about this here:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Menu_theme_ ... ment_guide

I used an EXEC action to launch the program.

[paulh]

Well we are in 2020. CD's are so last century I'm sure most people these days either buy there music in digital form or get the CD and rip it for convenience so they can have instant access to it and so they can use it on many different platforms. You can't play a CD on phone for example.

Having said that Bogo does have a legitimate use for playing CD's that I never thought of. Unfortunately MythMusic, like all the EOL plugins, dosen't have a developer maintaining it so that's why things get broken and never fixed. Out of the kindness of my heart I was going to take a quick look at it but just realised my dev box doesn't have a DVD/CD drive or even an external slot to take one which is a problem. I'll have to see if I can get some time on one of the FE's with a CD drive it .

[Bogo]

Thanks again for your answer. Switching to a different player may be a propper solution. I'll try that as next step.

Yeah, 2020. As said, I used my MythTV box without a drive for about 14 years. But the WaF is obvious: "Why should I switch on the TV, struggle with ripping a CD I don't own, just to find out I don't like it? Why not use the old-fashioned CD-Player and just insert the CD to find out?" They got me there with my modern media system.

[paulh]

Looks like it's been broken for some time, this is what we are still trying to use
https://blog.metabrainz.org/2018/09/18/ ... h-18-2019/

Questions is is it worth spending time trying to fix something that clearly no one is using any more

[kmdewaal]

Would it not be possible to just play the CD and forget about the metadata?

[Bogo]

Right, I don't need the metadata. When I just play a CD I can read the metadata on the jewel case or booklet as it is in my hand when inserting the CD. I sound so old. Well, anyway, when ripping, metadata make sense to me as the CD stays on the shelf and is not handy.
So in fact, not to fix FreeDB, but kicking it out may be an valuable option?

[paulh]

I've removed all the freedb/cddb stuff from master but can't properly test since the media monitor is not working for UDisk2. I can scan a CD for ripping but without any metadata obviously.

[blitzie]

Hello I've got the same problem. I need to play some CDs directly from the frontend, with out any action to ripp them.
Is it possible that their is a patch or some thing in the near future to solve that problem?

I see it like bogo, I don't need the metadata in that case.

Thanks in advanced
Marcus

[paulh]

I'm slowly working on fixing this. I have a proof of concept patch that allows my to play CD's but fixing that opens a whole can of worms involving the media monitor and UDISKS2 support and the question of getting the metadata.

[blitzie]

Hello Paul,
thanks for your quick reply.
I am not a programmer, but if I can, I would help. I could imagine using one of my decommissioned frontends to test the software.

As I said, I would suggest not to focus on the metadata for CDs.
Metadata are nice to have in the first step

When I look at the other answers in the thread -I don't see it alone like that.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to ask for impossible things.
I want to help. Since mythtv is not a commercial software, I realize that you can't invest 100% power for it.

Greetings from Ruhr area
Marcus