[mythtv-users] CPU load when watching TV

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Sun Dec 13 00:00:29 UTC 2009


On Saturday 12 December 2009 06:23:52 pm Brian Wood wrote:
>
> Top gives you an average. I've seen systems  where top says 60% or so that
> were actually hitting peaks that caused playback problems.

True -- but it's also very useful in identifying what specific processes are 
chewing up CPU time. In my experience, when playing back video and nothing 
else, this should be the mythfrontend process, with X coming in second, and 
others chewing up negligible amounts of CPU time. If the system is 
transcoding, commflagging, or doing something else during playback, the 
relevant processes may be up there, too.

> I used to have the problems with X that you mentioned, I forget what the
> fix was.

For me, it was to add the following line to the video card's "Device" section 
in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

    Option         "UseEvents" "True"

This was with an nVidia card using the nVidia proprietary drivers. Such fixes 
tend to be very card-specific, though. I don't know offhand if this option 
applies to other video cards. The MythTV wiki has notes for some of the 
common drivers.

-- 
Rod Smith


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