This is a new myth build, and I'm doing something wrong in that I cannot find my scheduled recordings under MediaLibrary->Watch Recordings. I CAN see all the recordings that I actually watched live, and anything that I sceduled to record while I was watching TV (The tuner will switch to that channel). But nothing scheduled ever shows up if I'm back at the main menu when the scheduled to record program airs.

SchedulesDirect is working in the EPG. Last night I scheduled to record Letterman, EPG had the green "S" displayed on the show. It's not in the Watch Recordings listing.

Myth appears to have recorded it because
Manage Recordings-> Previously Recorded shows:
12-23 23:55 9_1 WUSA-HD "Late show Dave L" R

When I select it I get:
OK
Allow to Re-record
Remove from list
remove all episodes for this

There is no option to 'play' it. Any way I can query mySql to find out WTF?

Matt

So, I'm not sure what I did, but now its working. I just went to "Watch Recordings" and the first thing I saw was like a genre menu. It said somethig like ??? :
All Programs
Mystery
SciFi
Romance

I selected all programs and the 5 programs I've set to record are there and available. Now I must figure out how to get the genre menu back (its gone now). Before, the program list was only showing programs that I had watched or skipped by, but not recorded. I changed some appearance settings last night when I was ripping music, I wanted the directory tree displayed. Did that somehow change the view?

Ya, Myth takes some getting used to. IMO it's not the most logical and organized layout, for example Program Guide settings are not all in Setup|ProgramGuide. I wish the Recordings screen showed the current time, and the length of shows rather than the time they were on, FCS. I don't care when they were on.

I'd just leave most settings at default until you figure out what's what. Normally when you go to Watch Recordings you should get a panel on the left, with All Recordings and the names of all the shows you've recorded. I just leave it on All, and right arrow to arrow down to the earliest recorded.

Yeah it takes some getting used to. Thing is now I can't get it to look the way it used to look. IMO, it never should have looked the way it did. In the left window of the Watch Recording menu, it literally had ever program I had taken a split second look at. If I skipped through channels and passed by a news cast, "watch recordings" had the 10 second clip of the news cast. It showed everything. Watched Law and Order for a few minutes, changed channel. went back to LAO, it had 2 LAO in the list. One from 9-9:14, another from 9:15-10:00.

And it didn't list a single program that i scheduled.

It has to be something in the configuration settings.

It sounds like the Watch Recordings menu is set to view Live Recordings. Settings are labryinthian, so all you can do is go through them. Settings really needs to get straightened up, but it's not going to happen in the next version because I'm running that.

Nevertheless, Myths attributes far outweigh its drawbacks IMO.

I agree. Even though its consumed two weekends of my life, now that its working I am loving life. It ties in beautifully with my Ubuntu PC, audio rips are terrific, DVD rips are perfect, I finally have a OTA HD DVR, and my obsessive hobbyist nature is occupied and happy. And thanks for all the help here on this forum.

Man, I've just spent a good deal of time dicking with MythMusic, and its organization doesn't make sense.

It collects every song in every directory you have, and puts them all in one huge pile. You're supposed to pick through hundreds of songs one-by-one, and sort them into playlists. And if you have more than one machine, you have to do this on each one! >:X

I don't have time for that. I already have my genres sorted into directories. If it would allow me to just aim it at a directory, making playlists would be quick and easy.

And what's up with the frontend on a remote machine operating on songs on that remote machine rather than on the HTPC media server? The media server is supposed to serve media. If I set a remote frontend up for songs in one place, on the HTPC those directory locations are irrelevant and I can't play music on the HTPC!

The plugin author must not put this to alot of use.

Another problem with the onesy-twosy system is that when you add a song... der, it is not added to any playlist. It just goes into the morass of the All Songs list and is lost forever. This is another reason that Playlists should be directory-based. I will never be listening to all genres, mixing Anna Voog and Cranes with Rorschach Test and Mannikin.

Maybe everybody other than me just dumps all their songs into one directory... or doesn't have enough sense to listen to more than one genre.

Or maybe I'll stick with Kaffeine.

Hey Matt,
http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-22.html#ss22.4

Hey, QS, you can change mythmusic's settings to a directory view.

I had the same problem with MythAudio. Somewhere in the Settings is setting to display 'directory tree'. Its not the best, but vastly better than the long list.

Well boy, I sure can't find it anywhere in v0.22 nor here (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MythMusic).

Under Utilities|MusicTools|ImportFiles there is a scan in directory function, but that's only for importing and does not check files. Nonsensically, under Utilities|MusicTools|SelectMusic there is no select by directory. And under Utilities|Setup|MediaSettings|MusicSettings|GeneralSettings, the only checkbox remotely related to directories is on the third page, "Enable Directories on MP3 Creation", unrelated to views.

Maybe Myth 0.22 no longer has a directory tree function.

In Media Settings|Music Settings|Player Settings, there's a checkbox for "Show entire music tree". I thought that was it, but that doesn't seem to do it anymore. There is, however, a "Smart Playlist" feature (press "M" from the player screen to select one/edit) where you can filter by genre, artist, title, or whatever. So, if you're music is tagged properly, this should make things much easier for you.

As for playing songs from a remote backend, you just mount the NFS or Samba share and use that directory for music, or , if you have music files locally, also, you can symlink that remote mount into your local music directory.

Thanks mm, but I did have "Show entire music tree" checked, and it is doing exactly what it says; shows me the entire music tree. A morass of a thousand songs. I also tried Smart Playlist, but it only lets me choose from Decades, FavoriteTracks, or NewTracks. I can search any one of these for Genre, but decades and genre aren't id3 tagged reliably.

The other issue is not playing files remotely. (BTW, sshfs is far better than NFS or Samba)

I have my music on both machines, but in different places. When I set mythfrontend on the remote machine to a certain directory structure, it is saved in the MySQL database. So when I try to listen to music on the other machine, it goes to the wrong directories! This approach violates the philosophy of a media server. When I set Music to a certain directory, it should mean the directory on the server, not on the remote machine I happen to be running at the time.

I don't expect them to fix these issues for me, but Myth does so much right I cannot understand how they could get a simple thing like the fundamentals of Music so wrong. At least half the population sorts their music by directory, and the other half is disorganized. What could Music devs be thinking? They must never actually use Music, or only use it in a vary narrow orthodox way, or are thinking like Vista.

This makes Music unusable for me.

I guess it's removed then, because I've done it before on older versions.

Have you tried Amarok? It's my fav besides XBMC.

I'm still confused about your directory problem. I guess the idea is to have *all* of your stuff on the server.

Kaffeine has served me well for a long time. Amarok seems like alot more than I need.

On the directory problem, my Myth backend is on the HTPC, a media server in my living room. I run the frontend on this machine to drive the projector. Also, I run the frontend on my laptop over the LAN, so I can watch TV there. The same music is on both machines, but in different places.

When I set the MythMusic directory on the laptop it means the location on the laptop, but it saves that in the MySQL database on the HTPC. When I then run MythMusic on the HTPC, the music directory is still set the that of the laptop because that's what I'd set it to, so I get no music on the HTPC. If on the HTPC I set the music directory to its correct music location, I no longer get music on the laptop because the directory is set for the HTPC.

When I set the music directory, it should mean the music directory on the HTPC, no matter which machine I set it on. The HTPC should be the media server. Why they made it the way it is, is nonsensical.

One cool thing about Amarok is you can easily edit ID3 tags. It also ties in nicely with the firefox plugin "foxytunes", although, last I checked, that wasn't working in a 64-bit browser.

The easiest thing to do about the directory thing is to copy all of your music to the backend. Otherwise, I think you'd have to set up slave backends on your frontend boxes, but I've never tried this because I'm only running 2 systems and they're connected wireless g.

Have all my music on the backend. But when I aim MythMusic to that directory in the HTPC... it no longer works on my remote machine.

Problem is, frontend looks to its local directory structure only, whichever machine it may be on, not to the directory on the server as it should.

Have all my music on the backend. But when I aim MythMusic to that directory in the HTPC... it no longer works on my remote machine.

Problem is, frontend looks to its local directory structure only, whichever machine it may be on, not to the directory on the server as it should.

Yes this is quite annoying, and mythvideo is the same way. you have to mount things on remote frontends in the same place on all machines.

On the directory problem, my Myth backend is on the HTPC, a media server in my living room. I run the frontend on this machine to drive the projector. Also, I run the frontend on my laptop over the LAN, so I can watch TV there. The same music is on both machines, but in different places.

When I set the MythMusic directory on the laptop it means the location on the laptop, but it saves that in the MySQL database on the HTPC. When I then run MythMusic on the HTPC, the music directory is still set the that of the laptop because that's what I'd set it to, so I get no music on the HTPC. If on the HTPC I set the music directory to its correct music location, I no longer get music on the laptop because the directory is set for the HTPC.

When I set the music directory, it should mean the music directory on the HTPC, no matter which machine I set it on. The HTPC should be the media server. Why they made it the way it is, is nonsensical.
All frontend machines should have a custom identifier so they store their own mysql data. If you don't do this, then they will each overwrite the others data in the database. You need to select use custom identifier on page 2 of the general setup and give each machine (with exception of the frontend on the master backend server) a separate identifier name.

Once you've done that, then set the directory on all machines to the dir name used on the master backend and make sure you have the same dir name on the frontend you are configuring. Now, if you want them to actually use the backend files, which I think most people would, you need to setup file sharing. On the master backend, setup those dirs for nfs file sharing. My master backend is not running a myth specific distro, so I had to set this up. I don't know how the distros handle it, but nfs is pretty simple. Now on the remote frontend machines you need to mount these nfs shares on boot by adding an fstab entry for each one.
I just setup mythmusic and mythvideos like this so I could store everything on one machine. It works like it should.

Sample nfs share setup for myth music, videos, and image gallery.
/etc/exports on main server (192.168.0.2);

/mnt/video/videos *(no_all_squash,async,insecure,no_subtree_check,ro)
/var/lib/mythmusic *(no_all_squash,async,insecure,no_subtree_check,ro)
/var/lib/mythtv/pictures *(no_all_squash,async,insecure,no_subtree_check,ro)

Set to read only some someone on a remote frontend doesn't do something stupid.

sample fstab entry on remote frontends to mount the shares;

192.168.0.2://mnt/video/videos/ /mnt/video/videos/ nfs auto 0 0
192.168.0.2://var/lib/mythmusic/ /var/lib/mythmusic/ nfs auto 0 0
192.168.0.2://var/lib/mythtv/pictures/ /var/lib/mythtv/pictures/ nfs auto 0 0

That's it.