[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #7525: Optimize Pulse handling in MythUI

[Jim Stichnoth]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Gavin Hurlbut <gjhurlbu at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do call it a problem to have a tiny "Recording..." on the screen pulsing
> taking up nearly 50% of a CPU core.  There are much better things to use CPU
> for, especially on a combined frontend/backend setup, which is fairly common
> out there.  If alphapulse can't be knocked down to use significantly less
> CPU, I will probably just go and disable it locally on my setup, and
> maintain THAT as a patch.  I'd rather spend the CPU on commflagging than in
> idling in a menu, as pretty as the menu may be.
>
> But I'll see what your current patchset does to the CPU usage.  Maybe it
> does enough :)

I think you'll be disappointed...  For some reason, it just seems to
take a lot of CPU to update the "static" screens at 70Hz without
hardware acceleration.

One could globally reduce the pulse rate from 70Hz and get a
proportional drop in CPU use, but then some transition effects will
look strange.

One could also patch alphapulse to update only every few ticks, which
would make alphapulse less smooth but not affect anything else.

Jim