[mythtv-users] mythfrontend speed issue.

[Aaron Averett]

I'm using the nvidia driver, built/installed according to the instructions
found on nvidia's website.  It doesn't throw any errors or anything when I
install it, and the OpenGL based screensavers run just fine, so it looks
like it's working correctly to me.  I've since discovered that the system is
easily capable of decoding just the video portion, if I make the sound go
away.  (In this case, what happened was I installed ALSA, and I think I
disabled OSS)  At any rate, the CPU utilization during decoding now hovers
in the 3 to 5% range, but there isn't sound.  I can't tell if it's getting
recorded or not, since I don't have another box to run this on.

I'm beginning to think that my problem has to do with ivtv.  I'm having a
devil of a time getting it to work correctly, especially the part that
involves the firmware.  The vidcap card in question is an Avermedia m179.
I've been trying for literally hours to get this to install correctly, but
every time I try to follow the instructions on ivtv's site, it still throws
errors during boot about unresolved externals the first time I reboot it.
The driver loads, though, and the card works until I reboot it again, and it
says it can't find the firmware.

Aaron
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Hattemer" <eric at hattenator.dyndns.org>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 11:28 PM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] mythfrontend speed issue.


> Aaron Averett wrote:
>
> >
> > Shouldn't it?  It's an AthlonXP 1800+ with 512 MB of ram.  Both hard
> > drives in the system have DMA enabled. According to the MythTV
> > documentation, CPU utilization for just watching TV (no timeshifting)
> > should be around 10 or 15 percent.  According to top,
> > mythfrontend's CPU utilization typically hovers around 90%.  At any
> > rate, it's almost unwatchable like this (certainly not enjoyably
> > watchable).
> >
>
> Most likely, your problem is your video card.  What kind of card is it?
> Very few video cards in Linux have hardware acceleration in their
> drivers.  If youhave an NVIDIA card, you almost have to use the
> nvidia.com driver.  If you have an ati card, you might be able to get
> away with the X builtin driver, but try the ati.com driver anyway.  If
> you have any other card, it probably isn't being used, so all the work
> is done by the processor.  See if you can use other video programs like
> xine or mplayer without any trouble.  I think most likely its your video
> drivers, though.
>
> -Eric Hattemer