FS#2930 - ivtv is broken (especially for audio with PVR 150)

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Friday, 08 July 2005, 00:09 GMT
Last edited by Paul Mattal (paul) - Thursday, 02 March 2006, 13:12 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Paul Mattal (paul)
Architecture not specified
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7 Wombat
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

If you look at my ivtv package in the AUR, I've updated it to use the make install method of installation. Recent versions of ivtv have cleaned this up greatly and make it worth using. In addition to that, support for PVR150 and PVR500 cards has been added to the driver, so my initial list of modules to install is no longer complete. There's also some symlinks to be made in the .install file (which I've also improved upon in recent days).

Thanks for accepting my package into an official repo! Should I continue maintaining mine?

build() {
cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/driver
make || return 1
make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install

cd ../utils
make INSTALLDIR=/usr/bin || return 1
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/bin
make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install

install -m 0755 $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver/utils/*.pl $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/

install -m 0644 $startdir/pvr350dec.bin $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/pvr350dec.bin
install -m 0644 $startdir/pvr250enc.bin $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/pvr250enc.bin
install -m 0644 $startdir/pvr150enc.bin $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/pvr150enc.bin
install -m 0644 $startdir/HcwMakoA.ROM $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/HcwMakoA.ROM
}
This task depends upon

Closed by  Paul Mattal (paul)
Wednesday, 29 March 2006, 05:35 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Friday, 08 July 2005, 19:09 GMT
Hey, thanks for doing this! I will look it over and update the main package. I want to make sure that basic testing passes, and I'm away from my mythtv box for the weekend.

In general, you can continue to update your package in AUR if you'd like.. it's a good forum for others to find the updates and consider and comment on them.

However, if you want to help expedite the flow of those changes into the main repo, it would be helpful if you would consider emailing me (or using this bug reporting mechanism) patches against the current PKGBUILD for ivtv in extra. That saves me time and steps. As long as you're willing to test out and improve the package, I'm happy to continue checking the results and updating the package in extra.

So however you want to work it is fine with me. I'm very appreciative for all the work you've done on myth! I plan to put some of your plugin packages in extra as well.

Best,
Paul
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Friday, 08 July 2005, 19:12 GMT
One other thing to note: You'll note that in the extra package, I went to a model where we download and extract the firmware from a web location. Doing this for the other firmware is also critical. Making sure we aren't including large-ish firmware files in the PKGBUILD directory for the package is my primary concern there, but also the cleanliness of building everything from publicly available source located elsewhere.

So the new firmwares may need a similar transformation done in the extra package.

- P
Comment by Vlad Seryakov (vseryakov) - Wednesday, 27 July 2005, 05:02 GMT
I tested installation and update my PKGBUILD with this line to install all kernel modules. for PVR150, cx*.ko module is needed.

for f in *.ko; do install -D -m 0644 $f $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra/$f; done
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Wednesday, 27 July 2005, 12:32 GMT
Don't you also need the firmware in order for things to work with the PVR150?
Comment by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Wednesday, 27 July 2005, 23:56 GMT
I'm using a PVR150MCE and a PVR250MCE in my myth box, and the package I have in the AUR work very well for me. I'm afraid I can't test on the PVR350.

The 150 and 500 will work just fine using the 250's firmware, but there are alternative files for "better video/audio", even if the difference is hardly noticeable.

As for having the modules, Chris Kennedy improved the install scripts to install all the modules as support for the 150 and 500 improved. That's why I'm on the make install model now, as opposed to my previous "copy junk where it needs to be" method. It works better!

Vlad, those modules are not included in the extra version because I didn't include them in my version in the past. They didn't exist when I first packaged IVTV.

Finally, I agree that the firmware files should come from somewhere on the internet, but I have found that the mirrors that have them haven't been as reliable as could be desired. In my version I included the files because they aren't overly huge (just a couple of hundred KB) and it improves availability.

I will definitely consider rewriting the package to extract.
Comment by Vlad Seryakov (vseryakov) - Thursday, 28 July 2005, 03:41 GMT
It works fine with my PVR150MCE but maybe will be better with all firmware loaded
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Thursday, 28 July 2005, 12:43 GMT
The problem I'm having is finding out how to get HcwMakoA.ROM extracted. According to what I've read, it seems that you need the audio firmware, but not the encoder firmware, for the 150 to work. The encoder firmware for the 150 is optional and provides better quality.

If someone can confirm that the 150 works without HcwMakoA.ROM and pvr150enc.bin being present, then I'm happy to just update the package in extra with the new modules. Alternatively, if someone can give me a patch for the PKGBUILD to actually fetch and extract those files, I'll include that. Otherwise, I'll keep chipping away at that problem as time allows.
Comment by Vlad Seryakov (vseryakov) - Friday, 29 July 2005, 03:05 GMT
150 works for me without HcwMakoA.ROM and pvr150enc.bin, i use standard .bin files ivtv-fw-enc.bin. Sound and video in mpeg. Quality could be better though. I see error messages about not able to load HcwMakoA.ROM as well.
This is the link to HcwMakoA.ROM:
ftp://ftp.shspvr.com/download/wintv-pvr_150-500/inf/pvr_2.0.24.23035.zip
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Saturday, 06 August 2005, 03:07 GMT
Thanks Sasha for the rest of the firmware work. Anyone tested the new package? I tested it here, but my cable in my new place is kinda crappy, and I can't tell how well or poorly we're doing. The driver seems to be working, though.

Interestingly, it didn't work on my PVR-350 until I put the firmware BACK as ivtv-fw-enc.bin and ivtv-fw-dec.bin. Symlinking the right ones to those names also didn't work. So we end up with what we have for now.

Those who desire to use the PVR-150 firmware -- do you need to copy those over the ivtv-fw-{dec,enc},bin?
Comment by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Saturday, 06 August 2005, 04:11 GMT
Curious, it works fine on my PVR-250 and PVR-150 (both MCE) with the symlinks.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Saturday, 06 August 2005, 04:56 GMT
I'll try playing with this some more. Maybe I did something subtlely wrong with the symlinks.. but I can't imagine what it would have been. Maybe it was something different with the PVR-350, or caused by my video card?

The symptom was that as soon as I went to view live TV, the screen went black and I could not exit back into X with any keystrokes. Finally I would kill X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Saturday, 14 January 2006, 05:22 GMT
I just revamped this seriously; however, it doesn't work on my system (PVR150) but I suspect it's something else with my system as I've done a bunch of updates
recently; it appears as though the driver is performing fine (detecting the board, etc) but no video signal

Can you give me some feedback on the newest build?
Comment by Kristian Toftenes Askildsen (kristian) - Saturday, 14 January 2006, 22:44 GMT
Hm, I think I might have the same problems as you do. I'm using a Hauppauge PVR-350. From what I can see everything should work just fine. I can switch channel and input-source with ivtvctrl, ivtv-tune and ptune-ui. Even though I don't think the latter gets installed with your package (I use one in my home-folder).

But when I try to watch tv with "gmplayer tv://dev/video0". All I gett is a green screen. "cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg" creates nothing but an empty file.

I could show you some output if you need it for troubleshooting.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Monday, 16 January 2006, 17:51 GMT
Kristian (and Sasha): Try the new 0.4.2. I think the 0.4.1 build was fairly broken, with missing modules and all
(even though the build process didn't fail).

0.4.2 fixes my problems at home with the PVR-150 MCE, and I hope they will fix Sasha's no sound problems. Kristian, can you let me know if they fix your problems?
Comment by Kristian Toftenes Askildsen (kristian) - Monday, 16 January 2006, 17:55 GMT
Package 'ivtv 0.4.2-1' works for me. Thanks a lot! (Still using PVR350)
Comment by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Monday, 16 January 2006, 20:53 GMT
I'm afraid I'm still not getting any audio with 0.4.2.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Monday, 16 January 2006, 22:27 GMT
Damn. Thanks for the info, though.

I'll begin looking into this tonight -- starting by confirming I'm getting no sound, either. I'm glad that we have the same card now, it makes debugging very nice! I was borrowing someone's PVR-350 while trying to resolve motherboard BIOS conflicts with my PVR-500 MCE, and finally just swapped in a PVR-150 MCE because I was tired of waiting for Asus to fix their stuff.

- P
Comment by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Monday, 16 January 2006, 23:43 GMT
I'm afraid I'm still not getting any audio with 0.4.2. 0.4.0 works fine. :-/
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 14:26 GMT
Just put 0.4.3-1 in testing. Does this help or make things worse? Seems to make things worse for me.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Saturday, 04 March 2006, 05:48 GMT
I might have fixed something with the latest update to 0.4.3-2 in testing. Turns out I was installing a different -enc firmware than the one they recommend, I think. Things seem happier on my PVR-150, but for complicated reasons, I can't currently test audio on my rig.

Can anyone check workingness of audio and video with a PVR150 and 0.4.3-2?
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 04:39 GMT
At long last I can now test audio on my rig. And it's still broken for me with PVR-150 MCE and 0.4.3-2.

Anyone have any ideas about this problem? It seems like it should be something we're doing, but perhaps somehow the upstream folks just haven't noticed.

I'm thinking of trading my 150 back in for a 250 or 350!

- P
Comment by Sasha (kleptophobiac) - Monday, 27 March 2006, 17:50 GMT
It seems to be working for me now. PVR-150MCE
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Wednesday, 29 March 2006, 05:35 GMT
It seems to work for me, too, with the fixed firmware. The problem I have at the moment seems to be my cable, which led me to the wrong conclusion!

So I'm going to close this bug now and work on building 0.6.1 for use with the 2.6.16 kernel.

- P

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