[mythtv-users] MYthTV Playback is Choppy

[Brian Wood]

On Tuesday 07 April 2009 21:18:49 Brian Schmidt wrote:
> Here is the additional detail on the hardware:
> AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+ (~1730MHz)
> 256MB RAM
> 10GB boot drive
> 200GB video storage drive
>
> Installed packages:
> mythtv-0.21-17.fc10.i386
> mythtv-frontend-0.21-17.fc10.i386
> kmod-nvidia-96xx-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686-96.43.11-1.fc10.1.i686
> akmod-nvidia-96xx-96.43.11-1.fc10.1.i686
> xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-96.43.11-1.fc10.i386
> xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs-96.43.11-1.fc10.i386
>
>
> `top` output without mythfrontend even running (top 4 processes on the
> list):
>
> top - 23:11:25 up 48 min,  2 users,  load average: 1.20, 5.24, 5.29
> Tasks: 135 total,   2 running, 132 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
> Cpu(s): 20.7%us,  1.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 76.0%id,  1.3%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.3%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem:    221612k total,   192532k used,    29080k free,     1136k buffers
> Swap:   524280k total,   222956k used,   301324k free,    53728k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+
> COMMAND
>  3104 myth      20   0  194m  50m  11m S 11.6 23.4   1:50.86
> firefox
>  2467 root      20   0 85908  12m 2476 S  9.3  5.7   0:57.58
> Xorg
>  1441 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  1.3  0.0   0:33.72
> lirc_dev
>  2317 root      20   0  213m 6448 2812 S  1.3  2.9   0:30.63 mythbackend
>
>
> `top` output while trying to playback a recording (top 6 processes on the
> list):
>
> top - 22:53:08 up 30 min,  2 users,  load average: 6.79, 4.93, 2.98
> Tasks: 136 total,   1 running, 134 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
> Cpu(s):  3.7%us,  5.6%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id, 89.7%wa,  0.3%hi,  0.7%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem:    221612k total,   217580k used,     4032k free,      252k buffers
> Swap:   524280k total,   312296k used,   211984k free,    69712k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+
> COMMAND
>  2961 myth      20   0  159m 2024 1464 S  3.3  0.9   0:01.33
> pulseaudio
>  3211 myth      20   0  441m  78m  57m S  2.0 36.5   1:37.57
> mythfrontend
>  2467 root      20   0  201m 7828 3064 S  1.3  3.5   0:36.90
> Xorg
>  1441 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  1.0  0.0   0:20.44
> lirc_dev
>   242 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.7  0.0   0:02.85
> kswapd0
>  2317 root      20   0  213m 5476 1996 S  0.7  2.5   0:16.47 mythbackend

Well you seem to need more RAM, as you're swapping a bit, and with 0% idle I'd 
say you are maxed out on CPU cycles.

Looks like your CPU is spending  LOT of time waiting on I/O, I'd check your 
disk systems, make sure DMA is working, you are using a proper type of cable 
etc. etc. This is almost certainly your main problem.

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org