[mythtv-users] Playback problem -- random short pauses

[tim draper]

i too have freezing similar to how you describe. i've not worked it out to a
specific cause yet, but i will be keeping an eye on this thread to see how
it progresses.

im thinking it's something todo with CPU, HDD or possibly the gpu decoding.
the 2 times i've noticed it, has been at what i'd expect higher bit-rate
scenes to be; major change in screen content one of which was a HD channel.
it's fairly rare on my system though. infact the other night i watched tv
perfectly for 3hours on various channels (HD included) and it was fine. on a
previous install, i seem to recall having TOP running when a pause occured;
top was still responding and no weird utilization either..



On 24 March 2011 15:36, Nasa <nasa01 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Mike,
>
> I have seen these *pauses* as well -- and you do a good job describing
> it.  The only execpetion I have is that the pauses can be longer than
> 2 seconds(in some cases, much).  I haven't taken the time to troubleshoot
> this and thus haven't put in a bug report.
>
> Thanks for hitting the list with this, it maybe more prevelant than
> just me :}
>
> Nasa
>
> ----- "Michael Drons" <mdrons at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I see the same issue on my FE device.  I can't answer the issue either
> > when asked.  I usually blam it on the video source switching from 480p
> > to 720p (ie a commercial).  But I know it does it other times.
> >
> > I see the same ALSA errors.
> >
> > I have not spent the time trying to determine the issue.  If you get
> > anywhere or need additional data, please let me know as I am willing
> > to provide debug/logs.
> >
> > My FE/BE is trunk.
> >
> > Mike
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Kenneth Emerson <kenneth.emerson at gmail.com>
> > To: Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> > Sent: Thu, March 24, 2011 11:03:28 AM
> > Subject: [mythtv-users] Playback problem -- random short pauses
> >
> > I have been following several of the threads on this list (and the
> > commit list) that have talked about "stuttering" during playback.  I
> > don't believe that these issues are describing what I am seeing on my
> > system.  My symptoms seem to have started happening about two months
> > ago but I cannot pinpoint the time to some specific change in either
> > my FE/BE combination or the version of mythTV.  I keep both my OS
> > (Ubuntu 10.04 32 bit) and mythTV (24-fixes currently
> > v0.24-227-gccd73be) up to date.  My version of NVIDIA driver is
> > 260.19.21.  My system is based on an Intel Q6600 quad core 2.4GHz cpu.
> >  The video being watched is primarily either 720p or 1080i material.
> >  I don't believe I have ever seen the problem on 480 material, but
> > that data set may be too small to matter.
> >
> >
> > The specific problem I see during playback is a random, short pause
> > with either missing frames or missing audio; hard to tell which.  The
> > pause is very short (less than 2 seconds) but long enough to miss 1-3
> > words of the dialog.  The video is not damaged since I can back up and
> > replay the same segment without any interruption.  These pauses are
> > random and occur anywhere from none in an hour-long show to four or
> > five times in that period.  It is not related to the scheduler
> > starting/stopping other recordings as I check my watch every time one
> > occurs.  I do see a slight stutter, occasionally, when I know there
> > are other recordings stopping/starting and that is a different and
> > less annoying symptom.  I also limit the number of simultaneous jobs
> > to two and I hold off commflagging until after the recordings have
> > finished.  There appears to be nothing of interest in the frontend
> > log.  I occasionally see "ALSA, Error: WriteAudio: buffer underrun"
> > messages, but these do not seem to correlate to the pauses.
> >
> >
> > I am looking for any ideas on how to proceed to troubleshoot this
> > problem.  The WAF is not plummeting, but I do get the occasional,
> > exasperated question "Why does it do that?" which, unfortunately, I
> > cannot answer but desperately want to be able to.
> >
> >
> > -- Ken E.
> >
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