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FAQ

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[edit] General FAQ

[edit] What does MMS stand for?

MMS was formerly known as Mpeg Menu System but is now known as My Media System. The name change reflects the fact that MMS now can run on a number of output devices and not only mpeg-based output devices.

[edit] What is MMS?

MMS is a media center software running on linux. MMS has its focus on:

  • Music (harddisk, cd, radio)
  • Video (harddisk, cd/dvd, streams)
  • Pictures (harddisk, cd/picture-cd)
  • Electronic Program Guide

[edit] Which languages are supported?

Beside english the following languages are supported:

  • Czech
  • Danish
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Swedish
  • Polish
  • Italian (new!)

If your $LANG environment variable is set correctly, then the appropriate language will be used by MMS automatically. If your language is missing, feel free to provide the translation.

[edit] Which output and input devices does MMS support?

Well, that's the best point about MMS.

[edit] supported output devices are:

  • DVB (FF-cards - hardware decoder is neccessary, so no budget cards are working)
  • DXR3 (aka Hollywood+ cards - based on em8300)
  • X11 (using SDL)
  • Framebuffer and DirectFramebuffer (vesa, sisfb, etc)


[edit] Input devices are:

  • Keyboard
  • Lirc (Infrared remote control)
  • evdev (almost any USB device)

[edit] Is MMS free?

Yes. MMS is open source. MMS is developed under the General Public Licence Agreement (GPL).

[edit] Does MMS have/support plugins?

No, not until the 1.1.0 release.

[edit] Why MMS?

  • MMS is slim. If you've already tried other solutions, you'll honor that.
  • It's easy to configure
  • MMS is good looking
  • Input/output multitalented
  • MMS has an active community
  • and MMS is under steady and heavy development by the author himself

[edit] Problem orientated FAQ

[edit] font/language problems

[edit] Why does my language characters not work?

  • MMS uses UTF-8. Try to start MMS like this: 
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 /usr/bin/mms

NOTE: UTF-8 support has to be installed. Replace de_DE with the token for your country.

[edit] Starting MMS

[edit] What is the best way to start MMS?

  • Usually a init.d start script is used. See here.
  • then you can start MMS like this: 
/etc/init.d/mms start
  • An alternative method of starting and stopping MMS in the inittab is described here.

[edit] Audio problems

[edit] I have more than one sound card, what can I do?

If you have two or more sound cards Xine might be playing sound on the wrong card. You have to manually set the device in ~/.xine/config. 

audio.device.oss_device_name:/dev/dsp
audio.device.oss_device_number:1

[edit] I can't hear anything, what's wrong?

If your system is using alsa, change your MMS config 

audio_output_type = alsa
audio_dev = default

and verify the volume settings in /var/lib/mms/options. Set the value below, if it is zero. 

volume,99

[edit] Video Problems

[edit] I don't have any movies on my HD yet, how can I see a fancy video icon anyway?

This is no problem. Go into your mov_dir in a command line, where you configured your movie path location for MMS. Create a directory and inside a movie title: 

# cd /my/patch/to/my/movies/here
# mkdir Matrix
# cd Matrix
# touch Matrix.mpg

Now use the r button on the keyboard to get the IMDb information for this title. A dialog box appears, and lets you select a title. Hit OK. That's it.

[edit] I have a budget DVB card, but can't see /dev/dvb/adapter0/video0, what's wrong?

Nothing. A budget card doesn't have a video0, and the entry in the config 

dvb_device = /dev/dvb/adapter0/video0

is meaningless to you, it's for full-featured cards, and only then, if you want to use DVB as output device. If you want to use your budget card with VDR, in order to watch TV over MMS, set up VDR as a budget-only solution first. See here how it's done (Take your time, it's not that straight forward)

[edit] Lirc

[edit] I don't understand the lirc mapping, where can I find help?

  • First of all, setting up lirc is not part of this wiki. See here, how it's done.
  • Use this tool, or read this section, and especially look into this table, where all key from the input-lirc are described.

[edit] Can I share my remote control with other applications?

  • All applications started within MMS can take control of your remote control, respectively lirc.

But if you've started e.g. VDR first, it is not possible to use the same definition set of your lirc anymore. Therefor you have to use a second lirc remote control definition set. That means: starting tvtime as frontend within MMS doesn't mean, that you can control VDR, because VDR was already started before.

UPDATE:

  • An experimental patch for VDR has been implemented by Skrzyp (forum-name) and a few additional scripts, which makes it possible to use one remote control for both applications. As for now it's only working for the DXR3 frontend, but the Author of MMS is willing to port it to SDL (X11) also. This would mean a huge step towards a really full VDR integration. Read Skrzyp's installation instructions here.
    • UPDATE: 15:42, 28 January 2007 (CET) It's now possible to use VDR over SDL(X11) together with MMS. Follow the link to the thread above.


UPDATE: 10:58, 7 March 2007 (CET)

Sharing one remote control with VDR and MMS is possible now. How it's done is described in this thread (read from this post to the end): [1]

[edit] Hardware

[edit] What are the Hardware Requirements for MMS?

It depends on what you like to do with MMS, and whether you have a mpeg-video accelaration card, like a full-featured DVB or DXR3 card.

  • Assuming you have no hardware support for video (mpeg), here are the minimum hardware requirements:
    • Processor: min. Celeron 733MHz
    • Memory: 32MB Ram
    • Video Graphics Adapter with Overlay

Linux-Kernel >=2.6.8 and gcc >=4.0 is recommended, and also look up the library-requirements. If a mpeg-video accelaration card is available, a CPU of 233MHz should be enough.

[edit] I'm using a DXR3 and the picture seems too large?

I have a problem with mms menu on TV with dxr3. I can't see eg. whole song names because they are too close to the screen border. Also some icons are too close to screen border also.

This one is a problem of Overscan! Currently there are two solutions:

  • Change tv-mode matrix within em8300-modules (/em8300/modules/em8300_dicomm.c):

For NTSC do: 

struct dicom_tvmode tvmodematrix[EM8300_VIDEOMODE_LAST + 1] = { 
        {576, 720, 46, 130},     // PAL 4:3 
        {480, 720, 46, 138},     // PAL60 4:3 
        {440, 640, 60, 170},     // NTSC 4:3 
//      {480, 720, 31, 138},     // NTSC 4:3 
};

For PAL the correct value is: 

{540, 660, 64, 150}, // PAL 4:3

Note: Changing the modules results in a system wide change, so other applications using DXR3 may suffer from this!

  • Second (and preferred) solution:

Newer versione of em8300-modules support changing the zoom-level via sysfs 

echo "90%" > "/sys/module/em8300/drivers/pci:Sigma Designs EM8300/0000:02:00.0/zoom"

This one can be changed per-application!

[edit] Are MMS and VDR able to share the same output-device? (DXR3/FF-DVB)

Yes and No ;) If using a Dxr3 or FF-DVB together with MMS & VDR, you'll have to release the device from VDR for to run MMS. It is not possible to access the device if another app is using it

[edit] Network related problems

[edit] Inotify doesn't work and is slow over NFS/Samba

The problem of inotify not working on NFS is a known problem, it doesn't support notifications. You can compile MMS without inotify support by disabling it during configure. In this situation you need to manually go into options and do a reload to see new contents in a folder.

[edit] Other

[edit] My question isn't mentioned here, where can I find help?

Look into the forum, and use the search function, or register there (it's really painless), and post your question there. The people are willing to help. Promise :-)

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