pyTivoX

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 12:46 AM

pyTivoX is an Apple Mac OSX application that lets you view movies that are stored on your computer via your Tivo.

It provides both pyTivo and streambaby, and all necessary support applications/libraries.

You can read more about it and download it at http://pytivox.googlecode.com/

It has a very simple user interface, and 'just works'.

And yes, it's entirely free. No registration required. Source code available on the same web page.

Rdian06 · 12-10-2008, 01:00 AM

Looks cool. Will have to try it later.

BTW, did you compile the included ffmpeg Universal Binary yourself or grab it from somewhere?

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 01:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rdian06

Looks cool. Will have to try it later.

BTW, did you compile the included ffmpeg Universal Binary yourself or grab it from somewhere?

Compiled it myself (so if it's missing something, or is totally borked.. tell me

.

fatespawn · 12-10-2008, 06:49 AM

The "+" and "-" signs are not rendering (I can only "assume" they are + and- since I can't see them)

westside_guy · 12-10-2008, 10:24 AM

This is very nice. I've certainly been able to get pyTivo and its dependencies going in the past, but it's always nice to not HAVE to do it. Sorta like why I run OS X and not Linux on my desktop nowadays...

Thanks for putting this together!

Edit: It may be having trouble with m4v files - h.264 with AC3. I'll try it with a couple different files to make sure it's not just the file.

raianoat · 12-10-2008, 10:32 AM

Thanks for creating this! I recently published a guide on how to install pyTiVo on OS X however, this app looks like it's dead simple. I plan on mentioning it on my blog later today...

westside_guy · 12-10-2008, 10:48 AM

Yeah, pyTivoX seems to be choking on an m4v file (mentioned above) that gives no trouble to krkeegan's pyTivo using ffmpeg from fink.

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by westside_guy

Yeah, pyTivoX seems to be choking on an m4v file (mentioned above) that gives no trouble to krkeegan's pyTivo using ffmpeg from fink.

Ok I'll check that there's a valid decoder for m4v files in ffmpeg. Thanks for the pointer....

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatespawn

The "+" and "-" signs are not rendering (I can only "assume" they are + and- since I can't see them)

Hmm.. are you on 10.4? The images might only be available on 10.5
(I should really create my own icons.. eh

I suck at graphics...
I'll get to fixing that ...

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by westside_guy

Yeah, pyTivoX seems to be choking on an m4v file (mentioned above) that gives no trouble to krkeegan's pyTivo using ffmpeg from fink.

Ok uploading a new build shortly, with new icons and a new build of ffmpeg with mp3lame, libx264, libfaad, and libfaac. If it's still crapping out, can I get you to put up a copy of a non-working m4v file for me to play with?

Thanks

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 12:56 PM

Ok, sorry took a little longer to build than I expected.. but it's up now

wmcbrine · 12-10-2008, 01:06 PM

Which branch/date of pyTivo are you using?

westside_guy · 12-10-2008, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoav

Ok uploading a new build shortly, with new icons and a new build of ffmpeg with mp3lame, libx264, libfaad, and libfaac. If it's still crapping out, can I get you to put up a copy of a non-working m4v file for me to play with?

I won't be able to try it out until this evening - but if the new build doesn't work, I'll try to get an example m4v file (smaller than the problematic DVD rip m4v, though - maybe I'll rip one of the "extras" off the same disk).

Thanks for your work on this!

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wmcbrine

Which branch/date of pyTivo are you using?

I grabbed the wgw fork via git two days ago... I had to make a one-line change to allow it to use a config file from the Application Support dir instead of the current dir or /etc/...

(I'm guessing you're the maintainer of the wmcbrine fork?.. I picked wgw since it had some newer committed changes so I figured it was 'more recent'... I really have no clue what the differences are... should I switch codebase?).

fatespawn · 12-10-2008, 03:39 PM

Nice BIG icons, but I can't seem to get the server to run on 10.4. Nothing shows up in The Now Playing List. One gotcha is the "restart" button doesn't work. I entered my "shared folder" but had to manually restart. Would that affect things?

pkscout · 12-10-2008, 05:28 PM

This is really nice. The one thing I found hard about pyTiVo was getting it to start automatically on OSX. I kludged something together, but I like this better. Two things:

1- It doesn't appear the web admin interface is active. I really like being able to make quick changes without remoting into my media computer.
2- It would be nice to have an option to either use the built in ffmpeg or point to a different one (like the one I painstakingly built from scratch via the instructions for pyTiVo).

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pkscout

This is really nice. The one thing I found hard about pyTiVo was getting it to start automatically on OSX. I kludged something together, but I like this better. Two things:

1- It doesn't appear the web admin interface is active. I really like being able to make quick changes without remoting into my media computer.
2- It would be nice to have an option to either use the built in ffmpeg or point to a different one (like the one I painstakingly built from scratch via the instructions for pyTiVo).

Short Version: I don't plan on making this a 'power-user' type tool.. The idea is to make life easy for people who aren't very computer-savvy by just having everything there.
If you *really* want your self-built ffmpeg, you can copy it into

/Applications/pyTivoX/Contents/Resources/

However, keep your original around since that will get over-written every time the program is updated.

As for having it auto-restart, I'm planning on adding an option to do just that (and hide the dock icon and use a menulet to control it) -- in an upcoming version.

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pkscout

This is really nice. The one thing I found hard about pyTiVo was getting it to start automatically on OSX. I kludged something together, but I like this better. Two things:

1- It doesn't appear the web admin interface is active. I really like being able to make quick changes without remoting into my media computer.
2- It would be nice to have an option to either use the built in ffmpeg or point to a different one (like the one I painstakingly built from scratch via the instructions for pyTiVo).

Oh I didn't answer the web-interface thing.
The problem with the web interface is that it will try to write to the incorrect config file. I was originally going to use it but it also looked very un-mac like

(and had a lot of advanced options that I wanted to keep hidden).

At least for now, if you simple 'run' the program, but don't ever hit the 'restart' button, it will not overwrite the config file in ~/Library/Application Support/pyTivoX/pyTivo.conf

So you can manually go there, and edit it (including starting the web interface). And use PyTivoX to simply start and quit the program... but yeah, I think it sounds like you're competent enough to simply run the tools by yourself anyways

...

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatespawn

Nice BIG icons, but I can't seem to get the server to run on 10.4. Nothing shows up in The Now Playing List. One gotcha is the "restart" button doesn't work. I entered my "shared folder" but had to manually restart. Would that affect things?

I *suspect* the restart button worked. It doesn't restart pyTivoX.. it restarts the underlying server code (pytivo) with the new settings -- you don't see anything happen when you click it...

first thing: check if there's a Python process for pytivo running:

in a terminal.app, type:

Code:

ps auxwwww | grep Python

and tell me what it says (when pyTivoX is running).

raianoat · 12-10-2008, 07:10 PM

I can't seem to get pyTiVox to work for me. I noticed that my config file is getting blown away whenever I restart it via the "restart" button. Here's a couple of lines taken out of the console. The errors seem to occur whenever I click on the restart button.

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] Writing Config File /Users/raianoat/Library/Application Support/pyTivoX/pyTivo.conf

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] result 0

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] *** -[NSCFNumber UTF8String]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x117360
12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] *** -[NSCFNumber UTF8String]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x117360

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raianoat

I can't seem to get pyTiVox to work for me. I noticed that my config file is getting blown away whenever I restart it via the "restart" button. Here's a couple of lines taken out of the console. The errors seem to occur whenever I click on the restart button.

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] Writing Config File /Users/raianoat/Library/Application Support/pyTivoX/pyTivo.conf

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] result 0

12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] *** -[NSCFNumber UTF8String]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x117360
12/10/08 8:08:12 PM pyTivoX[99318] *** -[NSCFNumber UTF8String]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x117360

The blowing away of the config file on restart is normal (restart kills the python process, writes the new configuration settings based on what you have in the gui, and starts the python process again).

The attempt to extract a string from a number is not normal.. And I think I see what happened. (the choice of video/music/photo is being marked as 0,1,2 instead of the string.. fixing).

raianoat · 12-10-2008, 07:33 PM

Thanks....
Somehow I got around that problem. Now I'm having an issue where it's not transferring the video to my TiVo. I tried to transfer a number of different videos however, each of them are "black" when I go to play them. Let me know if you need me to send you a log file.

fatespawn · 12-10-2008, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoav

I *suspect* the restart button worked. It doesn't restart pyTivoX.. it restarts the underlying server code (pytivo) with the new settings -- you don't see anything happen when you click it...

first thing: check if there's a Python process for pytivo running:

in a terminal.app, type:

Code:

ps auxwwww | grep Python

and tell me what it says (when pyTivoX is running).

OK,

This is what I get when I cut and paste into Terminal

11451 0.0 0.0 18052 240 p1 R+ 7:55PM 0:00.00 grep Python

So, looks like the server is working.... right?

I understand what you are describing. I loaded pytivox onto my wife's computer (Intel/10.5.x) with complete success. However, my 10.4 G5 still doesn't work.

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoav

The blowing away of the config file on restart is normal (restart kills the python process, writes the new configuration settings based on what you have in the gui, and starts the python process again).

The attempt to extract a string from a number is not normal.. And I think I see what happened. (the choice of video/music/photo is being marked as 0,1,2 instead of the string.. fixing).

0.4 should have it fixed..: 'check for updates...'

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatespawn

OK,

This is what I get when I cut and paste into Terminal

11451 0.0 0.0 18052 240 p1 R+ 7:55PM 0:00.00 grep Python

So, looks like the server is working.... right?

I understand what you are describing. I loaded pytivox onto my wife's computer (Intel/10.5.x) with complete success. However, my 10.4 G5 still doesn't work.

Hmm.. I just realized.. I think 10.4 ships with an older version of python for which pyTivo doesn't work 'out of the box'...

run

python -V

and tell me what number it spits out. Since I don't plan on including a full python distribution in the bundle, if the default python on Tiger is too old, it looks like I'm gonna have to make this a 10.5-only project

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raianoat

Thanks....
Somehow I got around that problem. Now I'm having an issue where it's not transferring the video to my TiVo. I tried to transfer a number of different videos however, each of them are "black" when I go to play them. Let me know if you need me to send you a log file.

A log file would help, as would a sample of one of your sources (or at least a description of what kind of file it is). I'm guessing ffmpeg is not converting the file correctly to an mpeg-2 for you, but that's a total guess..

Are you using 0.4?

Yoav · 12-10-2008, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatespawn

OK,

This is what I get when I cut and paste into Terminal

11451 0.0 0.0 18052 240 p1 R+ 7:55PM 0:00.00 grep Python

So, looks like the server is working.... right?

I understand what you are describing. I loaded pytivox onto my wife's computer (Intel/10.5.x) with complete success. However, my 10.4 G5 still doesn't work.

Oh.. also, no it doesn't look like the server is working.. that's the 'grep' process.. not the python process.. If you found a python process it would look something like

Code:

yoav     14331   0.0  0.4    99808  18356   ??  Ss    6:28PM   0:01.22 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python /Applications/pyTivoX.app/Contents/Resources/pyTivo-wgw/pyTivo.py

fatespawn · 12-10-2008, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Hmm.. I just realized.. I think 10.4 ships with an older version of python for which pyTivo doesn't work 'out of the box'...

run

python -V

Python 2.3.5

raianoat · 12-10-2008, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoav

A log file would help, as would a sample of one of your sources (or at least a description of what kind of file it is). I'm guessing ffmpeg is not converting the file correctly to an mpeg-2 for you, but that's a total guess..

Are you using 0.4?

No, I'll try out .4 and let you know what I see.

westside_guy · 12-10-2008, 09:57 PM

0.4 fixed the m4v problem I reported earlier - thanks!

I did find another issue though. In cases where a Mac has VMware or Parallels installed, pyTivo in general doesn't correctly guess the right network interface to use much of the time. Other pyTivo implementations work around this by allowing the user to manually identify the correct subnet to use via a "beacon" directive in pyTivo.conf - but pyTivoX does not currently incorporate this feature. So to get pyTivo to use the correct subnet on my computer, I had to manually shut down VMware Fusion's background processes like this:

Code:

sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/boot.sh --stop

Otherwise, my Tivo HD would not see the pyTivoX shares.

This does work, but it's not an optimal solution.