[mythtv-users] pauses during hd playback

[James Armstrong]

I have been running mythtv for almost two years now and until  
recently everything has been fine. It seems that in the last few  
months, when I playback HD content on the frontend it will seem to  
skip a few seconds and show mpeg noise on the screen. When the  
backend starts recording, it gets worse. It starts to pause every few  
seconds. I am only showing about 20% cpu usage on X on the frontend  
while it is happening.

The frontend is a P4 3ghz with 1gig memory, NVIDIA card.
The backend is an Athlon XP 2000 with 512 megs memory.

The backend has been able to record 2 HD streams and 1 250 at the  
same time while I playback one on the frontend (until recently). I  
have updated to the latest cvs yesterday. I am usually a few weeks  
behind. It has not made any difference. The backend seems to be  
having problems. I am no expert, but here is the TOP results:

top - 20:29:37 up 13 days,  1:23,  1 user,  load average: 4.96, 5.89,  
5.10
Tasks:  63 total,   2 running,  61 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  5.4% us,  6.5% sy,  0.0% ni, 12.0% id,  7.1% wa, 69.0% hi,   
0.0% si
Mem:    515240k total,   511124k used,     4116k free,     8452k buffers
Swap:   522072k total,       80k used,   521992k free,   396340k cached

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
32352 mythtv    15   0  227m  47m  12m S 38.2  9.5  44:54.91 mythbackend
   156 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  1.6  0.0   8:20.72 kswapd0
2887 mysql     16   0 33484  15m 2512 S  1.0  3.1  32:00.19 mysqld
1725 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   2:43.34 xfsbufd
     1 root      16   0  1548  452  392 S  0.0  0.1   0:08.84 init
     2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.65  
ksoftirqd/0
     3 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   1:50.02 events/0
     4 root      14  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khelper
     9 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
    18 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
    92 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  36:24.10 kblockd/0
   100 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd
   154 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:14.13 pdflush
   155 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   3:20.11 pdflush

Is it an interrupt problem? I noticed that ivtv1 is on an interrupt  
by itself, but ivtv0, eth0, and skystar2 are on one interrupt with  
the highest number and the ERR number keeps rising:

           CPU0
   0: 1095715619          XT-PIC  timer
   2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
   3:       6114          XT-PIC  ohci_hcd
   5:          1          XT-PIC  ohci_hcd
   8:          1          XT-PIC  rtc
   9:          0          XT-PIC  acpi
10:     398925          XT-PIC  Skystar2, SiS SI7012
11:    4301199          XT-PIC  ivtv1
12:  180839091          XT-PIC  ehci_hcd, eth0, ivtv0, Skystar2
14:   38733591          XT-PIC  ide0
15:     554797          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0
ERR:      13806


My next question would be how to change / move what interrupts the  
cards use and how I should group them.
The frontend reports 'video behind (or audio ahead), playing video at  
double speed'.

Let me know if anything else will help.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 746 Host (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL  
Media IO] (rev 25)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0016
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]  
Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0  
Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0  
Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0  
Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900  
PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
00:09.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII  
DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 02)
00:0a.0 Network controller: Techsan Electronics Co Ltd B2C2 FlexCopII  
DVB chip / Technisat SkyStar2 DVB card (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15  
MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
00:0c.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16  
(CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]  
315PRO PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter

Thanks,
James