encoding video for topfield pvr

Sometimes we use our Topfield PVR to play back video from 'other' sources. What I mean by this is video that it didn't record itself, which might be video from the web (eg. youtube), or recordings made on a linux box with a DVB card. The PVR is a TF 7100 HD PVRt Plus.

The manual for the PVR is a little vague on the subject. It says: "You can enjoy video files in DivX, vob, mkv, or mp4 format on the digital receiver." Not really any mention of codecs or container formats, and nothing on audio encoding. The unit has a USB port on the front (and another on the back) where an external hard drive can be attached, but according to the manual: "To copy files to the external hard drive, it must be formatted through the Topfield in the JFS file system. After this, the external hard drive can only be used with the Topfield PVR." Bad news for anyone not running linux (even heard of JFS??), but after some experimenting, here's what I've found actually works...

Video Encoding

Video formatted for iOS seems to work. I have a bash script that does the encoding using ffmpeg, but anything that can produce mp4 formatted video for iOS should be able to produce video that the Topfield can display. I experimented with DivX avi files as suggested by the manual, but as far as I know aspect ratio is not encoded into avi files, so the video was display in the incorrect aspect ratio. It would be possible to correct this during playback in the PVR, but I found that mp4 files displayed with the correct aspect ratio with no adjustment necessary.

Disk Filesystem

I use a USB stick, formatted in EXT2 format. The Topfield box reads this OK, using the USB port on the front. To write the video files to the disk you either need access to a linux box, or a linux virtual machine. I use a VM running Debian, on Mac OS X. It's a little slow, but it works. This should work just the same with an external USB hard drive, although I've not tried it.

Permissions

Last point, which seems to be crucial, is that the Topfield can only see folders and files that have root for the owner/group. It may not be necessary to have *both* owner and group set to root, but this is what I've found works. For example, here are the permissions on a demo video file supplied on the PVR:

---------- 1 root    root    65337872 Feb  6  2009 Alterna_Compilation.divx

Very limited, but the Topfield seems to like it. Hope it works for you.

For those that are still reading...

Here's ffmpeg's info on the video file supplied with the Topfield PVR. Make of is what you will:

~ > sudo ffmpeg -i /Users/foo/Alterna_Compilation.divx 
[mpeg4 @ 0x7fc78a029600] Invalid and inefficient vfw-avi packed B frames detected
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/foo/Alterna_Compilation.divx':
  Duration: 00:02:05.46, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 4166 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (DX50 / 0x30355844), yuv420p, 720x400 [SAR 1:1 DAR 9:5], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 30k tbc
    Metadata:
      title           : Video 
    Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 160 kb/s
    Metadata:
      title           : Audio 
At least one output file must be specified

a ruby wrapper for 'svn switch'

A while ago our local network admins decided static IP numbers were a Bad Thing, causing chaos for me when trying to use a machine as a server for subversion (among other things).

I found myself trying to check changes in subversion repositories back in to the server, only to find that the server was no longer at the IP address from which the source had been checked out. The answer (apart from attacking the network support people) is the svn switch command. This is a multi-purpose tool with lots of options, so I wrote a wrapper to simplify the process of changing the repository's root URL and nothing else. It was also an excuse to learn a bit of ruby, which is way cool.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

    new_server_address= ARGV[0]
    fail "Specify the new server name or IP number" unless new_server_address

    svn_info = %x{svn info}
    fail "'.' is not a working copy" if svn_info == ""

    url_regex = Regexp.new('^URL: (.*$)')
    repository_url = url_regex.match(svn_info)[1].to_s
    fail "Unable to find the URL" unless repository_url

    split_repository_url = repository_url.split('/')
    split_repository_url[2] = new_server_address
    new_repository_url = split_repository_url.join('/')
    puts "Switching from \n#{repository_url} \nto \n#{new_repository_url}"
    puts "Continue? [Y]"
    confirm = STDIN.gets.chomp
    if confirm.upcase == "Y" then
        system("svn switch --relocate #{repository_url} #{new_repository_url}")
    end

Subversion setup

Start by editing /etc/apache2/httpd.conf so that the httpd-subversion.conf file gets included.

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-subversion.conf

There's no httpd-subversion.conf file by default, so we need to make one. On my system, it needs to contain the following:

LoadModule dav_svn_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module libexec/apache2/mod_authz_svn.so

<Location /svnrepos>
    DAV svn
    SVNParentPath /usr/local/svnrepos
    # the following svnindex.xsl (and svnindex.css) are located in the
    # server DocumentRoot dir, which is defined in httpd.conf with the following line:
    # DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
    SVNIndexXSLT "/svnindex.xsl"
    # require SSL connection for password protection
    SSLRequireSSL

    # user authentication
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Subversion Repository"
    AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/subversion.auth

    # only authenticated users may access the repository
    Require valid-user
</Location>

The .xsl and .css files were copied from my old server. They're just to make browsing the subversion repo more nice.

The subversion.auth file is generated using htpasswd as follows, and stored in /etc/apache

sudo htpasswd -cm /etc/apache/subversion.auth my_user_name

After the command is issued, a password must be entered (twice).

Test the install by trying to access a subversion repository (presumably in /usr/local/svnrepos, according to the above config). You should be required to use a https connection, and be prompted for your username and password.

Generate SSL keys on Mac OS X Lion

I've done this successfully using a script I wrote a while back. One of the gotchas seems to be that the "Common Name" should be the server name (or static IP number if you don't have one). This must match the ServerName directive in httpd.conf.

#! /bin/bash
echo; echo -e "Generating Certificate Authority (CA) [1]:"
openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096

echo; echo -e "Generating Certificate Authority (CA) [2]:"
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -out ca.crt

echo; echo -e "Generating Server Key:"
openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 4096

echo; echo -e "Generating certificate signing request (CSR):"
echo -e "       ** name entered for Common Name (CN) should match your server name **"
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

echo; echo -e "Signing CSR with CA:"
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt \
        -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt

echo; echo -e "Making insecure version of server.key for apache startup"
openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.insecure

echo; echo -e "Renaming server secure/insecure keys"
mv server.key server.key.secure
mv server.key.insecure server.key

sudo cp server.key /etc/apache2/server.key
sudo cp server.crt /etc/apache2/server.crt

Still seems to work...

In order to get apache to use the ssl certificates it's necessary to change httpd.conf

First uncomment the LoadModule line to get ssl_module to load:

LoadModule ssl_module libexec/apache2/mod_ssl.so

Uncomment the line in httpd.conf to get the httpd-ssl.conf file loaded:

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-ssl.conf

Now make some changes to httpd-ssl.conf. This file is in the extra/ directory.

Set the ServerName correctly (and the ServerAdmin email address, if you like)

ServerName name.of.your.server:443
ServerAdmin email.address@nowhere.com

Set the SSLCertificateFile and SSLCertificateKeyFile to the correct file paths:

SSLCertificateFile "/private/etc/apache2/server.crt"
SSLCertificateKeyFile "/private/etc/apache2/server.key"

And that should be it. Try loading https://localhost in a web browser. Check the logs if there's a problem.

Moving redmine to apache

This post follows the last one about installing or migrating redmine and mysql. Picking up from the point where redmine was working through WEBrick...

A couple of extra ruby gems are required to get apache to serve redmine to the world. Passenger does most of the hard work, and when it installs it provides it's own config instructions. Neato!

sudo gem install passenger
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

The last command is really cool, it does lots of work compiling the apache module. I guess it's something from the rails community. The instructions tell us to add some lines to the apache configuration file. I'm putting them in /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf. After I'm done, the passenger.conf file looks like this:

# settings from passenger-install-apache2-module
LoadModule passenger_module/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.11/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.11
PassengerRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby

# additional settings
PassengerUserSwitching on
PassengerUser _www
PassengerGroup _www

Set user:group on /etc/apache2/conf/extra/passenger.conf

sudo chown _www:_www /etc/apache2/conf/extra/passenger.conf

And get apache to load the passenger.conf file by adding the following line to httpd.conf

Include /private/etc/apache2/other/*.conf

Redmine runs on apache using a virtual host. Include the httpd-vhosts.conf file by uncommenting the relevant line in httpd.conf:

# Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Then edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file to get things working. Comment out the example configs (anything referring to *dummy-host*), and add the following config sections:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
        ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName your.ip.number.here
        ServerAlias redmine.local
        ServerAlias your_server_name.local
        <Directory /Library/WebServer/redmine>
                Order allow,deny
                Deny from all
        </Directory>
        <Directory /Library/WebServer/redmine/public>
                AllowOverride All
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
        RailsBaseURI /redmine/public
        RailsEnv production
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache in the terminal with sudo apachectl graceful, or in System Preferences->Sharing (toggle Web Sharing off and on).

Go to http://your.ip.number/redmine/public in a web browser to check if all is working. The first time you load redmine, the server needs to start ruby so it takes a moment, but the response should be quicker after that.

If things go wrong it might be helpful to open the Console to look at relevant logs.

Compiling mplayer on Mac OS X 10.7

Compiling mplayer on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Have been doing this for ages, but with Lion there's a new error:

~/mplayer > ./configure
No FFmpeg checkout, press enter to download one with git or CTRL+C to abort

Cloning into ffmpeg...
remote: Counting objects: 7969, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (5420/5420), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (7969/7969), 9.84 MiB | 1.40 MiB/s, done.
remote: Total 7969 (delta 5169), reused 4198 (delta 2409)
Resolving deltas: 100% (5169/5169), done.
Checking for cc version ... 4.2.1 
Checking for working compiler ... yes
Detected operating system: Darwin
Detected host architecture: x86_64
Checking for cross compilation ... no 
Checking for host cc ... cc 
Checking for CPU vendor ... GenuineIntel (6:23:10) 
Checking for CPU type ...  Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8335  @ 2.93GHz 
Checking for kernel support of mmx ... yes 
Checking for kernel support of mmxext ... yes 
Checking for kernel support of sse ... yes 
Checking for kernel support of sse2 ... yes 
Checking for kernel support of ssse3 ... yes 
Checking for kernel support of cmov ... yes 
Checking for mtrr support ... yes 
Checking for GCC & CPU optimization abilities ... core2 
Checking for byte order ... little-endian 
Checking for extern symbol prefix ... _ 
Checking for assembler support of -pipe option ... yes 
Checking for GCC support of -mstackrealign ... no 
Checking for PIC ... yes 

Error: Your binutils version is too old to compile for 64-bit

Check "config.log" if you do not understand why it failed.

Googling for the answer didn't help, but I finally came across the solution: use clang.

~/mplayer > ./configure '--cc=clang'

and off it goes...

iViewFox compatibility...

I have been having issues with iViewFox ceasing to work every time there's a FireFox update. Not sure why - it seems to be a problem on some computers and not others. Turns out there's a version compatibility string in one of the Add On's files, which can be edited...

The file is install.rdf, and it's located at ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/.default/extensions/iViewFox@forboden.com/install.rdf. It's an XML file that can be edited in your favourite text editor. In the file there's a line that says:

<em:maxVersion>4.0.*</em:maxVersion>

which I changed to:

<em:maxVersion>7.0.*</em:maxVersion>


Restarted FireFox, and the Add On seems to be functioning correctly.