Setting up MythTV

The key to exporting video from your MythTV is to create a so called UserJob. MythTV provides with the option of setting up to four such jobs. To create a UserJob you can either use the standard mythtv-setup program or the web based mythweb interface. Using the mythtv-setup interface select the general setting and click yourself through to the UserJobs (also called Job Queue). There take any of the for and add the following command to it:

nice -n19 mencoder %DIR%/%FILE% -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=500:acodec=mp3:abitrate=96 -sws 2 -vf scale=320:240 -af lavcresample=32000 -o ‘/srv/www/htdocs/mda/%TITLE%-%SUBTITLE%%STARTTIME%.avi’ -quiet

This Job will use mencoder to reencode any MythTV (MPEG2) recording to MPEG4 video and store it at "/srv/www/htdocs/mda" which is a directory I have enabled to be browsed from the web. All recordings that you now flag to be encoded with this UserJob will land there.

UPDATE: Now, the fun thing about Open Source is that crackpots like me get to be put right by real programers. Please use this script and not my version, as it is much cleaner and better.

Using TCPMP

Now that you probably have some well encoded file lying on your MythTV server you should copy these onto a SD-Card. The very nice video player TCPMP for Windows Mobile can be downloaded from here. The files created have exactly the resolution of the screen of the MDA and can be watched by holding the device sideways. You can therefore disable resizing of any kind in TCPMP to reduce unnecessary processor usage and therefore battery drain.

Hope this helps you!

I use an MDA Compact II from T-Mobile as my cellphone. It features Windows Mobile 5 and a 320×240 pixel wide screen. After playing a lot with MythTV I got the urge to be able to watch my recordings on this device. The following How-To shall describe how I got it working flawlessly.