[mythtv-users] Resolution

[Alan Snyder]

> 
> On Monday 01 December 2003 17:10, Javier Santos
wrote:
> 
> > I have just set up mythtv on my Gentoo system.
Everything is working
> 
> > fine. I have got choppy video with RTJPeg at
480x480 (default)
> 
> > resolution, but it works ok at 320x240.
> 
> >
> 
> > My setup is:
> 
> > Celeron 1200 Mz
> 
> > Pinnacle PCTV
> 
> > Nvidia TNT rage
> 
> >
> 
> > The disk dma is turned on, my distro is Gentoo and
my kernel is 2.22
> 
> > with preemption and low latency.
> 
> >
> 
> > Should I expect 480x480 resolution to work without
dropping 
> frames or
> 
> > I just should buy a Hauppauge PVR?
> 
> 
> 
> I can do 480x480 on my Athlon XP 1600+ (I assume you
mean 
> LiveTV).  Your 
> 
> machine is a bit slower, but I'd guess you should be
able to 
> handle it.  
> 
> What are your recording profile settings (not just
resolution, but 
> 
> quality & MP3 settings)?  Also, how much/what kind
of RAM do 
> you have?  
> 
> Try setting your MP3 quality at 7, and turn down the
RTjpeg 
> quality to 
> 
> around 172 or so.  Though you may like the picture
better at 320x240, 
> 
> or 320x480, rather than turning down the quality. 
Fiddle 
> with it until 
> 
> you get something you like.
> 

I have an Athlon Thunderbird 1 GHz, 266 MHz FSB, 256
MB DDR, 
generic bt878 card (Kworld) and an nvidia
GeForce2-440MX,
running under Mandrake 9.1.  Both Rtjpeg live tv and
mpeg4
recordings, both at 480x480 with all other settings at
default (mpeg4 is at 2200 Kb/sec at 640x480, scaled
with
resolution, don't recall other settings).

I use around 30-40% CPU to record.  I don't recall my
numbers
for playback, live TV or watching a recording in
progress,
but the worst case was around 80% CPU.

I do notice that both live TV and recordings have a 
"film-like" quality to them.  I suspect that this
relates more
to the compression than to any CPU limitations, since
when I
tried KnoppMyth on my 1.6 GHz Pentium-M notebook the
look
was basically the same.

I recently noticed the pretty modest CPU requirements
they
specify for Freevo at lower resolutions.  I tried
KnoppMyth
on a 460 MHz PII with 256 MB RAM (100 MHz FSB) and a
Voodoo
Banshee video card (salvaged from our local recycling
center).
It nominally worked (I was in a hurry and didn't check
CPU 
utilization).

The bottom line to me is that you can get
better-than-VCR
quality with a rather modest CPU, especially for
frontend-
only.


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree