[mythtv-users] Mac OS X video profile settings in 0.21?

[Todd Ignasiak]

On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Todd Ignasiak <todd.ignasiak at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just upgraded my Mac OS X MythTV setup to 0.21, and ran into
>  problems with video playback performance.
>
>  1080i playback went from using 80-90% of one CPU (Mac Mini 1.66GHz
>  Core Duo) in 0.20.2 to 135-155% CPU with 0.21 and choppy playback.
>  I have tried a bunch of settings for the video profile, but nothing
>  has brought the CPU down from the 150% range.     Even 720p playback,
>  which used to be around 65-70% cpu load, is at 130%+.

After a bunch of experimentation, I finally located a Trac ticket
which had a patch to enable MMX in Leopard.  After applying that
patch, video decoding CPU usage is back down in the ballpark that 0.20
was in.   Are these 'known issues' posted anywhere?  It is not
mentioned in the release notes, or any mailing list, wiki, etc. that I
could find.

The patch is here: http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/4200

I also enabled the Mac video acceleration (dvdv) option.   For 720p
playback, it looked very promising.. CPU usage was around 50%.   But,
1080i playback didn't work right, the video output was corrupted with
tiles of what appeared to be unused video memory (e.g. chunks of the
Front Row menu were shown when video playback was attempted).


>  I see that the dvdv acceleration is listed as a new feature in 0.21.
>  Does this mean that it is now stable enough for common usage?  My
>  attempts at using it in the past didn't go well.   Are there any
>  limits on its support (is Leopard okay?), or is it documented
>  anywhere?      I am not positive, but I don't think the frontend
>  configuration generated by osx-packager.pl listed Mac acceleration as
>  being enabled.
>
>
>  The settings options appear to be:
>
>  Decoder: Standard, libmpeg2,
>  Video Renderer: opengl, quartz-blit
>  OSD Renderer: softblend
>
>  Decoder: Mac hardware acceleration
>  Video Renderer: quartz-accel
>  OSD Renderer: opengl3
>
>  I thought the closest approximation of 0.20 settings was  Standard
>  MPEG2, Quartz-blit, softblend.  But, that was still up around 150%
>  CPU.
>
>
>  Anyone having better results for Mac OS playback?
>