When using MythArchive and I've set it off (chosen which programmes I want to burn to a DVD, etc...) I'm presented with the status/progress page, do I need to leave it there or can I click the "Exit" button and get on with something else, watch TV/a recording or whatever?

Would it cancel the whole thing or would it continue preparing the DVD and then burn it?

Thanks

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Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Hi,

The 'Exit' button allows you to continue using mythtv while the archiving occurs. 'Cancel' will cancel the current achiving project. If you have Exited, you can come back and check on the progress of the archive at anytime. Status messages are sent to the LiveTv OSD.

BigB.

Cool, glad I can now get on with other important things... like watching stuff as it burns.
Thank you... I should have been braver and tried it myself....
Regards Chris

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Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

I recently got burning directly to DVD to work and it does excellent.

My problem is that I hit EXIT like tophee did and go to watch a recording and it will play for maybe a minute and then exit back to the main menu (Watch TV, Watch Recordings, etc.) And my remote is frozen during this as well. I VNC into the MythTV and select the recording I want to watch, it plays for maybe another minute and again exits to the main menu.

It keeps transcoding/burning the DVD, and eventually when it finishes, I can navigate w/ remote and watch recordings as usual, but not while it's working.

Any clues?

System specs? Sounds like you don't have enough horsepower to do everything at once. Transcoding, mplex, et al consume quite a few CPU cycles...

Celeron D 3.06Ghz
1GB RAM
Nvidia 6200 128MB video card (Outputting DVI - HDMI @720p)
200GB HDD

I wondered if it had to do something with horsepower, but when I watch my recording for that 1 minute or so, it plays fine. No stutter or anything. I tried an HD program and a SD program to see if it made a difference. It did not matter. Same result.

I am running R5F27 with a 3 Ghz Pentium 4. When MythArchive is running I really can't do anything else with the box.

MythArchive process uses all available CPU cycles, and everything else
is painfully slow, Guess you could run them at a lower priority if you wanted to.

My solution was to always run any archive jobs at night.

Up until this point, I usually was doing it right before I went to sleep or some other off-peak hour. This time, I mistakenly tried it 15 minutes before the wife and I wanted to watch something...hard lesson to learn.

I think this is one of the reasons that you want to separate your front- and backend systems. Frequently when I archive, someone else ejects the DVD to play some movie, putting hours of cpu work down the drain. Plus the fact that although archive is using a low nice value (18? 19? Don't remember), there are steps in the process that makes video playback stutter - quite seriously affecting the FAF (Father Acceptance Factor).
Separating the two is definitely a good idea for digital TV. With analog, the backend must still have enough crunch to encode any recordings in progress along with the archiving job. Well, such a machine would have lots of fans anyway - tuck it away and get yourself a quiet living room grade frontend!

Cheers,
/Chris

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