Dreamboard

steenkh · 23. März 2013

I have an DM8000, and for a long time I have copied recordings to DVDs in order to take them with me and see them at my summer house. However, HD recordings cannot be written to DVDs, and they are too big anyway. So I want to copy them to an external hard disk instead, and hopefully I can view them by playing them from my on my laptop.

Is this possible, and how would I do that? I could also try to copy them to and USB card.

I do not know how to copy the files (although that seems to be the least of the problems), and I am not sure if the Dreambox can copy files to a FAT32 or NTFS system. And finally, I have no idea what format the files are in, and if I can find a player for Windows that can play them (although again, this is probably a solvable problem).

Do you have some advice?

Thanks,
Steen

WilliamG · 23. März 2013

There are various solutions to the tasks at hand.
Let's start with the easy one

Playback on laptop
Keep in mind that the laptop will need quite some CPU power (or a compatible GFX chipset that allows hardware accelerated decoding) and that 1080i recordings need to be deinterlaced.
I would recommend VLC or MPC-HC (with LAV Filters).

Moving recordings to an external HDD
If your external HDD is formatted with NTSF and you intend on doing the task directly on the box without utilizing a PC, you will indeed need the appropriate kernel modules for writing to NTFS volumes (FAT32 works out of the box, but is - due to filesize limitations - not really advisable in this scenario).
But this solution would be quite slow and tedious, as NTFS support in a *nix environment is a crutch.

Alternatively you could format the external drive with a Linux native filesystem, e.g. EXT2/3, and install the appropriate drivers on your laptop (e.g. this or that.
This would speed up the copy process - when done directly on the box - quite a bit.

You could do the actual copying of the files using the GUI (e.g. DreamExplorer), the shell (mv or cp) or e.g. create a cronjob that automatically copies new files to the external HDD every night.

A better solution - especially if this is a one-off endeavor - would be to attach the external HDD to your laptop and copy the files via network (e.g. FTP or SMB).

maxl · 23. März 2013

easyest way is to plug the Ntfs/Fat disk to your PC and copy the Files with an FTP client

direct copy to Fat/Ntfs on the box is extreamly slow, slower than Network transfer, else you can use ext2/3 and copy from comandline, midnightcomander(mc) or GP3 Filemanager

steenkh · 23. März 2013

Thanks a lot!

I thought it would be easier connecting through the USB connector, but you have convinced me that FTP is the way to go. I hope my laptop will have the necessary power. My cable provider has just announced that they will stop sending non-HDTV channels where possible.

I really do not care if a recording is HDTV or not, so perhaps I could convert them to a lower resolution and be able to play them even if the laptop is not powerful enough. But even if it is possible, it will probably add hours to the time I need to prepare a recording ...

steenkh · 14. Juli 2013

I am back with more questions ...

The story so far is that it works OK to copy movies to my laptop using FTP. However, if I use my WLAN for any part of this transfer, the transfer grows alarmingly, so I lay out cables every Thursday in order to copy the stuff that I want to see during the weekend.

This is quite a chore, and I thought, maybe it is not so bad if I could copy the movies to a USB stick after all. You guys warned me that it would take a lot of time to convert to FAT32, but I would like to see for myself!

But how do I do it? When I put a USB stick into the Dreambox, I can browse the files using the File Browser from the menu. I can also browse the movies, but I cannot seem to be able to copy them, because the USB drive does not turn up under the possible target destinations.

The web interface does not have a file browser, as far as I can see.

How would you copy the movies to a USB stick, preferably using a Windows machine for giving the command?

Steen

maxl · 15. Juli 2013

use Telnet command to conect to your Dreambox http://wiki.blue-panel.com/index.php/Telnet_%28en%29

then start "mc" (Midightcommander) - this is a Filemanager what is easy to use http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/doc

MartiniB · 15. Juli 2013

as default recording path i have configured CompactFlash (mostly to able silent recordings at nigh time)
and from the cron call this script every hour

/usr/script/move_recordings_from_CF.sh
(chmod 755)

Bash

#!/bin/sh
#
# MartiniB #
#


SrcDir="/media/cf/movie/"
#DstDir="/media/net/bigdisk/movie/"
DstDir="/media/hdd/movie/"


CfFreeSpaceIsEnough=4000000 # ~4Gb


#
# exit if alredy running
#
foo="$0"
crntNameExt=${foo##*/}
PID_FILE=/var/run/"$crntNameExt".pid
[ -f "$PID_FILE" ] && exit
echo $$>"$PID_FILE"


CheckSpaceOnDest () {
	SpaceEnough=0
	DstInfo=`df -h $DstDir| tail -1`
	case "$DstInfo" in
	/*)	if [ `echo $DstInfo| awk {'print $4'}| sed -e 's/\(^.*\)\(.$\)/\2/'` = "T" ] ||
		   [ `df $DstDir| tail -1| awk {'print $4'}` -gt $(($fSize / 1024)) ]; then
			SpaceEnough=1
		fi
	;;
	*)	if [ `echo $DstInfo| awk {'print $3'}| sed -e 's/\(^.*\)\(.$\)/\2/'` = "T" ] ||
		   [ `df $DstDir| tail -1| awk {'print $3'}` -gt $(($fSize / 1024)) ]; then
			SpaceEnough=1
		fi
	;;
	esac
}


CheckSpaceOnSrc () {
	SrcInfo=`df $SrcDir| tail -1`
	case "$DstInfo" in
	/*) SrcFreeSpace=`echo $SrcInfo| awk {'print $4'}`;;
	 *) SrcFreeSpace=`echo $SrcInfo| awk {'print $3'}`;;
	esac
}


ExitIF () {
	# if night-time and free space on flash is enough
	[ `date +%H` -le 08 ] && CheckSpaceOnSrc && [ "$SrcFreeSpace" -ge "$CfFreeSpaceIsEnough" ] && rm -rf "$PID_FILE" && exit
}


ExitIF


for i in "$SrcDir"*.ts; do
  if [ -e "$i" ]; then
	echo "$i"
	fName=${i##*/}
	fName0=${fName%.ts}
	fSize=`ls -l "$i"| awk {'print $5'}`
	if [ ! $fSize = "0" ] && sleep 10 && [ $fSize = `ls -l "$i"| awk {'print $5'}` ]; then
		CheckSpaceOnDest
		if [ "$SpaceEnough" = "1" ]; then
			echo "cp $SrcDir$fName0"
			cp "$SrcDir$fName0"* "$DstDir"
			[ $fSize = `ls -l "$SrcDir$fName0".ts| awk {'print $5'}` ] && rm -f "$SrcDir$fName0"*
		fi
	fi
  fi
  ExitIF
done


rm -rf "$PID_FILE"

Alles anzeigen

recorded files from the SrcDir="/media/cf/movie/" will be copied to DstDir="/media/hdd/movie/" when hour will be higher than 8 or space on source less than CfFreeSpaceIsEnough=4000000

/cron/tabs/root
(chmod 644)

Code

# Min	HH	Date	Month	wDay	command to be executed
# |	|	|	|	|
# |	|	|	|	|
# |	|	|	|	+-----	day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
# |	|	|	+-------------	month (1 - 12)
# |	|	+---------------------	day of month (1 - 31)
# |	+-----------------------------	hour (0 - 23)
# +-----------------------------------	min (0 - 59)
#


1	*	*	*	*	/usr/script/move_recordings_from_CF.sh

Alles anzeigen

steenkh · 16. Juli 2013

Thank you guys, that was a terrific response that I got!

The tip that I could use directly was of course the one about telnet and mc. Windows built-in telnet support was not good enough, but I found a superb telnet client for my iPad, and that suits me even better than using the laptop.

Maxi warned me that copying to a FAT32 USB drive be too slow, and alas, he was right. I hate when people are right about bad things!

Copying an episode of Mythbusters that takes about seven minutes with cables took three hours and twenty minutes! This is clearly unacceptable.

My next step will be to format a USB-drive in a unix format (ext4 ?), and see if the Dreambox will read it and work faster.

MartiniB · 16. Juli 2013

have you any win pc? (don't know do iPad can browse win shares)
then try another way, install on dreambox sambaserver and open drembox's files from pc \\dreambox_local_ip\

steenkh · 16. Juli 2013

Zitat

have you any win pc? (don't know do iPad can browse win shares)
then try another way, install on dreambox sambaserver and open drembox's files from pc \\dreambox_local_ip\

Would that make it possible to copy the movies faster?

Yes, I have a Win7 laptop which I use for those tasks that an iPad cannot do!

maxl · 17. Juli 2013

Zitat von steenkh

Would that make it possible to copy the movies faster?

Yes, I have a Win7 laptop which I use for those tasks that an iPad cannot do!

no copy via Sambaserver is not faster than FTP could be even a bit slower

steenkh · 18. Juli 2013

Well, I formatted the USB drive in ext3 and copied a Mythbusters episode to it: it took about eight hours! This is the longest yet!

I have no idea why the Dreambox should be so slow when copying to a USB drive. I am quite convinced that copying the same episode from my Windows laptop to the USB drive will only take a matter of minutes (but I haven't tried).

It seems that I have lost this one, and I will need to get out the cables whenever I want to copy something.

Thanks, guys (and gals if there are any) for your comments and help.

m0rphU · 18. Juli 2013

Test the stick at your PC. Most probably it's a cheap or defect one.

The dm8000 has USB 2.0 so it should never take that long!