xbmc.restartapp + guisounds + deinterlacing

[hagayg]

Hi all

Just started using xbian 2 days ago , and i am still amazed what this little device can do with good software

I have couple of questions , i hope this is the place to ask them :

1.why no xbmc gui sounds support ? (not even shown on skin settings) is this on purpose ? related to RPi limitation ?

2.i kinda missing option to restart xbmc from xbmc gui it self , i know reboot is an option (and it kinda seems stuck until it reboots , maybe do a fade or something) but it takes ages comparing to xbmc restart via ssh.
xbmc supports xbmc.restartapp command on windows and openelec but it doesnt seem to work on xbian.

Also i have some addons that stuck from time to time (also on windows xbmc , not xbian problem) on windows i could do a hard restart of xbmc process , not sure if xbmc.restartapp will help on those cases, so i understand i can call the shell script to restart outside of xbmc using lirc (is this possible ? would love some example)

3.deinterlace support
here our dtv is using h.264 50i format, so my recorded files playback requires detinterlacing.
not sure but seems the RPi detinerlacing not work so well (its enabled on gui) i saw threads regarding mpeg2 maybe no one tried h.264 ? vlc or windows xmbc detinterlace much better to 50fps.

4.pvr media portal , pvr://recordings is not mapped the network share (smb://<server>/<share>) but the local path on the media portal server (e:\programs\recorded tv\ - i can see that in the log) , same config on the server works on windows xbmc (which sits on different pc then media portal server)
this worked fine on also raspbmc , but also didnt work on openelec rpi.

keep up the good work guys

[Koenkk]

1. This is because XBMC doesn't support Audio Engine (because this is too much for the pi)
2. We are already working on the "reboot looking stuck" issue.
3. I don't know (I think Rikardo does)
4. Are you already on the latest XBMC? (XBMC 12.1) You can upgrade by executing

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbian-package-xbmc -y

[hagayg]

Thanks for your answers

1.xbmc 11 didnt have audio engine and still had gui sounds , i guess it is possible to workaround this , not a biggy
2.great
4.
xbian@xbian ~ $ sudo apt-get install xbian-package-xbmc -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
xbian-package-xbmc is already the newest version.
xbian-package-xbmc set to manually installed.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

[rikardo1979]

1) no there is not
3)would have to have a look when I get home and find a time

[Koenkk]

1. Depends on the XBMC team

Btw, why do you want to restart XBMC from within XBMC?

[hagayg]

Most restarts i guess required on first setup stages and afterwards are less frequent.

As mentioned before , I have couple of plugins that get stuck from time to time and i need a "hard restart" for xbmc.
I have implemented solution on other windows xbmc computer using irsuite which kills the process and restart it.

My goal is to map remote key to that task so it will be easier to get out of this mess (especially for non tech guys which otherwise i would have to tell them to pull out the power cord which is less "healthy" than just killing xbmc and running it)

[rikardo1979]

just looking into deinterlace and it seems to work only for MPEG2 but h.264 seems to have no support.
I cant find any 100% confirmed information so I think the best for you would be open an issue on XBMC git and you should get response from the right person(dev)

[hagayg]

(24th Apr, 2013 06:45 PM)Koenkk Wrote:  1. This is because XBMC doesn't support Audio Engine (because this is too much for the pi)
2. We are already working on the "reboot looking stuck" issue.
3. I don't know (I think Rikardo does)
4. Are you already on the latest XBMC? (XBMC 12.1) You can upgrade by executing

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbian-package-xbmc -y

I noticed the gui of xbmc shows version 12.0 on xbmc's system information

the update wont work because of this ? :

xbian@xbian ~ $ sudo apt-get update
Hit http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org wheezy InRelease
Hit http://archive.raspberrypi.org wheezy InRelease
Get:1 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org wheezy/main armhf Packages [7410 kB]
Get:2 http://archive.raspberrypi.org wheezy/main armhf Packages [6474 B]
E: Method gzip has died unexpectedly!
E: Sub-process gzip received signal 4.

any way i could fix that ?

[hagayg]

Just to let you know , after a lot of fiddling around i made a fresh install on other sdcard and it allowed me to update with out errors.

Tough it took about 1.5 hours to do full update while fresh install took about 5 minutes

Maybe its time for new version ?

---

I found a solution to restart xbmc.

Just add lircrc file under /etc/lirc containing :

begin
prog = irexec
button = key_sleep (or other key you mapped using irw)
config = ./etc/init.d/xbmc restart
end

reboot and viola.

---

Also found solution for problem 4.

My media portal box (windows) had two ips assigned , when i remove the second one it just started to work....

I wonder how come windows xbmc or raspbmc didnt have a problem with that but openelec and xbian did.