My hd SBE works great but when the OSD is on the screen everything slows down dramatically. The picture gets severely choppy and the sound is even worse.

I recall various discussions about OSD issues but several keyword searches fail to bring up anything helpful. I tried unchecking OpenGL (made things worse) and I tried unchecking the "fade" option but both changes made things worse.

Can someone point me in the right direction here? I've read that the OSD is in a separate frame buffer which causes horrible things or maybe they meant flames out of my muffler... I dunno.. Either way it sounds bad.

EDIT: This issue was resolved when I removed the 6200 PCI card and used the onboard 6150 video. Apparently the original PCI type cards are not optimal for HD playback and various emails in this thread and in this forum mention this.


Thanks for your help. -Abs

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

Not sure if this will help or not..

I run an experimental 6.0 mythbox that experiences the effect that you cite- runs HD video fine but slows down and gets choppy when OSD (B & W) is onscreen.

But my machine is running on a 1.8 ghz Pentium 4, with the video setup automatically selecting Xvmc on the Nvidia 5200 video card. I was surprised that it would do HD video acceptably at all....

Your dual core 3 ghz machine should have a cakewalk.

My production machines ( single P4 3.6 ghz) are running a 1080 p output on R5.5 and colored OSDs so not running Xvmc. Only time they displayed this behavior was when they were trying to process commercials out of the video simultaneously with recording and playing back.

Try setting the commercial processing to overnight starting at midnite and ending 7 am.

Thanks for the suggestion. But I don't think commercials have much to do with it.

I'm not sure why you mentioned that the OSD was B&W. Does that matter?

I've also found this thread that discusses this issue with R5D5 and R5E50 but doesn't give a solution. The thread just dies!?

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 26c093c724

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

In my case, the processor attention demanded by processing commercials 'on the fly' was enough to cause stuttering, even on the single processor 3.6 ghz machines. It went away when I limited the commercial processing to hours when video wasn't being displayed (overnight).

It signified that my low powered 1.8 ghz machine could manage to display HD acceptably when some of the video processing was offloaded to a compatable video card using Xvmc (signified by the OSD is B&W, not color.) I noted the 3.6s have color OSDs and are not getting help from the video card, but that when the workload includes commercial processing, even the fast processor machines stutter. I'm assuming your dual core machine should have enough processor power to do HD unaided, but may be pulled under by the significant workload that goes with processing commercials.

Most have moved on from those versions ? I updated all my production machines to R5.5, and am running a R6.000 version to see how it holds up long term.

I'm able to record two HD programs via my HDHomerun while watching one of them and commercial flagging both of them with my Athlon 64 3800+ machine and I'm not using XVMC or any anything like that. I use the Blootube Wide theme which isn't exactly "lite" on resources either. I also have 2 GB RAM.

I realize this isn't exactly "helpful" but based on the hardware specs I don't think the issue is commercial flagging. Still worth a shot though.

Martian

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ABIT NF-M2 nView | Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 2GB DDR2 800 | HDHomerun | GeForce 6150 (onboard) | WD 640 GB SATA HD | DVD-RW (sata) | StreamZap IR receiver with Logitech Harmony remote

Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

I'm not sure how I ended up using XvMC as further reading has shown me that it's used by low powered boxes.

So how do I turn it off? And more importantly what do I change it to?

Thanks, -Abs

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

Ok so I now realize that this whole issue revolves around tv/playback/playback profiles.

The libmpeg works best with quartz renderer for me. In fact my %cpu goes down from 95% to 30%. So this is great. But now my usb streamzap remote's commands/signals aren't being picked up as often. In fact I have to hold the buttons down a lot to get things to work.

Yawn... I guess this all just comes down to trial and error. What works for some people/hardware doesn't work for others. I wish I knew what each renderer's pluses and minuses were and what interlacing does or doesn't do. I'm sure I'll figure this out someday. Or maybe I'll read War & Peace first.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Abs

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

After you read War & Peace, here's the War & Peace of deinterlacing explanations. It's designed for people deinterlacing videos when, say, transcoding DVDs, but the same principles apply for MythTV's deinterlacing schemes:

http://www.100fps.com/

Basically, some broadcasts are still interlaced: NBC is 1080i and CBS is 1080i. (The now-defunct SD analog broadcasts were 480i). Fox and ABC are 720p.

You may not notice MythTV interlacing issues when watching stuff that was filmed. But if you watch sports or news or shows with info "tickers" running across the screen, you may see that it looks different than when you watch the same program on your TV's built-in tuner. If so, that means you need to fiddle with your playback profiles and deinterlacing schemes to get it to look right to you.

Some people don't seem to notice the difference: either they only watch filmed shows, or they literally don't see the difference, or they have a fast enough system that is already set to a good deinterlacing scheme.

Any idea why my usb streamzap would suddenly act up after changing the decoder from XvMC to libmpeg? Could this really be a cause & effect or two totally separate problems unrelated to one another?

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

Certainly can't think of any reason why, but doesn't mean that it's not the case. Does it stop acting up if you switch back? That'd be conclusive evidence, obviously... then you could start checking logs to see if you could find any more clues.

Yes, if I switch back it works great. Very strange. I'm not sure how Cecil & crew block out these tangential issues and stick to the real core of putting out a great product. Especially with people like me starting threads like this!

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

Cool, so at this point I'd recommend starting a new thread since it's a new topic. There's certainly some log where you could check for errors in LIRC, for all I know it's called lirc.log and is in /var/log. The wiki troubleshooting pages might have more. Anyhow, hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me on lirc will have more ideas in your new thread.

Because XvMC offloads more work from the CPU, and as a result it has spare cycles to go check the LIRC input?

Oh and IIRC the streamzap is a USB remote. USB is a serious freaking CPU hog. They saved a nickel on every USB device by forcing your CPU to waste it's time polling the stupid USB ports. It's like using a 747-400 to tow an ox cart.

Thanks for the knowledgeable answer.

When using XvMC, mythfrontend hits 90% cpu with smooth video output. Things only get jerky when the OSD comes up. At no time does the lirc have issues.

When using libmpeg/quartz, mythfrontend takes 30%-40% cpu but lirc is maddenly unresponsive.

Just for giggles I'll get a db9 -> usb converter and plug the receiver in there. Hopefully it solves the whole issue.

Thanks, Abs

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R6.04, dual core 3ghz, 3 gig memory, Zotac 8400 passive heat sink dvi/hdmi out video, 500 gig sata, dual tuner hdhomerun, streamzap remote

Abby

If XvMC is using more CPU than libmpeg, then something is configured wrong.

With XvMC my CPU idle for playback never goes below 25%, and without it HD playback will peg the CPU with either software decoder. Right now I'm watching live 480i content and the % idle is hovering around 87 and the OSD barely causes a blip (full disclosure - my FX5200 lets me use the chromakey option). Full 1080i drops the idle % to ~50 and the OSD has minimal effect. To really stress it, running a live 1080i thumbnail in the program guide drops the idel % down to ~25.

OK, so what configuration matters? See the links in my most recent posting to the R5.5 Hints thread.

In your modules section:


In the device section for your card:

In your extensions and DRI sections:


See the other postings for more details.