[mythtv-users] giving up on 0.21

[William Munson]

Greg Woods wrote:
> I have been trying for a couple of months now to get the 0.21 Myth
> packages from ATrpms to work well on my Fedora 8 system. I am at a dead
> end. If I remove all the myth* packages, and try compiling from my old
> 0.20 SVN source, is there a chance this could actually work? This
> version did work well under FC5 on the same hardware, so I do not
> believe my problem is lack of hardware power. It has to be software
> configuration, but I have tried everything I can think of. I  have tried
> every playback profile from CPU-- to CPU++, and I still get "NVP:
> prebuffering pause" filling my logs, and choppy or bad looking HD
> playback. I also cannot get Myth to work with ALSA; the only way I can
> get any audio at all is to use /dev/dsp (OSS). I've been told this is a
> Pulseaudio problem, but I can't figure out how to make it work, and
> removing the pulseaudio stuff from the alsa.conf file doesn't help
> anyway. (The OSS audio works well enough, but I'll need ALSA eventually
> when I move to optical sound output). I have also tried both 96 and 169
> versions of the Nvidia driver (GeForce 5500); the 96 versions don't work
> at all on this system, and it doesn't matter which subversion of the 169
> driver I use, I still get crappy playback.
>
> The closest I came to acceptable was the CPU-- profile, and that looks
> OK for shows like "ER", but looks terrible for anything with fast motion
> (like hockey). Even with "ER", I get prebuffering pauses when I first
> start playback with crackly audio for a few seconds, then it settles
> down and looks OK even though the prebuffering pause messages continue
> in the log. Attached is a log sample, just in case it makes light bulbs
> come on for anybody still reading this.
>
> My next plan, when I feel a little less discouraged than  do right now,
> is to try the 0.20 SVN sources. I feel like I have nothing to lose.
>
> --Greg
>
>   

For me getting 0.21 working right took two parts. Biggest change was to 
Ubuntu which allowed me to use firewire capture from my STB. I have 
always compiled my own rather than use binaries that have everything 
turned on so the second part of the fix for me was to patch my audio 
code with the patch that fakes out the system into thinking it can run 
BobX2.(It can, but for some reason myth does not think so, this patch 
fixes that.) This for me cured my jerky video and audio issues. 
Currently running a FX5200 video on a Athlon 2.0GHz processor with xvmc 
enabled on all video over the size of standard tv. Nice smooth video 
with about 45-60% cpu usage. Have 1GB of ram installed. Let me know if 
you want a diff of the patch against 0.21-fixes branch.