[mythtv-users] MythTv, HD-PVR & Xine

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 03 June 2009 09:50:20 Doug Haber wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 June 2009 08:47:05 Doug Haber wrote:
> >> Hi All,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I've been recording shows using my HD-PVR (with Myth SVN trunk) and on a
> >> relatively powerful box the playback is fine.  However, when I try to
> >> playback the files on a Mac Mini I get a lot of stuttering and
>
> prebuffering
>
> >> pause messages in the logs.  However, if I play the file back on the Mac
> >> Mini using Xine then the playback is pretty smooth.  Is there anything I
> >> can do to get Myth to use the same playback as Xine?  If not, is there
>
> any
>
> >> way to use the regular recordings list but then have it play the file in
> >> Xine instead of directly in Myth?
> >
> > Myth does more than just playback the file, which is why you need more
> > horsepower.
> >
> > You would lose things like commercial skip, the ability to play at
>
> different
>
> > speeds and other nice features of Myth if you were to use a different
> > playback program.
> >
> > I guess having smooth playback is a higher priority than skipping
>
> commercials,
>
> > I just wanted to point out the drawbacks to using a non-Myth playback
>
> engine.
>
> > Have you tried different playback profiles? Some are more demanding than
> > others.
>
> Hi Brian,
>
> Thanks for the quick response.  I think you've hit the nail on the head.
> While I love all of the great features of Myth like skipping commercials,
> in this case smooth playback trumps everything.  I could write a nasty
> script to read from the db, get a list of shows pick one and display it in
> Xine, but I was hoping that I could reuse the frontend and just open a new
> media player when it came time to play (ideally only the certain files that
> are slow).  I've tried all of the playback profiles and even created a
> dummy one with no de-interlacers or filters, but all to no avail.
>
> Anything else I can do?

I wouldn't give up on getting the frontend to work on the Mini, yet.

What does your CPU usage look like while playing back? If it's not too high, 
the usual things like stopping any process you don't absolutely need, going 
to a lighter weight window manager (or no WM) etc. might help.

But I'm not sure what you are using on your Mac mini, so this may or may not 
be practical.

Are you running a full frontend on the Mini? Is your network possibly a 
bottleneck? I assume you're accesing the DB over the network.

An immediate workaround might be to drop the bitrate on the recordings, or 
transcode them to something the Mini can handle better after recording.

h264 is hard to decode, one reason we're all so enthralled with VDPAU, but 
again that's not an option with the Mini.

You could try dopping a recording into your videos directory, and selecting 
xine for playback.

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org