On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 03:27:38PM EDT, Duncan Webb wrote:
> Chris Jones wrote:

> > I had not trouble editing the local_conf.py file - or rather the copy I
> > made to my home directory - and pretty much everything that I needed now
> > works (this is a laptop and I don't have a TV/radio card, for instance).
> 
> There are USB DVB dongles that work pretty well.

I should have imagined it .. ;-/ 

They should work on this laptop - even though the USB is the old 1.2 -
well, not 2.0, anyway.

I'm not a perfectionist but are there any you would recommend or any I
should avoid?

> > Things that are not working smoothly at this point:
> > 
> > 1. Switching to full-screen mode results in a blank (black, actually)

[..]

> More than likely the geometry settings in your freevo.conf. I always
> start freevo with the --fullscreen option.

I don't have this flag with lenny's version - 1.8.2, I think .. off the
top of my head.

But I specified:

START_FULL_SCREEN = 1

in my ~/.freevo/local_conf.py - so I should be OK.

What I have to do is make sure I'm in full screen mode before I start
playing any videos.

> > 2. RSS is not working 

> Difficult to get all feeds to work. Can be improved when we know which
> pages don't work.

Yes, one problem is that I don't have an RSS aggregator on this system, so I
can't really tell if there's a problem with the feed or not. I mean, if it
failed both with freevo and another aggregator, I guess that would strongly
suggest that the problem is with the feed rather than the software.

I've tried this one for instance:

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&output=rss

and this doesn't work. I just get the "No Headlines found" message.

Here's what my headlines stanza in ~/.freevo/local_conf.py looks like:

plugin.activate('headlines', level=45)
HEADLINES_LOCATIONS = [
   ('Freevo news releases', 
'http://sourceforge.net/export/rss2_projnews.php?group_id=46652'),
   ('Google News - U.S.',   
'http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&output=rss'),
]

I can't see a syntax error in this.

Mind you, I know nothing about rss, so since the Freevo News link and
the google link have rather different syntax, maybe that's the problem?

> > Things that I would like to tweak/improve:
> > 
> > 1. Keyboard actions do not suit my habits - mainly I would need to bind
> >    the hjkl keys to navigate the screens more efficiently and something
> >    like q to the "shutdown" option. I saw a stanza near the end of the
> >    local_conf.py file named "events" that has a few examples of how you
> >    define custom bindings but I would need a list of the events' canonical
> >    names in order to do that. I'll read the doc tomorrow - otherwise they 
> >    should be defined somewhere in /usr/bin/freevo.real, I guess.
> 
> /usr/share/freevo/freevo_config.py is the default config file and has
> the events, look for EVENTS =
> 
> Adding something like this to local_conf.py you can see all the events:
> print_events = True
> if print_events:
>     # Print configured events
>     for(k, v) in EVENTS.items():
>         print '==========='
>         print '%s' % (k)
>         print '-----------'
>         for (k2, v2) in v.items():
>             if v2.handler != None:
>                 print '  "%s" %s "%s" %s:%s' % (k2, v2.name, v2.arg,
> v2.context, v2.handler)
>             elif v2.context != None:
>                 print '  "%s" %s "%s" %s' % (k2, v2.name, v2.arg,
> v2.context)
>             elif v2.arg != None:
>                 print '  "%s" %s "%s"' % (k2, v2.name, v2.arg)
>             else:
>                 print '  "%s" %s' % (k2, v2.name)

Thanks, I'm saving this one for later. 

What I'm looking for is a list of bind-able events, something like
NEXT_MENU_ITEM that I could bind to the 'j' key and PREVIOUS_MENU_ITEM
that I could bind to the 'k' key.

Then there would be something like UP_MENU_LEVEL that I could bind to
'h' and DOWN_MENU_LEVEL that I could bind to 'l'.

So I could use the hjkl keys to navigate in the same way I do it in the
ELinks web browser - next/previous link and back/forward. 

Little things that make life bearable at times :-)

> > 2. Many of the .flv's that I have are music and I would prefer having
> >    them recognized as such by freevo in order to have the benefit of
> >    features like playlists (such as playing an entire directory) and
> >    possibly random play, repeat, etc. I have seen some promising hints
> >    in local_conf.py that this might be possible.
> 
> This is simple, looks at the _SUFFIX settings.

I got that to work .. eventually .. problem with the local_conf.py file
syntax.. and more importantly a problem with permissions. 

What I did was to configure both the "system wide" freevo that runs
under the freevo user - nice touch to have it take of at boot on vt9
btw, and my id's freevo. 

I just need to figure out where I can switch the CapsLock and Control
keys on that "standalone" freevo/X session, so that it is in sync with
my regular X session. 

Not sure where I can plug in an xmodmap command.

Not sure these are much of an issue for experts, but it took me a while
to realize that most of the problems I was having was due to permissions
on all my legacy videos and audio.

I took the brutal approach, and chmod'ed everything to freevo.freevo
_and_ chmod'ed the same to "+r" - owner, group, and world.

> > 3. I haven't had time to look into web TV & radio as yet but this should 
> >    be straightforward. I just need to retrieve the links from my bash 
> >    history and figure out how to pass options such as cache size etc. to
> >    mplayer.
> 
> MPLAYER_ARGS['flv']     = '-nocache -forceidx'

The radio links provided in the sample xfd file that I tried are non-
functional. 

I added my favorite WQXR and a French radio station called "France
Musique" to the xfd file and they work absolutely fine.

The only thing I may need to tweak a bit is that freevo appears to
change my mixer settings - I probably just need to specify values of 100
in my local_conf.py files..?

> > 4. When using mplayer from the bash prompt, watching web TV or .flv
> >    clips, I specify a "geometry" so that the output is positioned in a
> >    small window somewhere near the top right corner of the screen, out 
> >    of my way, so I can get on with whatever I am doing. Then, I would 
> >    use 'f' to toggle full screen mode. Not sure if I can achieve something 
> >    similar with freevo. 
> 
> Could be tricky, the design goal was for a stand-alone media centre.

I'll see what can be done. Maybe I'll just have to change my habits. 

Every feature of freevo that I can use with my hardware now appears to
be working with the exception of RSS. Not that I really need that all
that much, but I'd like to take a look. 

Thanks much..!

CJ

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