[mythtv-users] best method to performance tune?

[Jeff_Mitchell at accessbusinessgroup.com]

Brian-

Well, you can probably get in the ballpark by looking at what other people
are using for hardware and compression settings.  I had some posts
yesterday talking about my setup (a search on the myth-dev archive for the
strings 'Mitchell' and 'PIII' should get you on the right thread.  Even if
my hardware is vastly different than yours, you should be able to ballpark
what your box can handle.

For the tweaking after you're in the ballpark, I'd start by deciding which
compression method you want to use.  I believe MPEG4 takes more grunt, but
gives you a larger file size, while rtjpeg is vice-versa (with
middle-of-the-road quality settings -- I'm sure you could switch this
around by screwing around with settings.)  Then look at resolution, and
finally the compression settings.

Before starting this, you should brobably psyche yourself up for a
(possibly) lengthy, iterative process.  Because "quality" is such a
subjective, nebulous term, you're not going to find a straight answer for
video settings.  Just use Myth like you plan to use it, and play around
with settings until you find something that works for you.  I played around
with the seetings for a few days, and haven't touched them since.  Perhaps
I'll get the bug, but probably not any time soon.  Obviously after a
hardware upgrade, I expect to go through the same rigamarole.

During your journey, if you have any questions about how you might be able
to tweak something specific (like problems during panning, etc.), you could
probably get some good insight from this list.

-Jeff

P.S.  I should note that I had played around with settings for the same
card on a pretty much comparable machine under Windows XP before, and I did
that for probably 3-4 days, so I had a bit of a head start when configuring
the compression settings for Myth.