[mythtv-users] playback profiles... help.

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Tue Mar 18 19:50:18 UTC 2008


On Mar 18, 2008, at 12:37 PM, Sarah Hayes wrote:

> Yes, I'm being an idiot and whilst I REALLY like 0.21 I'm trying to
> understand the default playback profiles. I get what they're doing.
>
> The defaults seem to be: Slim, CPU+, CPU++, High Quality, CPU--,
> Normal.   I'm assuming these are the pre-defined ones but it could be
> something chucked in to Gentoo... if it is I'll go ask in their  
> forums :)
>
> I'd guess High Quality is "best of the best" with all the goodies  
> turned
> on, but I'm having a hard time with the others, especially the ones  
> that
> make mention of ivtv, which I thought was for driving a PVR card?  I  
> get
> the resolution checking and differing rendering engines bit, I'm just
> wonder what the intended use is and what sort of proc/speed's fit in  
> to
> those defaults... is a C3 a 'cpu+' or a 'cpu--' or indeed a 'slim'  
> sort
> of thing.
>
> Any one with advice welcome.

I think it's more of a "suggested use" like, "If you want to sacrifice  
lots of CPU for good quality, use a CPU++ profile. If your CPU isn't  
up to the task, try CPU+. If you have a slow CPU or want to dedicate  
the machine's resources more for transcoding or anything else running  
other than watching TV and quality doesn't matter all that much, try  
CPU- or CPU--.

I basically started at the top and worked my way down until I found  
one with a good balance of quality/cpu usage. There's no hard and fast  
rule that says, "If you have this fast of a CPU and this graphics card  
you should use this profile." That's why it's easy to switch between  
them.

If you want to tweak those default settings and know enough about your  
CPU speed, hardware, drivers, etc.. then you can edit those. If you  
don't, there's no need to edit. Just use them. That's why they're there.

-Brad



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