File README.SUSE-vdr.html of Package vdr
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="./greenish.css" type="text/css" /> <title>VDR</title> </head> <body> <h1>VDR - Video Disk Recorder</h1> <p><a href='http://www.tvdr.de/'>VDR</a> (Video Disk Recorder) is a video playing and recording application for DVB (Digital Video Brodcast) cards.</p> <a name='File%20system%20layout'></a><h2>File system layout</h2> <p>The vdr package is adapted to fit seamlessy into the openSUSE filesystem hierarchy:</p> <ul> <li>/etc/vdr contains configuration files that you might want to modify to suite your needs (e.g. channels.conf). See man 5 vdr for the syntax of those files.</li> <li>/var/spool/video is the place where recordings are stored. If you are low on space you should consider putting this on a separate partition. Recordings can take up several Gigabytes.</li> <li>/usr/lib/vdr contains shared libraries for plugins. If you compile you own plugins you need to put them there. </li> <li>/usr/include/vdr contains header files necessary to compile plugins, if the package vdr-devel is installed.</li> </ul> <a name='Start%20scripts'></a><h2>Start scripts</h2> <p>You almost never want to run the vdr binary itself. If the package runvdr-extreme-systemd is installed, you can configure the start parameter in the file /etc/runvdr.conf and start vdr in the background using</p> <pre>systemctl start vdr.service</pre> <p>If you want to start vdr automatically on boot run</p> <pre>systemctl enable vdr.service</pre> <p>Note: vdr as packaged on openSUSE does not run as root but under a special vdr user account to reduce the risk of damage to the system in case of (security-)bugs. Do not try to re-use the vdr start scripts for a self-compiled version without applying the necessary patches!</p> <a name='Setting%20up%20the%20channel%20list'></a><h2>Setting up the channel list</h2> <p>vdr as packaged on openSUSE contains a minimal /etc/vdr/channels.conf for Astra-19.2E (DVB-S). You can create you own using dvbscan. For example if you live in Nuernberg, Germany and want to create a channels.conf for DVB-T you would run</p> <pre> scan -o vdr /usr/share/dvb/scan/dvb-t/de-Nuernberg > /etc/vdr/channels.conf </pre> <a name='Using%20vdr%20with%20a%20TV%20set%20attached'></a><h2>Using vdr with a TV set attached</h2> <p>If you have a full-featured card and intend to run vdr on a dedicated machine just like a regular VCR, you probably want also use a remote control unit to control vdr. Unfortunately, the remote control unit shipped with the popular Hauppauge DVB cards is not supported out of the box. You need to install the Remote Control-Plugin contained in the vdr-plugins package. For home-brew hardware or if you also have an analogue card with remote you might want to use lirc. Use the yast runlevel editor or systemctl to have dvb, lirc and vdr started during boot.</p> <a name='Using%20vdr%20on%20a%20desktop%20machine'></a><h2>Using vdr on a desktop machine</h2> <p>With a full-featured card you can use xawtv for watching TV on your desktop. You should append /usr/share/doc/packages/xawtv/vdr.config to your ~/.xawtv file to control vdr from within xawtv.</p> <a name='Using%20vdr%20on%20budget%20cards'></a><h2>Using vdr on budget cards</h2> <p>Budget cards do not have an mpeg decoder so you can't connect a TV set to them nor use v4l applications like xawtv to watch TV. Instead you may use the xine-plugin for vdr (package vdr-plugin-xine). To tell vdr to use this plugin add -P'xine -r' to your vdr start script, or if using runvdr-extreme-systemd add the following to /etc/runvdr.conf</p> <pre>AddPlugin xine -r</pre> <p>When vdr is running press the "VDR" button in xine (package xine-ui) to get the live TV picture. Instead of xine-ui you can also use any xine based media player like kaffeine by opening the url vdr://var/lib/vdr-xine/stream#demux:mpeg_pes</p> <p>You may need to install additional codec packages to be able to view mpeg streams like the one from the dvb card.</p> <a name='Compiling%20your%20own%20plugins'></a><h2>Compiling your own plugins</h2> <p>See also <a href='http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE%3APackaging_vdr'>openSUSE:Packaging_vdr</a> for instructions how to properly package vdr plugins to fit into package management.</p> <p>Normally, current vdr plugins can be compiled and installed as any standard software using make && make install, but old plugins expect to be compiled inside the vdr source directory. This is of course not possible with a prebuilt package. Fortunately, most plugins can still be easily compiled using the following command:</p> <pre> make VDRDIR=/usr/include/vdr LIBDIR=/usr/lib/vdr LOCALEDIR=/usr/share/vdr/locale all </pre> <p>To tell vdr to use the plugin add -P'pluginname' to your vdr start script, or if using runvdr-extreme-systemd add an "AddPlugin" line to /etc/runvdr.conf. Some plugins require additional treatment because vdr is not running as root. The osd-teletext plugin for example wants to put files into /vtx. You have to create that directory yourself and change it's owner to vdr. Other plugins like the dvd plugin open device files, you need to adjust permissions for these as well.</p> <a name='Updated%20Packages'></a><h2>Updated Packages</h2> <p>Packages for the most recent stable vdr version are available via the <a href='http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/vdr/'>openSUSE build service</a></p> </html></body>
