[mythtv-users] Firewire source and channel changer

[Alex Brekken]

Brian, I see this exact same issue - the choppy video which you describe as
a "stopping and starting" effect - on my firewire video as well. Everything
else with my Firewire setup works well, except this. The thing is, I see it
on standard def. TV as well as HD - although not all the time and not on
every channel. It's very random. My CPU usage looks no different viewing
Firewire-recorded video than it does when I'm viewing video recorded from my
PVR-250. (which works flawlessly, not choppy at all) Turning off the "use
video as timebase" setting on the frontend seems to help a bit, but not
100%.

Just for reference, my Firewire box (DCT6200) is hooked up to a Dell P3
1Ghz, which is conifgured as a slave-backend streaming the video to my
master backend/frontend box which is in my living room. While I can't prove
it, I don't think my network is the issue here - nor is the harddrive. I've
sorta been assuming that maybe it's a slow PCI bus/motherboard issue on the
Dell box, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I realize you're having other issues with FireWire but I just
thought I'd see if you were seeing this choppy video stuff on non-HD content
as well.

>With preliminary testing (when the firewire is working), I get sort of a
>continual "stop and start" when playing back HD content as if
>*something* can't keep up. It doesn't look to me like my CPU is being
>killed - I see it at around a load of 2-3 (which is a little higher than
>regular content), but didn't seem terrible. And watching hard drive
>activity (which is set to use DMA) also doesn't seem bad at all...so I'm
>not sure if it's a bus or an IRQ issue or what. I'll be happy to just
>get the firewire straightened out first and then look into this issue.

>Thanks!
>Brian
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