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I need more speed for my HDTV playback. Any suggestions?
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12014		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:50 am ]
Post subject:  I need more speed for my HDTV playback. Any suggestions?
First of all, here's my setup.

2.6GHz Celeron
Trigem Imperial GL Motherboard (Intel 82845GL built-in graphics disabled, and the board has no AGP slot)
Dvico FusionHDTV5 Lite
nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI'
2 sticks of RAM (one 512 and one 128)
KnoppMyth R5D1

When I try to watch 1080i, the picture looks pretty good, but the audio becomes noticeably choppy. The video gets slightly choppy, but it's not really noticeable. Also, the CPU seems pretty pegged at 100%.

If I turn off deinterlacing (I was using Bob deinterlace), then the HDTV will play at full speed. Though, I notice interlacing problems and it looks fairly junky.

I can not overclock this board. I actually tried to do a hardware mod, but it failed and my BIOS does not support any way to set any speeds.

First of all, should my setup play 1080i just fine? I thought it would based on other reports that I read. Is there something that I'm missing that would speed things up? How can I tell if my hardware is being used to its fullest?

What can I try to do to speed this up and/or optimize it? Are there any other pre-optimized binaries to try? Would compiling stuff (kernel, Myth, etc.) be of any benefit? I'm not really into compiling the packages myself because it becomes a maintenance issue when I need to upgrade things. Though, I'll do it if people think it'll help.

I don't want to toss more money at this project. I would really like to find a way to squeeze a bit more performance out of it without buying a new motherboard/CPU/etc.

I'd appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks!
Author:  RacerX [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:09 am ]
Post subject: 
You might want to take a look at this post

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... light=6150

It seems to verify your thought of compiling from scratch with the least amount of programs. That would be a good test. Since you are not inclined to upgrade the hardware it would seem to be the way to go..
Author:  thornsoft [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:33 am ]
Post subject: 
Have you tried XvMC? The OSD will be greyscale when it's on. R5D1 is the only release where it worked for me, but it was nice. I blew my HD last night, and will probably be going back to R5D1 (was on 0.20, which I like, but it had playback issues with Athlon64).
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:40 am ]
Post subject: 
Yeah, I should have been more clear about that. On R5D1, I am using the "Standard XvMC" setting with BOB.

I have not tried MythTV 0.20 at all.

Also, that other thread that RacerX pointed me to seems to be more to do with the Athlon64 issues, unless I'm missing something.
Author:  RacerX [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 12:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
Well I guess the point I was trying to make was that if you know your hardware is borderline and don't want to upgrade the hardware. Then you can try compiling from scratch or you could try it as only a frontend and see if that improves things. Either way lessens the software load and might help you out to determine what will and will not perform well for you're situation...
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 12:38 pm ]
Post subject: 
RacerX wrote:
Well I guess the point I was trying to make was that if you know your hardware is borderline and don't want to upgrade the hardware. Then you can try compiling from scratch or you could try it as only a frontend and see if that improves things. Either way lessens the software load and might help you out to determine what will and will not perform well for you're situation...


Right, I understand what you're getting at, then. I'm not excited about compiling the source, but I'll do it. I was just hoping to get find someone that had similar issues to see if compiling helped them. I'd still be open to any other suggestions, too.

Thanks!
Author:  Human [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 12:59 pm ]
Post subject: 
Flavor wrote:
I'm not excited about compiling the source, but I'll do it.

Everything in KM is compiled for i586 already, and since you already have a CPU that isn't more advanced than that, I don't think recompiling will help you.

First, I'd try linear blend deinterlacing. It seems to be fairly gentle as deinterlacers go.

Failing that, you may want to transcode shows before you watch them. This will significantly delay your ability to watch new content, though.

You could also try setting your monitor resolution lower. Drop it all the way down to 640x480 to see if you get a performance boost at all.
Author:  RacerX [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 12:59 pm ]
Post subject: 
I tested out FX5200 pci vs Nvidia 6150 onboard video and found that the best solution was to use 6150 onboard graphics with R5D1. It seems that playback was smoother and less studdering. It pretty hard to make a general statement as to what hardware works and doesn't when it comes to HD playback. It is quite resource intensive overall.
Author:  gr8nash [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 1:50 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
2 sticks of RAM (one 512 and one 128)


i dont think thats enough ram to playback HD.. i always use AT LEAST a 512 and 256. And most or the time 1 gig of ram. run:
Code:
free

if you are showing any swappage then you need more ram.
Author:  Human [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 1:59 pm ]
Post subject: 
Another thing to try is quitting the frontend and just playing your shows with mplayer on the command line. It can be a lot more efficient than mythfrontend. Not as convenient, certainly... If that works well for you, you can try to link /myth/video/recordings to /myth/pretty and then configure mplayer to play back .mpg files. It will not be as efficient as just running mplayer and not the frontend, but it may be more efficient than the built-in player in MythTV.
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:11 pm ]
Post subject: 
gr8nash wrote:
run:
Code:
free

if you are showing any swappage then you need more ram.


It doesn't show any swapping. In fact, I had previously tried 2 sticks of 512, and it didn't help.
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
Human wrote:
Another thing to try is quitting the frontend and just playing your shows with mplayer on the command line. It can be a lot more efficient than mythfrontend. Not as convenient, certainly... If that works well for you, you can try to link /myth/video/recordings to /myth/pretty and then configure mplayer to play back .mpg files. It will not be as efficient as just running mplayer and not the frontend, but it may be more efficient than the built-in player in MythTV.


I tried mplayer on the command-line just now.

It seemed to play fine, but it had the interlacing issues. So, I guess it's no better than running mythfrontend and turing off deinterlacing.

Is there a good way to show how fast my hard drive access is? I wonder if that could be an issue.
Author:  Human [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:26 pm ]
Post subject: 
Flavor wrote:
I tried mplayer on the command-line just now.

It seemed to play fine, but it had the interlacing issues. So, I guess it's no better than running mythfrontend and turing off deinterlacing.

Try it with deinterlacing, then:
Code:
mplayer -vf pp=lb /your/file.mpg

Quote:
Is there a good way to show how fast my hard drive access is? I wonder if that could be an issue.

There's a way to short-circuit the need for that test. First, as a previous poster said, see how much free RAM you have while playing back your media. If you have, say, 32MB, then you can invoke mplayer with a cache directive to cache 32MB before it starts playing back. If you get smooth initial playback and slow/stuttered playback later on in the video, then it could mean that your disk is a bottleneck.

Example of how to run with explicit caching:
Code:
mplayer -cache 32768 ...

Combining both suggestions, try:
Code:
mplayer -cache 32768 -vf pp=lb /your/file.mpg
Author:  Flavor [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:37 pm ]
Post subject: 
Is there a good place that I can wget a nice test MPG. The reception here is fairly poor, and I'd like to test on something I know is good.

EDIT: I'm downloading http://pchdtv.com/downloads/tst.tar to test with.
Author:  Human [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
Flavor wrote:
Is there a good place that I can wget a nice test MPG.

I just posted my source:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 0468#70468

There are 4 clips I've used: crawford, emotion, logo, and shuttle
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