This is the Remote MPlayer PlugIn for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Sascha Volkenandt <sascha@akv-soft.de>

Project's homepage:          http://www.magoa.net/linux

Latest version available at: http://www.magoa.net/linux

See the file COPYING for license information.

Requirements:
-------------

mplayer     http://mplayerhq.hu

Your mplayer must be compiled without DVB support (either by disabling it or by
compiling on a machine without DVB software), but with lavc/fame support. I am
currently using 0.90rc3, but older versions should work, too.

A second PC that does the hard work (I am pretty happy with 1,2GHz).


Description:
------------

This PlugIn allows you to watch AVI and other files on your VDR, even if it is
a slow machine. It sends the data over network to a special server, the 
MPlayer processes that data, and it is then sent back to the VDR to display
it on the TV screen. You can also specify a NFS prefix to enable the Remote
MPlayer to read the Video File directly (to allow seeking for example).

Installation:
-------------

If anything goes as expected, you just compile this plugin as usual and you 
will have an additional executable in the 
PLUGINS/src/mplayercluster/recode-server
directory. This one (called recode-server itself) must be copied to the remote
machine and executed.


Usage:
------

When you start the PlugIn, you get a browser like you know from the traditional
MPlayer-PlugIn. It also uses MPlayer's mplayersources.conf for the directories,
and mount.sh for mounting devices, so please look into it's MANUAL until I find 
some extra time to complete this ;). I've put an example mplayersources.conf
into the package.

When you start a file for replay, it's content or name it transmitted to the
recode-server started on the remote side depending on your setup (see below).
The recode-server then starts an MPlayer processing the data and transcoding
it to MPEG data, which is sent back to the plugin. 

You have to put an extra config file into the Config Directory's subdirectory 
called plugins (if your standard config path is /video, that would be 
/video/plugins) in order to use the remote control. It is called 
mplayerclusterkeys.conf
and (currently) maps VDR keys to MPlayer-Slavemode-Commands. Each line contains
one mapping, and it would look like this:
Up        pause

which means that the "Up" key pauses MPlayer playback.
Yellow    seek +60

would seek by 60 seconds if you press the "Yellow" key. Remember that seeking
only works if MPlayer can open the real file, i.e. if you use NFS mode.


Setup:
------

The Number of Prebuffers and Minimum Buffersize parameters are taken from the
streamclient PlugIn and tell that the replay should be started if min. that
many packets have been received.
The Recode node IP and Recode node Port tell what remote machine should be used.
The Remote NFS statement tells the PlugIn to send the Filename prefixed with
the NFS Prefix instead of sending the video data itself. This allows seeking
via remote control.
The Hide Mainmenu Entry is not (yet) useful at all.


Known Bugs:
-----------
Sometimes VDR crashes after replay and sometimes replay won't start immediately.


