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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:01 am 
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:55 pm
Posts: 19
Hi,

After a long and winding road getting programming info from Schedules Direct I've managed to set up HDTV on my R5F27 box. Everything is working well except for one issue: When I watch live HDTV the video is very choppy. The screen will freeze for as much as a minute or more while the box is working very hard at ... something. I've run 'top' and am failing to see any correlation to specific tasks running a lot. 'top' seems to respond even while the video freezes so it's not a complete takeover of the system. I did notice that RRD was running a lot and I disabled that. My system:

Knoppmyth R5F27
Asus P5LD2 Intel 945P MB
Core2Duo 2G CPU
1G RAM
160G drive (/myth and /media reside on an offboard NAS)
pcHDTV 5500
Hauppauge PVR-150
Chaintech GSE85GT-G1 GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit video

The interesting thing is that if I simply record the same show and watch it later, it is absolutely smooth. One thing I wonder about is whether commercial detection may be causing this, but I'm not sure whether I'd see that in a 'top' display or not.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks, Don


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:01 pm 
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Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2005 7:11 pm
Posts: 52
what is mythfrontend using on the CPU? Are you using xvmc? I use a much smaller box and my playback is not choppy.

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System Specs:
Intel P4 3.2Ghz; Intel mobo; nVid 7600gs AGP (512MB); SoundBlaster Audigy2 Sound; R5.5; PVR-500; HD Homerun; Vizio 42" LCD


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 4:24 pm 
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:55 pm
Posts: 19
mythfrontend runs at 50-55%, Xorg at 7-8% and that's pretty much it. Not using xvmc. Here's a sample top output, pretty much what it always looks like.

Code:
top - 15:22:50 up 1 day,  1:10,  1 user,  load average: 1.67, 1.61, 1.34
Tasks:  92 total,   1 running,  90 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s): 28.4%us,  1.9%sy,  0.0%ni, 65.9%id,  3.0%wa,  0.2%hi,  0.7%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1032728k total,  1012708k used,    20020k free,    99244k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,   241536k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 3409 mythtv     0   0  478m 352m 123m S   50 35.0  33:24.80 mythfrontend
 3338 root       0   0  354m 326m 110m S    7 32.4   4:51.48 Xorg
 3216 mythtv     0   0  293m  39m  12m S    2  3.9   2:28.02 mythbackend
 5568 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    1  0.0   0:19.22 cx88[0] dvb
  233 root       0   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.01 pdflush
 2769 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:09.19 rpciod/0
    1 root       0   0  2036  688  588 S    0  0.1   0:00.98 init
    2 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0
    3 root       0  19     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.12 ksoftirqd/0
    4 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0
    5 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/1
    6 root       0  19     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.05 ksoftirqd/1
    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/1
    8 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.03 events/0
    9 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.12 events/1
   10 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper
   11 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
   15 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd/0
   16 root       0  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd/1
   17 root      26  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
  115 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
  234 root       0   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.29 kswapd0
  235 root      39  19     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kprefetchd


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:08 pm 
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Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:04 pm
Posts: 905
Location: LA, CA
Could it be a network problem?

Quote:
160G drive (/myth and /media reside on an offboard NAS)


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:45 pm 
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:55 pm
Posts: 19
Well, it's possible but I don't think it's likely. I'm all Gig-E and, like I said, I can watch the recording just fine. So ...


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:53 pm 
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Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:04 pm
Posts: 905
Location: LA, CA
dkkrause wrote:
Well, it's possible but I don't think it's likely. I'm all Gig-E and, like I said, I can watch the recording just fine. So ...


Yeah, but when watching LIVE isn't there twice the network traffic? (I'm not sure how you have it set up.) Granted Gig-E shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes a stupid cable can bring the whole system down.

I guess you could eliminate network, once and for all, if you could change it to record to the local drive temporarily. At least that way you know without a doubt which box to address.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:31 am 
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Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2005 7:11 pm
Posts: 52
Too Many Secrets wrote:
dkkrause wrote:
Well, it's possible but I don't think it's likely. I'm all Gig-E and, like I said, I can watch the recording just fine. So ...


Yeah, but when watching LIVE isn't there twice the network traffic? (I'm not sure how you have it set up.) Granted Gig-E shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes a stupid cable can bring the whole system down.

I guess you could eliminate network, once and for all, if you could change it to record to the local drive temporarily. At least that way you know without a doubt which box to address.


Yup, I agree. With the rig he is running there should be 0 issues with HD playback. Are you using the latest nvidia drivers? The 8500GT is new and might not have good support on the stock KM nvidia drivers. That would be my two areas of focus. Local recording and drivers for the video card.

_________________
System Specs:
Intel P4 3.2Ghz; Intel mobo; nVid 7600gs AGP (512MB); SoundBlaster Audigy2 Sound; R5.5; PVR-500; HD Homerun; Vizio 42" LCD


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:23 pm 
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:55 pm
Posts: 19
Yes, recording and playing is twice the traffic but this is a full-duplex network. So, to record and play I have to send the file in both directions on the wire. Doesn't eliminate network problems but I'm not sure this is where to go. I do like the idea of recording locally to verify. Is there a relatively easy way to do that? Do I have to temporarily move /media back to the local drive?

I can't see the machine right now but I downloaded drivers from nvidia as the ones that are distributed in R5F27 wouldn't work at all so I'm much closer to current. And, since recorded video playback works I'm also not convinced that the video driver would be at fault.

Thanks for the help ...


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:38 pm 
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:55 pm
Posts: 1381
Location: Farmington, MI USA
dkkrause wrote:
Yes, recording and playing is twice the traffic but this is a full-duplex network. So, to record and play I have to send the file in both directions on the wire. Doesn't eliminate network problems but I'm not sure this is where to go. I do like the idea of recording locally to verify. Is there a relatively easy way to do that? Do I have to temporarily move /media back to the local drive?
I would simply unmount the NAS from /myth, run the test, and remount it (assumes you did not remove the original /myth/XXX directory structure before mounting from the NAS, and that your primary partition has enough space to record enough TV to determine if this is the problem or not). If you find that the local /myth/tv is the solution you'll have to mount the /myth/XXXX directories from the NAS individually, leaving /myth/tv local.

dkkrause wrote:
I can't see the machine right now but I downloaded drivers from nvidia as the ones that are distributed in R5F27 wouldn't work at all so I'm much closer to current.
Are you using the latest drivers? Driver "nvidia" shows up under Section "Device" in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf?


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:43 pm 
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Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:55 pm
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Yes 'Driver "nvidia", and I get an nvidia splash screen when X starts. I'll try the local drive ...[/quote]


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:01 pm 
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:55 pm
Posts: 1381
Location: Farmington, MI USA
slowtolearn wrote:
I would simply unmount the NAS from /myth, run the test, and remount it (assumes you did not remove the original /myth/XXX directory structure before mounting from the NAS, and that your primary partition has enough space to record enough TV to determine if this is the problem or not).
Errrm, my bad, you may find that you'll need to create a tv directory under /myth after unmounting the NAS. /myth is not on the primary partition by default...


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