[mythtv-users] Getting XVMC working and knowing it?

[michael brown]

Chris Osgood wrote:
> I recently went through all this so maybe I can provide a little info
> (hopefully correct info if I'm lucky).
>
> The OSD will be black & white if XvMC is running.  I don't if that
> is a true test though.

This seems to be the case.  ;-)

>> In my case there is a significant difference in CPU usage when using
> XvMC. I get 10-25% CPU usage without XvMC and with XvMC it uses so
> little CPU that it doesn't show up in top.

You must have a fast machine, I have a dual PII-450, Geforce 4 MX-440
and PVR-250.  I use about 50% (out of %200 total) when playing back and
I believe I'm using XvMC successfully.  I think the high CPU usage is
from decoding the audio stream.

The way I can tell that XvMC is involved is that when I watch a
recording and then exit back to the menus and then try to watch another
recording, the frontend dies with a "failed to create XvMC....".  When I
restart the frontend all is well for one TV watching (recorded or live
makes no difference).  So it appears that if the frontend can't enable
XvMC when it wishes, it dies.

Does anyone know if this is a bug in the nVidia drivers, X or MythTV,
it's really annoying?  (nvidia ver 4496, myth .12 and X 4.3.0)

> As far as I know XvMC only works with MPEG2 encoded stuff (DVD,
> hardware capture card like the PVR250/350, etc).  The normal
> RTjpeg/MPEG4 recordings will not use XvMC for playback.

This is the way I understand it as well.

> You can't currently record to MPEG2 with the software encoder.  That
> is something I would like to have also.

Yes this would be quite convenient.

michael brown