Setup:

PIII 1Ghz Tualatin
Biostar MB
Onboard Trident Blade Video connected to AverKey3 VGA->TV
512 MB RAM
PVR-250 MCE
KnoppMyth R4V4.1

After finally getting the PVR-250 to work (had to d/l the latest ivtv drivers & recomplie, but seems to work), the one problem is slow playback of mpeg2 files. Top shows pretty much 0% idle (split 65% between mythfrontend and 35% for XFree86) when either LiveTV watching or viewing recorded programs. As an experiment I exited the frontend, ran:

mplayer -fs -vo xv /myth/tv/blahblah.nuv

I was 25% idle when doing this w/ no stuttering or hesitation, but watching the same recording through the frontend got me 100% CPU usage and stuttering For reference, getting 75% idle watching DivX movies through mythvideo.

Pardon my ignorance on this, but does myth use mplayer to view live tv / recorded programs? Is there some place where I may have unwittingly disabled xv?

Running mythfrontend from command line and starting to watch TV; piping standard output to a file I get:

2004-09-01 11:05:04 mythfrontend version: 0.15.20040525-1 www.mythtv.org
2004-09-01 11:05:04 Enabled verbose msgs : important general
2004-09-01 11:05:05 Registering Internal as a media playback plugin.
2004-09-01 11:05:05 Registering MythDVD DVD Media Handler as a media handler
2004-09-01 11:05:05 Registering MythDVD VCD Media Handler as a media handler
2004-09-01 11:05:05 Registering MythMusic Media Handler as a media handler
2004-09-01 11:05:08 Connecting to backend server: 10.0.1.210:6543 (try 1 of 5)
2004-09-01 11:05:08 Using protocol version 8
2004-09-01 11:05:08 Using protocol version 8
2004-09-01 11:05:08 Using protocol version 8
2004-09-01 11:05:10 Opening OSS audio device '/dev/dsp'.
2004-09-01 11:05:10 Audio fragment size: 4096
2004-09-01 11:05:10 Using XV port 61
2004-09-01 11:05:11 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2004-09-01 11:05:21 Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
2004-09-01 11:05:21 Changing from None to None

Any ideas? Let me know if any other info I can provide.

Mucho thanks.

No, MythTV doesn't use MPlayer to play recorded files.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

and livetv is not the same as watching a recording.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Ok - so is the issue bad xvideo support for trident that is exposed by myth decoder? Somethying else? The docs indicate that w/ a 1Ghz cpu I shouldn't expect cpu probs wrt decoding. Any tips for improving playback performance?

thx

If mplayer plays it back fine mythtv should too. I would check to make sure you don't have the deinterlace or jitter reduction filters enabled. both improve the quality but at a high cpu price. also make sure you aren't trying to use xvmc since your card doesn't support it.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets