[mythtv-users] mp3anywhere stops working during playback

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Tuesday 04 November 2003 23:40, Michael Beauregard wrote:
> Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> >On Monday 03 November 2003 20:40, Michael Beauregard wrote:
> >>Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> >>>Top-posting rearranged.
> >>>
> >>>On Monday 03 November 2003 11:20, Michael Beauregard wrote:
> >>>>Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> >>>>>On Sunday 02 November 2003 12:07, Michael Beauregard wrote:
> >>>>>>I have managed to get the x10 "mp3 anywhere" wireless remote
> >>>>>>working with lirc. It actually works fine with mythtv for
> >>>>>>navigating the menus and such. However, as soon as I start
> >>>>>>watching live tv or a recording mythtv no longer responds to
> >>>>>> the remote. I read a warning from lirc.org (
> >>>>>>http://www.lirc.org/html/technical.html#bugs ) explaining that
> >>>>>>heavy IDE activity can disable interrupts often enough to cause
> >>>>>>signal decoding problems with lirc_serial and lirc_parallel
> >>>>>>drivers. I'm not convinced that this is the problem since the
> >>>>>>lirc mp3anywhere driver doesn't seem to use lirc_serial.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>Has anyone else experienced this problem? Anyone find a fix for
> >>>>>>it? I've been scouring the web and mailing lists archives for a
> >>>>>>solution for a week now and I am stuck.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>BTW, here is my setup:
> >>>>>>Dual P3-450
> >>>>>>PVR-250
> >>>>>>Voodoo3 tv-out
> >>>>>>Soundblaster live
> >>>>>>MythTV 0.11
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Are you using Myth's native LIRC support, or irxevent?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>-JAC
> >>>>
> >>>>irxevent
> >>>
> >>>Hmmm... my guess is you either have a problem with your .lircrc,
> >>> or your system is too bogged down during playback (unlikely). 
> >>> Can you use the keyboard to control playback without problems? 
> >>> And can you post your .lircrc?
> >>
> >>Keyboard works no problem every time. My .lircrc is simply a
> >> modified version of Jarod's sample .lircrc that he uses for
> >> pvr250. It has a few changes to a few codes and such, but
> >> otherwise nothing interesting to me. If you still want to see it,
> >> let me know. BTW, I'm not sure how much CPU usage I should be
> >> seeing on a dual 450 with PVR 250, but one cpu is usually near 90%
> >> and the other near 40%. My impression from other posts is that
> >> people with comparable hardware are not seeing this much cpu usage
> >> during livetv. Maybe it has something to do with this.
> >
> >Hmmm... 90% and 40%?  Is this all the time, or just during playback?
> >What process(es) is/are using up so much CPU?  Better check to see
> > if your Voodoo3 supports Xv and that you've got it configured
> > properly... sounds like you might be doing software scaling, which
> > could explain the hight CPU load.  You might need to fix your X
> > setup, or get a new video card.
>
> Well, I'm recording at 640x480 and playing back at 640x480 so scaling
> can't be the issue, could it?

When you say 'playing back at 640x480', do you mean your X desktop 
resolution is 640x480?  Or you have your Myth GUI size set to 640x480 
(or both)?  If your X desktop resolution is anything different than 
your capture resolution, then you're definitely doing software scaling.  
Even if it is the same, I'm not 100% sure how that end of things 
works... I suppose it shouldn't need to scale, then, but I don't really 
know.

> Here is top during live tv:
>
> 21:17:59  up 2 days,  4:20,  3 users,  load average: 1.63, 1.86, 1.60
> 92 processes: 91 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
> CPU0 states:  26.4% user   2.2% system    0.0% nice   0.0% iowait 
> 70.2% idle
> CPU1 states:  56.1% user  21.2% system    0.0% nice   0.0% iowait 
> 22.1% idle
> Mem:   513284k av,  506416k used,    6868k free,       0k shrd,  
> 89532k buff
>                     322120k actv,   74128k in_d,    9960k in_c
> Swap: 1052216k av,   10108k used, 1042108k free                 
> 277420k cached
>
>   PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME CPU
> COMMAND 1191 michael   15   0 44988  43M 23832 S    77.7  8.7 180:57 
>  0 mythfrontend
>   817 root      15   0  7996 7264  2544 S    13.2  1.4 103:42   1
> mythbackend
>  1027 root      15   0 94420  27M 15228 S    12.5  5.5  56:46   0 X
>  1154 michael   15   0  2800 2800   672 S     1.3  0.5  37:19   0
> kdeinit 4770 root      15   0  1104 1104   864 R     0.9  0.2   0:00 
>  1 top 7 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.5  0.0   0:32   0
> kswapd

Well, mythfrontend should *not* be using 77% of your CPU(s).  Either 
it's scaling in software, or your machine just can't handle 640x480 
MPEG-2 decoding.  What bitrate are you capturing at?  Perhaps you 
should try turning that down.  Also, do you have DMA enable on your 
hard drive?  My only other thought is that maybe mythfrontend is not 
using both CPUs?

For the best diagnosis, you should probably post your complete system 
specs (including mobo & chipsets, hard drive model, OS distro & 
version) and all of your capture settings (capture size, bitrate, audio 
settings, etc).  It's hard to diagnose a problem without all the pieces 
of the puzzle.

-JAC