This is a dual-plugin for VDR.

The "MP3-Plugin" allows playback of MP3 and other audio files.

The "MPlayer-Plugin" is used to call MPlayer for playback of video

files (e.g. DivX)

Written by:                  Stefan Hülswitt <s.huelswitt@gmx.de>

Project's homepage:          http://www.muempf.de/

Latest version available at: http://www.muempf.de/down/

See the file COPYING for license information.

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For the user manual see the MANUAL file.

Installing:

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By default the Makefile builds both plugins. If you want to use only one of

them, you can add one of "WITHOUT_MP3=1" or "WITHOUT_MPLAYER=1" to your

Make.config.

In the past month the plugins only have been tested with VDR 1.4.x and 1.5.x.

While the plugins probably can be compiled with VDR down to version 1.1.29, this

is not tested nor supported.

By default any mentioned plugin config file should be located in the "plugins"

subdirectory of your VDR config directory (see commandline option -S to specify

an plugin specific subdirectory). For a complete description of the config

files, see the MANUAL file.

The MP3 plugin needs some external libraries (some optionally):

You must have installed libmad and libid3tag from

<http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/> for decoding MP3 and ID3 support.

Recommended version is 0.15.1b. To compile and install I suggest the following

sequence from the source directory (libmad and libid3tag are installed

separately, so you must execute this once for each directory):

> configure

> make

> make install

> ldconfig

For playback of WAV and other sound files you must have installed libsndfile

<http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/> on your system. Recommended version is

1.0.11 or newer. The old 0.0.x series doesn't work due to some API changes. To

compile and install libsndfile I suggest the following sequence from the

libsndfile source directory:

> configure

> make

> make install

> ldconfig

If you don't want to install libsndfile, you must add "WITHOUT_LIBSNDFILE=1" to

your Make.config.

If you want to listen to CD audio, you can use cdfs

<http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/~ronsse/cdfs/> (version 0.5c suggested). I suggest

that you create a new entry in /etc/fstab and mp3sources.conf for cdfs. The

/etc/fstab entry could look like:

  /dev/hdc	/mnt/cdfs	cdfs	ro,noauto,user 0 0

The entry for mp3sources.conf could look like:

  /mnt/cdfs;CD-Audio;1

Or if you want only WAV files to be displayed:

  /mnt/cdfs;CD-Audio;1;*.wav

If you don't like cdfs, you could use any other filesystems which allows to

access the CD audio data as WAV files.

For playback of OGG files you must have installed libvorbis and libvorbisfile

<http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/> on your system. Most Linux distributions

include packages for this.

If you don't want to install the vorbis libraries, you must add

"WITHOUT_LIBVORBISFILE=1" to your Make.config.

The MP3 plugin can output the sound to an OSS soundcard. To compile this

support add "WITH_OSS_OUTPUT=1" to your Make.config. The output device defaults

to "/dev/dsp" (see commandline option -D too). Don't forget to enable OSS

output in the plugin setup menu.

Before compiling the plugin, you could have a look at "mp3-config.h". This file

includes a number of defines to set options and values at compile time. You

should only change defines, if you have understand the source code parts which

deal with the define. Improper settings can make the MP3 plugin to fail or to

operate unsmoothly. So you should know what you are doing.

To build the plugin(s) type:

"make plugins"

from the VDR source directory.

To make the progressbar work with the MPlayer plugin and slave mode you need to

apply a small patch to mplayer. Select an appropriate patch file for your

MPlayer version from the patches subdirectory. Apply the patch and recompile

MPlayer.

Early 0.90rc versions of MPlayer need a patch to enabled HEAD driver support

too. You will find one for 0.90rc1 in the patches subdirectory. Probably you'll

have to point configure to the new DVB include files with

--with-extraincdir=/usr/local/src/DVB/include or where ever you have stored the

files. MPlayer versions later as 0.90rc5 allow to select HEAD support with a

configure option or even detect this automatically.

Commandline options:

--------------------

For both plugins it's possible to give an additional configuration subdirectory

with commandline option -S/--sources, i.e. the given directory name is appended

to the default plugin config directory path.

Both plugins have a commandline option -m/--mount to define the name and

location of the mount script. The default mount script is "mount.sh". This

script is called from the plugin with 2 options on the commandline. The first

is one of mount/unmount/eject/status and gives the action to perform. The

second one is the base directory as defined in "mp3sources.conf" or

"mplayersources.conf". The script must return the exit code 0 if the action was

successful and 1 if the action failed (see the comments in the example

"mount.sh" script which comes with the archive).

The MP3 plugin maintains a cache for information scanned from song files (e.g.

ID3 tags). This information is saved to the id3info.cache file by default

located in the video directory. You can use commandline option -C/--cache to

specify a different directory for this file.

If you are using cdfs, the MP3 plugin is able to query a CDDB database for the

song information (like title, artist). Local CDDB lookups can be enable from

the setup menu and you must give the path to your local CDDB files with

commandline option -B/--cddb. The database layout follows the xmcd standard

(one subdirectory level for the categories, individual files for every disc).

The settings for remote CDDB lookups can be found in the setup menu, too. Any

information retrieved from a remote host is stored to your local CDDB database,

so the user running VDR needs write access to this directory.

If you are using any of the networking capabilities and you have a dial-up

network, you can use the commandline option -n/--network to give a script name.

This script is called before and after any network access and receives one

option on commandline. This can either be "up" or "down", depending on if it's

before or after the network access. In the "up" case the script should not

return before the network is connected and useable. By default the plugin

assumes that network access can be done at any time without prior action.

If you want to use the OSS output capability but your soundcard device is not

"/dev/dsp" (which is the default) you can use the commandline option -D/--dsp

to give an alternative soundcard device.

If you want to use the cover image display, you have to provide an image

converting script. Usually your covers are in a common image format like e.g.

JPEG or PNG, but the MP3 plugin can only display MPEG (still) frames. The

conversion is done by the script, which takes two arguments: first the filename

of the image file and second the filename or the resulting MPEG file. The

script also has to take care that any needed subdirectories in the cache are

created e.g. mkdir -p. You will find an example script in the examples

subdirectory. By default the script is called "image_convert.sh", but you can

use the commandline option -i/--iconv to change the name and location of the

script.

To speed up consecutive accesses to the same image, the converted frames are

cached on disk. The default cache directory is "/var/cache/images/mp3". You can

change this location with the commandline option -c/--icache.

Don't forget to enable the image display in the plugin setup menu.

The search order for images is:

- An image in the same directory as the song, named like the song but with the

  song extension replaced with the image format extension

  e.g. test.mp3 -> test.jpg

- An image named "cover" with the image format extension in the same directory

  as the song (album cover).

  e.g. cover.gif

- An image named "artist" with the image format extension in the parent

  directory of the song (artist image).

  e.g. artist.png

- An image named "background" with the image format extension in the base

  directory of the MP3 source.

For all locations the extensions "jpg", "png" & "gif" are checked (in that

order). If no image can be found, a full screen black image is displayed (this

is included statically in the plugin).

MPlayer is called through a script called "mplayer.sh" with the filename to

play as first argument and the phrase SLAVE as second argument if slave mode is

enabled. Additional the environment variable DVB_DEVICE will be set with the

number of the DVB card which VDR uses as primary display.

You can use the commandline option -M/--mplayer to change the name and

location of the mplayer script. The script has to call MPlayer with all the

necessary options.

The script should parse the SLAVE keyword too and give appropriate options to

MPlayer. To enable slave mode you must give at least the "-slave" option, while

I suggest "-slave -nolirc -quiet".

You can use the mplayer.sh.example file, which comes with the archive, as a

starting point. Juri Haberland maintains a full featured mplayer.sh file which

is available at <http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/VDR/>.

For the MPlayer plugin you can give a location for the global resume file with

commandline option -R/--resume.

Summary of commandline options:

-------------------------------

MP3 Plugin:

-m CMD,  --mount=CMD    use CMD to mount/unmount/eject mp3 sources

-n CMD,  --network=CMD  execute CMD before & after network access

-B DIR,  --cddb=DIR     search CDDB files in DIR

-C DIR,  --cache=DIR    store ID3 cache file in DIR

-D DIR,  --dsp=DIR      device for OSS output

-i CMD,  --iconv=CMD    use CMD to convert background images

-I IMG,  --defimage=IMG use IMG as default background image

-c DIR,  --icache=DIR   cache converted images in DIR

-S SUB,  --sources=SUB  search sources config in SUB subdirectory

MPlayer plugin:

-m CMD,  --mount=CMD    use CMD to mount/unmount/eject mplayer sources

-M CMD,  --mplayer=CMD  use CMD when calling MPlayer

-S SUB,  --sources=SUB  search sources config in SUB subdirectory

-R DIR,  --resume=DIR   store global resume file in DIR