History

Frequently asked questions

Translations

Movian is not translated to my language. How can I help add/contribute with a translation?

Please use this guide: https://movian.tv/projects/movian/wiki/Translations

Subtitles

Subtitles are not correctly shown?

This could be a number of issues.

  • Incorrect character encoding. Starting with 2.99.275 Movian will try to autodetect encoding of SRT files. If it fails to detect encoding it will decode the file as configured under the "Languages -> SRT character set" in settings.
  • A font with the required glyphs is not available. Please read "Font handling" section below.

External subtitles do not work when playing from UPnP/DLNA server shares.

This only works with some UPnP/DLNA servers. MiniDLNA and Twonky both have some extra support for handling SRT files. Recent builds of UMS have support too but is not fully tested.

Font handling

Font of user interface in Movian contains spaces between letters or incorrect glyphs in arabic/hebrew/chinese texts etc. Can we fix that?

On Ubuntu and OS X uses Liberation Sans font which is shipped with Movian. On the PS3 and RPi Movian loads fonts available from OS. The problem is - those font libs don't contain glyphs for all languages at the same time. The solution is to manually install TTF font that contains proper glyphs. Put your favorite TTF font to the flash/HDD drive/Samba share and just open it in Movian. It will ask you in which parts of Movian do you want to install selected font. Select UI and subtitles. Recommended font is ARIALUNI.TTF which you can find in Microsoft Windows distributions (eg C:\WINDOWS\FONTS. It is not included in Movian distribution due to copyright restrictions.

How to access developer's settings?

Enter settings:dev into the unified search box on the home screen

Audio output

I'm using Movian on PS3 and playing a file with Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 soundtrack but my receiver says it's DTS

Movian decodes multichannel audio to PS3 audio mixer which doesn't allow applications to output raw bitstreams. So the mixer reencodes that mutichannel stream on the fly to the best available format based on the audio settings in XMB. If 8 channel Linear PCM is available, that will be preferred. Then come DTS, then AC-3 and if none of those are available Movian will output 2 channel output Pro-logic mixed.

How to connect to Samba/CIFS share?

Movian has a native (works on all platforms and does not depend on some library on the host) Samba client which allows connecting to Windows shares.

Starting from v4.9.142 it's possible both to browse the network for servers and to browse shares of selected server. If server asks for auth credentials Movian will automatically ask you to enter it. To manually add bookmarks use following syntax: smb://serverNameOrIP/shareName, for example: smb://192.168.0.1/c$

Custom background

I installed custombg plugin. Can I configure it to render background gradients?

In 'path to image' type something like showtime:pixmap:gradient:0,0,0:0,0,90 to get a black -> blue gradient.

How can I get download links to the plugins?

Just open in browser http://showtime.lonelycoder.com/plugins/plugins-v1.json

How can I manually install plugin that I downloaded from github plugin repo etc?

Just put that zip file to USB drive or SMB share etc and play it with Movian. It will install it from zip file.

Where does Movian store installedfonts, installedplugins, kvstore, metadb, settings?

On Ubuntu /home/username/.hts/showtime/
On PS3 (Standalone Movian) /dev_hdd0/game/HTS00003/USRDIR/settings/
On PS3 (Multiman Movian) /dev_hdd0/game/BLES80608/USRDIR/sys/settings/
On RPi /stos/persistent/showtime/

Where can I find logs?

Read here: https://movian.tv/projects/movian/wiki/Logging

How can I connect via SSH to Movian OS running on RPi?

Use putty http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

What is SSH login/password to connect to Movian OS on RPi?

Login: root
Password: showtime

Can I use some kind of file manager to get/put files from/to Movian OS on RPi?

Use WinSCP http://winscp.net/

How to disable UPnP while running Movian in debug mode?

Just run it with --disable-upnp

How to enable MPEG2 and VC1 codecs on RPi?

1. Buy license at https://www.raspberrypi.com/
2. Add following strings: decode_MPG2=0x01234567 or/and decode_WVC1=0x89abcdef to config.txt in the root of STOS SD card.
Alternatively you can connect via ssh to your STOS and do:

mount /boot -o remount,rw
vi /boot/config.txt
add keys there, write and exit
mount /boot -o remount,ro
sync
reboot

In Movian's log you should see:

00:00:01.083: VideoCore [INFO]:MPG2=enabled

How to run HTTP traffic via SOCKS5 proxy?

As of 4.7.116 the feature is available as commandline option --proxy host:port

To run socks 4+5 server on ubuntu you can use: ssh -N -D 0.0.0.0:1080 localhost

How to disable upgrade checks (maybe useful to reduce logged HTTP traffic in developing mode) ?

As of 4.9.64 the feature is available as commandline option --disable-upgrades

Is there any Android based web remotes for Movian?

Try Movian Remote: https://github.com/claha/movianremote
Support forum is here https://movian.tv/boards/6/topics/8944?r=9150#message-9150

Movian on RPi includes mDNS/Avahi so you can ping Movian by Movian.local name. But how can I do that on Windows PCs?

Install Apple Bonjour64.msi (search in Google for it). After installation Windows based PC will be able to use mDNS.

Suddenly my RPi starts in 480p videomode and HDMI CEC stopped working. All was good before, how do I fix that?

Usually that is the result of power outage. HDMI circut of TV set or it's software starts working incorrectly. Just power off TV from power outlet wait a little and power on again. If that won't help try another HDMI cable/port over time contacts can degrade and even swapping HDMI cable ends can help.

I can't update Movian to the latest (or to the custom) version on RPi. How can I do that manually?

1. Download desired *.sqfs binary from here https://movian.tv/builds/movian
2. Connect SD card with STOS to PC and rewrite showtime.sqfs in the root of the card with the binary from step 1.

I found that Movian hangs/deadlocks. How can I help to fix that?

Run Movian on linux via gdb:

gdb --args ./build.linux/showtime -d
(gdb) r
... wait until it hangs then press ctrl-c in gdb (if it shows in console SIGPIPE and stops there, just continue with c) 
(gdb) set height 0
(gdb) thread apply all bt
and paste the output and report the issue