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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Not to add more noise on this sort of issue,
but...I suppose I am going to add more noise ;)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I find myself unable to get live tv stutter-free on
the following machine:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Intel P4 2.0GHz</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>512 MB ram</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>5400rpm HD (hdparm says throughput = 30MB/s, DMA is
on)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>NVidia GeforceFX 5200 video card with open source
drivers</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Latest Alsa with drivers for MAudio Delta66
soundcard</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>bt878 capture card, using btaudio (quite new
version of bttv, whatever installed with Fedora Core)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Latest MythTV from CVS</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If I try and run with the default live-TV settings
(480x480, RTJpeg), I'll be fine for "talking-head" type shows (News, etc.), but
sports programming (basketball for example) will cause more-or-less constant
stuttering (quarter second lurches every 1 or 2 seconds). Processor
usage stays near but below 50%.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I've read through all the posts I can find, and it
seems like some people have no problem with performance with this spec machine,
while others have trouble with even beefier machines. I'm trying to figure out
what the magic is to make this work. I've instrumented the code to try and
determine where my machine is falling down. So far, from what I can tell the
decoder thread winds up spending alot of time waiting for the ring buffer read
thread to fetch data. Whether this is because the hard drive is unable to keep
up (the size on disk of each frame is bigger for sports programming because it
doesn't compress as well), or because the read thread is getting starved because
compression/decompression is taking alot of processor time I don't know.
</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm kind of new to Linux so I don't know the best
way to monitor hard drive use (any pointers?)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I've turned jitter reduction on and off, messed
with the audio buffering settings, all to no avail.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My question is: Should this machine be able to do
this? Are others able to get smooth playback with this sort of setup,
specifically for sports programming?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks for any tips anyone can offer.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>-Mark</FONT></DIV>
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