[mythtv-users] Performance

[Ray Olszewski]

At 07:30 PM 8/3/2003 -0600, Peter Hutnick wrote:
>Well, I finally have everything working, thanks to Isaac's patient
>pointers to the docs.
>
>On the down side, I am getting choppy video and audio.  On the upside,
>they stay nicely in sync!  I'm not good at these sort of estimates, but
>maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a second "hang" every 5 to 8 seconds.

Your report (deleted here) covers most of the basics, but you do not report 
actual CPU usage. Though you write ...

>The CPU is a Celeron 1.3GHz.  Seems like this should be ample for watching
>TV.

... you may be underestimating the CPU load of watching "live" TV (since 
Myth buffers "live" TV to permit pausing, it actually both encodes and 
decodes). Also, since you don't say what video card and X driver you are 
using, it is unclear if XVideo is running properly, another source of CPU 
load problems.

So check this by running "top" and seeing what the system load is when you 
are watching "live' TV in Myth AND the TV display is actually onscreen. 
(The easiest way to do this is to ssh to the Myth host from another LAN 
host and run "top" in that session.)

Even if X is running properly, a 1.3 GHz Cel can be marginal for "live" TV, 
depending on what capture settings you are using. There's simply no way to 
know for *your* system except for you actually to check CPU load.