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MoviX is a mini Linux "live CD" distribution containing all the software
to boot from
CD/HD partition (either Linux or Winblows)/USB pen/CompactFlash card/Net
and start a console menu from which you can play, thanks to the great
MPlayer package (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/), most of the audio/video files
out there (and, if you are lucky, also internet radios and TV :-)
If you already tried MoviX2, this is basically the same thing but it does not
use X [so it is much smaller!] and the menu is written in Perl [so it is much
easier to develope and customize!].
Moreover, it supports TV-out for [at least!] ATI, Matrox, NVidia, CastleRock,
Savage and Trident cards.
Supported formats are all formats supported by mplayer, most noticeably DivX and QuickTime but more in general any DVD, VCD, AudioCD, avi, mpeg, ogm, wmv, asf, fli and a few others.
BTW, MPlayer reads also mp3 & ogg/vorbis files, so you can also use it to play music!
MPlayer supports playlists so you can also use it to play in the order you want any number of audio/video files.
If you are interested you'll find a copy of the config files for mplayer and the linux kernel in the main dir of this package.
All relevant MoviX configuration files and scripts are in the src/movix
folder from where will be automatically loaded in RAM at boot time, so
if you want to make any change to them it is enough to change those
files and make a new CD.
If you make some nice improvement please let me have a patch!
MoviX is all made from software already available on the net. Here is a list of the main packages I used:
syslinux v2.00 <syslinux.zytor.com> mplayer v0.92 <www.mplayerhq.hu> slackware v8.0 <www.slackware.com> linux kernel v2.4.22 <www.kernel.org> Perl 5.8.0 <www.perl.org> Curses-UI 0.76_01 <maurice@gitaar.net> BusyBox 0.60.5 <www.busybox.net> ALSA 0.9.6 <www.alsa-project.org>
All I did is just put these pieces of software together :-)
From the Slackware CD, that uses SysLinux to boot, I extracted the ramdisk that I slightly modified getting rid of a lot of unneeded files and adding all possible audio modules for kernel v2.4.22 and of course the MPlayer.
The menu has been written all in Perl using the nice Curses::UI module made by Maurice Makaay (now mantained by Marcus Thiesen).
The picture currently displayed in the MPlayer menu and during the music playback is by Coresis ( http://www.coresis.com ) and it is released under the GNU license.
There are literally tons of feature that may be added to this menu. I will never have time to add them all and in the future I will not have so much time to spend on this projet, so if you like it and want to help improving it just drop me an email!
I strongly hope the few lines I wrote in the menu will be enough to make everybody able to use it succesfully. Hopefully someone eventually will improve the menu adding a help and the many features that can be introduced.
--> Software:
The only thing you need to use MoviX is a software package to produce the bootable isoimage and one to burn the image on CD. On both Linux and M$ Window$ you can use mkisofs & cdrecord, that you can get from
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/
Working copies of mkisofs.exe and cdrecord.exe are included in the file MoviX_Win32_Script.zip packaged by Christophe Paris and available for download in the usual MoviX download page
Window$ users may be interested in downloading the Win32 MoviX setup
installer packaged by Clovis Sena (csena2k2@users.sf.net) that allow
to build very easily MoviX ISO images to be burned later on CD with
cdrecord, Nero or similar software.
There are also different Win32 setup packages recently built by Kangur,
you can get them at
http://www.movixisocreator.prv.pl/
Of course it does not matter with which application you write the image on the CD, but you cannot make the iso image in the usual easy way because you want it to become bootable.
--> Hardware:
CPU
Only x86 compatible are supported, and only >= i586.
RAM
This MoviX cersion needs at least 64MB but it may work even with as low as
32MB if you have a Linux swap partition with >=32MB on your HDD.
==> NOTE: in order to keep MoviX working with as few as 64MB a few features may be automatically disabled by the movix script, namely:
MICE
I could not manage make the mouse do anything good with Curses in a console
:-(
Hope to learn it soon.
CONTROLLERS
All IDE controllers are supported.
All SCSI controllers supported by kernel 2.4.22 are also supported.
VIDEO CARDS
It is not easy to say on which video cards MoviX will work.
Cards brand that are generally known to work are:
Matrox
Ati
NVidia
3Dfx
Intel
Sis
S3
Trident
but it is likely that the majority of video cards will work fine. There are good chances that DXR3/Hollywood+ cards now works, please let us have your feedback!
BTW, if you use the "aa" mplayer driver than MoviX should work no matter which card do you have. Ok, it is ASCII visualization but, what the hell, it works! :-)
If your video card works with MoviX please let me know so that I can start writing a database of cards known to work.
*KNOWN DXR3/H+ CARDS PROBLEM*
DXR3 modules (http://dxr3.sf.net/) are not yet able to autodetect the
specific chipsets used in the card (apparently there are many different
combinations) so it is likely that your card won't work with the standard
settings.
In this case go in the Edit->DXR3 menu and try different combinations of
the parameters until your card is able to visualize anything.
If nothing works drop me a note.
AUDIO CARDS
MoviX makes use of the ALSA sound drivers.
A complete list of all supported cards with detailed info on each of them
is available form the ALSA home page at
In case your card has problems with ALSA, you can still try the old OSS modules using the "OSS=y" option at the boot [after a very nice patch by William Daniau].
If you have more than one card on your PC, you can choose the one you want with the "AUDIO=n" boot arg, where n=1,2,... [0 is the default value]. Unfortunately there is no way to know which number will be assigned to each card so you'll have to make experiments :-)
*KNOWN ISA AUDIO CARDS PROBLEM*
If you have an ISA card, it may fail to be automatically detected.
In this case try first of all to use the "DETECT=all" boot argument to
let the system try all possible audio modules available.
If you are brave enough :-) , you can boot with the "AUDIO=n" boot arg
(so that audio is not loaded at all) and try to load by hand the right
driver with "modprobe".
If nothing works, drop me a note and cross your fingers :-)
ETHERNET CARDS
All cards supported by kernel 2.4.22 are supported.
REMOTES
Remotes support has been improved in this version.
Tested working remotes are:
To make new remotes work with MoviX, a line must be added to the src/movix/remotes.data listing the model, the driver name, the device that lircd uses with it and the kernel modules needed to be loaded. This is necessary because unfortunately some serial remote uses the standard Linux serial driver while other serial remotes use the lirc's own serial driver and so on.
If you have a remote working on your Linux box, please help the project support new remotes sending directly to me or in the movix forums all data needed to activate your remote!
USB
All relevant USB devices supported by the 2.4.22 kernel should be
automatically used by the system.
FireWire
All relevant FireWire devices supported by the 2.4.22 kernel should be
automatically used by the system.
--> ISO package
Usually a few days after a new version is out I upload a .zip file containing a ready-to-be-burned bootable MoviX ISO image, so if you are particularly lazy you can get that and skip the rest of this section **unless you want to make any change to the standard settings**
It is possible that you may modify the stabdard ISO package with the win32 utility WinISO (www.winiso.com). The application is not open but it is free to us it to modify small ISOs.
--> Win32 Setup
Thanks to Clovis Sena & Kangur, all MoviX distros have now a Win32 installation file, so if you are a WinXX user you may use that file to create a customized ISO image and skip the rest of this section. You can get these packages in the usual MoviX download directory and at
http://www.movixisocreator.prv.pl/
--> MoviXMaker
Thanks to Pascal Giard there is now a GNU/Linux Perl GTK+/Gnome/GladeXML interface to help you create customized ISO images for [e]MoviX[2] in secs!
New MoviXMaker packages are available at
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/movixmaker/
--> Custom setup for Win & Lin OS
If you are not familiar with the procedures to create a bootable CD, below you get step-by-step instructions for Linux & M$ Window$.
0. Let's assume your untarred MoviX package is in /usr/local/movix-0.8.1pre2/
To "install" the packages, all you have to do is copying the archives in
the src/mplayer/codecs directory.
Do not unpack the files, just copy the whole archive(s) you want to use.
Here is the list:
- Win32 codecs
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/win32codecs.tar.bz2
- QuickTime6 DLLs
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/qt6dlls.tar.bz2
- RealPlayer9 codecs
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/rp9codecs.tar.bz2
- RealPlayer Win32 codecs
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/rp9win32codecs.tar.bz2
- XAnim DLLs
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/xanimdlls.tar.bz2
3. If you want to be able to play your DVDs, you probably need to include the
libdvdcss library.
DISCLAIMER: the libdvdcss library makes use of the DeCSS algorithm,
that has been declared illegal in some country (e.g. USA and Germany),
so before adding it I suggest you to make sure it is ok to use it
in your country.
I am in no way responsible of what you put in your MoviX version.
Because of the extremely unclear status of the legal matters about DeCSS
I can't even provide a link for those who legitimally can make use of it,
but nevertheless all you should do is going in your favorite search engine,
look for the package named libdvdcss-1.2.6-1.i386.rpm and copy that package
in the src/movix dir.
4. If you speak french, italian or spanish you may replace all txt files
of the src/isolinux directory with the corresponding files of the
boot-messages/fr or boot-messages/it or boot-messages/es directories.
5. If you know what you are doing, feel free to modify the configuration files
in src/movix :-)
6. Create the .iso file running
sh mkmovixiso.sh
or
mkmvxiso.bat
depending on the degree of Micro$oft-ness of your OS :-)
The scripts output the iso image in /tmp/movix.iso or
c:\temp\movix.iso respectively.
Edit the scripts if you want to change this setting.
7. Write the iso image with any package you like.
E.g. with cdrecord you'd write something like:
cdrecord dev=0,0 -v -eject /tmp/movix.iso
If everything went fine, the CD you produced should be a bootable CD and it will automatically boot and start the MoviX menu.
==> NOTE: if you are a window$ user, you probably want to use Christofe Paris scripts! Read above about how to get them.
If you have a Linux box installed on your PC, chances are you use LILO as a
boot loader.
Starting from v0.8.1pre1 MoviX is able to boot from HD with LILO if you
append to your /etc/lilo.conf file an entry similar to the one you can find
inside the package file extras/hd/linux/lilo.conf.movix
All you have to do is copying the content of the 'src' directory of this package in some directory, e.g. under /movix/, and adjust accordingly the lilo.conf.movix 'image=' and 'initrd=' entries.
Moreover, you should modify the variables MD, MP and MF so that they contain respectively the hd number [0 = 1st disc of the primary IDE channel and so on] and the partition number corresponding to the partition containing the movix folder and the actual name you chose for the movix folder [if you called it /movix/ you don't even need to modify MF at all].
To boot MoviX from WinXX you need the loadlin package by Hans Lermen (http://elserv.ffm.fgan.de/~lermen/). Since the loadlin.exe binary is very small I included it in this package inside the extras/hd/windows/ folder.
All you have to do is copying the loadlin.exe file in some directory included in your PATH (e.g. in c:\windows\command), copying the content of the 'src' directory of this package in some (simple) directory, e.g. in c:\movix, copying the extras/hd/windows/wininit.gz file in the c:\movix\isolinux folder and copying somewhere, say in c:\movix, the extras/hd/windows/movix.par file (give a look to the file to verify that the data inside it correspond to your setup).
At this point, boot your PC in DOS mode, open a MS-DOS prompt shell, cd in the c:\movix folder and run the command
loadlin @movix.par
It is not clear whether this feature is really useful but I used it to test MoviX on a discless EPIA board and so why not to explain how to do it? :-)
Ingredients:
0. a client with a PXE NIC [it can work without it but it's too long to write
it down...]
Recipe:
0. create the /tftpboot dir and run the tftp server so that it serves files
from there
Starting from this release, a script has been added to let you install MoviX on your USB pen or CompactFlash card with no hassles.
MoviX distro size varies from ~20MB to ~30MB depending on how many codecs you decide to include in the src/mplayer/codecs directory, so you need for it a USB pen/CompactFlash card with >=32MB.
You can install MoviX simply going in the 3rd console and running the script 'install.pl'.
If you still prefer to do everything by hand, in next two sections you'll find the instructions to install the MoviX files by hand.
Starting from MoviX 0.8.1pre1 it is possible to install MoviX on Compact Flash cards!
The installation procedure differs slightly according to whether the card is connected to the PC through an IDE interface or a USB one. In the last case, follow these instruction and then go ahead and follow also the ones in the next section ("Booting from a USB pen").
==> Making the card bootable
You need to use SysLinux to make a card bootable. You can get the SysLinux package from
It contains the syslinux executables for both Linux and WinXX.
Linux Instructions:
To make bootable your card, just run
syslinux /dev/XXX
where XXX is the card partition [not the device! For example, if the card device is /dev/sda then the partition is /dev/sda1].
Windows Instructions:
I don't know for sure, but I think that it should be something like
syslinux X:
where X is the device letter associated to the card. If you try it out please report!
==> Copying the right files in the right place
mount /dev/sda /mnt -t vfat
[don't need to do that in DOS ;-) ]
2. copy the extras/flash/syslinux.cfg file in the flash card
3. edit the card syslinux.cfg and change the MD variable so that it
corresponds to the flash card number as an IDE device [e.g. if you have
two IDE HDs then Linux will see your card as IDE device 2, while if you
have no HD then the flash card IDE device will be 0].
4. create a 'movix' directory in /mnt with
mkdir /mnt/movix
and copy all 'src' files there with
cp -R src/* /mnt/movix/
5. move a few files in the flash card root:
mv /mnt/movix/isolinux/kernel/vmlinuz \
/mnt/movix/isolinux/initrd.gz \
/mnt/movix/isolinux/*txt \
/mnt/movix/isolinux/mov* \
/mnt
8. now you can boot from the flash card and enjoy ;-)
Starting from version 0.8.1pre1, MoviX is finally able to boot from USB pens! These same instructions are also good [I hope!] for booting a CompactFlash card from a USB interface.
The instructions to install MoviX on a USB pen are the same as for a CompactFlash card except for the fact that to boot from a USB pen (or CompactFlash card with USB interface) you have to use the extras/usb/syslinux.cfg file rather than the one found on the extras/flash/ folder.
Booting from USB though requires sometimes some extra wizardry. I myself have been able to boot my EPIA M-10k from my USB stick only after Pascal Giard sent me this very precious link I suggest you to read carefully:
http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/
The main info I extracted from there is that on some MB you have to enable the USB Keyboard support in your BIOS or no USB will be able to boot, and moreover that it is better to insert the USB device when the PC in not only turned off but also unplugged or the BIOS may not detect its presence and so it won't be able to boot.
Following these directions Roberto has been able to boot from EPIA board (very slowly unfortunately because he has a USB 1.1 pen). But we didn't succeed with other MBs that, in principle, are supposed to boot from USB devices (Roberto: Asus A7V-E, Pascal: Asus A7V-X), so do not expect 100% chance of succeding: evidently USB boot is not very mature yet.
There's an easy way to bypass all this: the next MoviX boot floppy will be able to look for USB devices and boot from them, so if your BIOS won't let you boot the good ol' floppy will fix this :-)
Pls report any suggestion or success/failure about USB boot!
--> Boot
Boot your PC from a MoviX CD.
You have several option for the boot:
BOOT LABELS
MoviX This is the default label and should be able to select
automatically the best mplayer options for you video card.
It makes use of the vesa FB linux driver at 800x600.
vesaFB1024 Same as MoviX but with a 1024x768 resolution.
Choose this if you think you are going to watch your videos
in ASCII! :-)
vesaFB640 Same as MoviX but with a 640x480 resolution.
Choose this if the previous two labels fail (most likely
because you don't have much RAM on your video card).
FB This uses the Linux FrameBuffer driver specific for your
card (if any). It may be faster than the previous one
but I have no card to check it with.
vesa This driver should work with most cards around but most
likely the MoviX menu will mess up soon and you'll have
to reboot often.
Use it as a last resource.
TV Using this option, the code needed to activate your card
TV-out is automatically used by the setHardware.pl script.
Supported cards are Ati, Matrox, NVidia, S3 Savage and Trident.
Probably also Voodoo and other cards work but I do not know,
so let me have some feedback!
NVidiaTV This is a label like TV, but it's especially meant for NVidia
cards. Please give us feedback if it doesn't work with your card.
To boot with a label different from the default one, just write the label at the boot prompt and press ENTER.
There are also two extra labels that can be useful too when you forget a MoviX CD in your drive:
hd - forget the CD and boot from the HD floppy - forget the CD and boot from the Floppy
Thanks a lot to Christophe Paris for this nice suggestion, I use it many times a day!
There are also a few boot parameters you can use:
BootArgs Values Effect
acpi off Turn off ACPI support. ACPI is a PowerManagement software
especially useful on laptops to avoid discharging your
battery in just a few minutes.
HOWEVER ACPI is still buggy and IT IS KNOWN TO HANG the
boot on some machine, so if you can't boot your MoviX
copy try first of all to turn off the ACPI.
KNOWN BUG: owners of VIA MBs MUST turn ACPI off or most
likely nothing will work!!!
MOUNT n Do not let the movix script to mount your HD partitions.
DMA n Do not try to activate DMA on CD drives.
Use this if during the boot process your CD seems to cause
a mess of error messages.
ACCEL sw,no Force MoviX to use sw or no rescaling.
DETECT all Use the old hw detection method, i.e. try all possible
modules until the right ones are found.
Use this if your audio card is not detected by the
default method.
OSS y Use OSS audio modules instead of the new ALSA
(use this if your audio card is not detected even
with DETECT=all)
AUDIO 1,2,.. If you have more than one card and get no audio from
your speakers, then probably MoviX choose the wrong one.
Try "AUDIO=1" to use your second card and so on.
Use "AUDIO=n" to skip audio autodetection if you need
to load audio modules by hand.
USB n Do not activate USB support
IEEE1394 n Do not activate IEEE1394 support
KB fr Use french kbd layout
REGION <region> Either one of NTSC, NTSC-J, PAL, PAL-B,
PAL-M, PAL-NC, PAL-60, PAL-M60 or SECAM.
This is needed if you use the "TV" boot
label unless you have an Ati card.
TVCARD 1,2,.. Specify your TV card type if autodetect fails
TVTUNER 1,2,.. Specify your TV tuner type if autodetect fails
Check http://bt848x.sourceforge.net/config.en.html
for a complete list of cards & tuners.
SCSI <module> Force MoviX to load the SCSI module.o module
(e.g. "SCSI=tmscsim")
REMOTE <model> Tell MoviX to initialize your remote. Currently only
"hauppauge" and "logitech" are supported.
splash verbose Do not hide kernel boot messages.
Example
Boot with the default label, do not rescale the video, use the second audio
card and a Logitech remote:
boot: MoviX ACCEL=no AUDIO=1 REMOTE=logitech
--> Customizing the default boot parameters
If you want to boot by default with a boot label different from MoviX2 then you should edit the src/isolinux/isolinux.cfg file and modify its very first line.
If you use often certain boot arguments, you can avoid having to digit them at every boot writing a file called 'bootrc' containing all your args one per line and putting the file in the src/movix/ directory. E.g. if you use always "ACCEL=no AUDIO=1 REMOTE=logitech" then you can write the following file:
# <--------- .bootrc sample
ACCEL=no
AUDIO=1
REMOTE=logitech
# ---------> end of .bootrc sample
Boot args passed at the boot prompt have higher priority than the ones written in the bootrc files, so in the few cases you don't want your default options you have a way to override them.
--> Configuration File
Starting from MoviX 0.8.0, it is possible to load/save from/to floppy a movix configuration file containing all possible parameters that you can set from the MoviX menu.
The name of this file is 'movixrc'.
Writing it by hand is not trivial and it is highly discouraged.
The best way to generate is using the "Edit->Save config" menu of MoviX:
once you find your favorite configuration, save it on a floppy and
either use the floppy every time to load the config file using the
"Edit->Load config" menu or burn a new MoviX CD after putting the
movixrc in the src/movix/ directory.
This way, the movixrc file will be automatically loaded at boot time
by the movix scripts.
You can also save audio mixer settings to floppy in the same way you save movixrc. To load automatically this settings when MoviX start, just put asound.state from the foppy (or your favorite GNU/Linux distro) in src/movix/ and burn a new MoviX CD.
BEWARE: if you use such a "customized" MoviX CD in a different PC, remember to remove the movixrc using the "Edit->Remove config" menu or there will be an inconsistency between MoviX config data and the actual hw of the PC and therefore much likely MoviX won't be able to do much.
If it starts, you can safely remove the MoviX CD and use the console menu to load&play any DVD/VCD/Audio CD/file you want.
==> DVDs
Starting from v0.8.0, thanks to a very nice patch by Max Weninger,
the DVD menu will automatically look for the movie track among the
[usually many] DVD tracks and will at the same time fill the "DVD tracks"
menu with a list of all tracks available.
All audio and subtitles available languages will be also shown so that
you can choose your favorite ones.
To avoid having to chosse over and over the same audio/subs language you can
set default ones in the "Edit->DVD" menu.
Moreover, the "Play->DVD" selection will automatically play the longest
DVD track, usually the one you want to see :-)
==> VCDs/XCDs/AudioCDs
The same DVD mechanism has been imported to VCDs/XCDs/AudioCDs, so that now after loading their TOC you can choose which track to play.
==> CDs/HD Partitions
Starting from MoviX 0.8.0, it is possible to play the whole content of a CD/HD Partition with the "Play->CD" and "Play->Partition" selections. Using this options, the movix script will automatically search the drive or partition for audio/video files and will play them all as a playlist. Once the playlist starts, you can use the MPlayer menu [see below] to navigate through the audio/video files contained in the drive/partition.
==> SlideShow
Starting from MoviX 0.8.1pre2, this option allows to visualize all images
under some directory chosen by you.
A DirBrowser menu will let you choose a dir and each picture file under it
will be visualized by the 'fbi' binary with a temporal distance of 5 seconds.
==> Playing Files
Starting from MoviX 0.8.0, when you choose a file in a folder containing subs and no sub file with the same name is found, then an extra file chooser will automatically appear to let you choose a subtitle [just press <Cancel> if you don't want any].
==> MPlayer menu
The MPlayer binary contained in MoviX is compiled with support for the new neat "menu" feature of mplayer: pressing "m" while mplayer is showing any video you should be able to access mplayer's native menu and navigate mplayer options directly from inside mplayer! This menu is also accessible from the MoviX menu presssing 'F4'.
==> Consoles
There are 3 consoles active, you can choose which one to go pressing ALT-F<n>, where n can be 1, 2 or 3.
console 1 (default): is the one with the MoviX menu. When/if MoviX menu crashes, it is restarted automatically so you don't have anymore to launch the "movix" command. If you need a shell go to console 3.
console 2: here you find the alsamixer, in case the mplayer volume keys do not raise the volume enough or if you want to adjust bass/treble or other things.
console 3: here you'll find a shell in case you want to run anything [like nvtv].
==> Audio
If you find the volume too low even when mplayer's volume is at its maximum value, just change console with ALT-F2, set all volumes with alsamixer and go back to the original console with ALT-F1.
==> Playlists
You can play video/audio playlists with mplayer opening them through
the Play->File menu.
The mplayer included in this version is able to use playlists with
the following extensions: pls, m3u, asx, txt, list.
==> Net
If you have an ethernet card tehn MoviX will automatically try to use its dhcp client (the 'pump' binary) to connect to a dhcp daemon; in other words, the DHCP boot arg is not needed anymore.
If you are not connected to any DHCP server then you can configure by hand your card setting the LAN parameters from the \ "Edit->MoviX Options" menu
After that you can either enter an URL through the Play->URL menu
or use a playlist you load from a CD or a HD partition through
the Play->File menu.
I included two examples called hardhouse56k.pls and hardtrance56k.pls
[thanks to Richard Didd for these playlists!] in the movix dir of
the MoviX CD.
==> Net volumes
You can also mount remote nfs or samba [e.g. windows partitions] volumes accessing to the mount menu from the Play->Net menu. After you mounted the volume, it should automagically appear in the partition list and that way you can play any audio/video file from it like if it was on your machine.
==> Subtitles character sets
You can select/change the MPlayer character set and its properties from the Edit->Subtitles menu.
==> Adding Subtitles character sets
To add a new character set to the MoviX ones, just add a new TrueType file
(lower-cased!) or a MPlayer fonts dir under the src/mplayer/mplayer-fonts dir.
The new set will be automatically added by the movix.pl script to the subs
font list.
If you want to use it as default, just set it as default in the movixrc
configuration file in the way explained above.
==> MoviX Menu fonts size
Starting from this version, you can select/change the MoviX menu font
size from the Edit->MoviX menu.
This is particularly helpful when you use the TV-out, in which case you
want to maximize the font size, or when you want to use the ASCII output,
in which case you want to minimize the fonts size.
==> TV-in
Finally an Edit->TV menu is available and can be used to choose your country's Chanlist and/or your area's channels. Up to now the only local channels list available are the ones of my area, namely the island of Sardinia (Italy). Just send me your own area's to have them added to the distro!
The format of the local area channels is the xawtv format, and to generate it it is enough using the 'scantv' utility under Linux as explained by Balazs in the following forum thread: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=784341&forum_id=207427
I included in MoviX the Balazs script that converts the widely used (under Unix) xawtv format in the MPlayer's one, so that to add your own channels it is enough adding a xawtv file in the src/mplayer/tv_channels/ directory, burning a new CD and select the new list from the Edit->TV menu.
The program 'scantv' is now available in MoviX. You can use it to generate your own xawtv channel file going in the 3rd console and running something like the following:
scantv -o mychannels.xawtv
Once you have the file, you can give it a try copying it under
/tmp/tv_channels/
and restarting (not rebooting!) the MoviX menu and choosing your new file
from the Edit->TV menu.
If the file works fine post it on the MoviX 'help' forum and it will soon
be included in the distro.
Starting from v0.8.0rc2 thanks to the blackkane suggestions in the Help Forum
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=882303&forum_id=207428
the MoviX menu can be controlled through a remote!!! Here's a list of the remote keys currently supported (for hauppauge remote):
VOL+ -> right arrow
VOL- -> left arrow
CH+ -> up arrow
CH- -> down arrow
FULLSCREEN -> ENTER
SOURCE -> Tab
TV -> Escape
The Escape key is particularly useful to bring the menu to its starting status.
KNOWN BUG: for some reason at the first start the MoviX menu piloted by irpty
fails setting the right size, but this may be a problem only in case you need
to use a filechooser.
Nevertheless, it is enough to restart the interface with using the
Quit->restart option to restore the normal status.
Piloting the menu with a remote is well worth this little bug, but of course
I hope it will be fixed soon.
TV-out should work fine on all Ati, Matrox, NVidia and S3 Savage video cards. EPIA MBs TV-out is also supported but no test has been made yet. It is likely that it will work also with other cards, like for example with the Voodoo cards, but I am not 100% sure about that.
If you manage to use the TV-out with other cards please let us know!!!
MPlayer allows you also to watch a movie encoded in ASCII characters thanks to the nice AA-lib (http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/).
Unfortunately watching a movie using the "aa" driver messes up the screen so after watching a video you have to close the MoviX menu and restart it launching the "movix" command.
I am not at all an expert in this so I cannot be very precise about this. All I know is that you should be able to play most of the DivX files around and more in general any AVI, MPG file, QUICKTIME, ASF and WMV should be ok. About video files, all MP3 and OGG/VORBIS files should work.
If you have examples of such files not working with MoviX please let me know!
Owners of VIA motherboards must use the "acpi=off" argument or most likely
MoviX will behave erratically.
To avoid having to write that arg at every boot you can add it to the
isolinux.cfg file.
For example, replace the line
append initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=13000 rw root=/dev/ram0 LABEL=MoviX video=vesa:mtrr vga=0x314
with
append initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=13000 rw root=/dev/ram0 LABEL=MoviX video=vesa:mtrr vga=0x314 acpi=off
Please use the newly created NVidiaTV label and give us feedback. It's been tested with NVidia GeForce 2 MX400 and NVidia GeForce 4 MX440.
I want to thank the great guys at www.scriptamanent.it for making the
logo for the MoviX project.
I also want to thanks my friend Andrea Assorgia for all his encouragements
and good advices about making MoviX and for actually having suggested
the name of the project. Special thanks go to my brother Vincenzo that
bought me a very fast CD burner speeding up a lot the development of this
package!
Finally I want to thanks Robos for his interest in the project and for
suggesting me the best way to develop this menu.