[mythtv-users] Choppy video playback

Brent Englehart brentje at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 10 16:58:41 UTC 2006


Hi

I don't know if this is can be solved or if this is
the right place to ask.  But I figure that video
problems are common for some MythTV users, and I am
using MythTV as my GUI.  I'm having problems with
video playback on my machine.

To start, here's my equipment:

Processor:P3 866
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-6PMM
Memory: 256MB PC133
Video Card: Guillemot 3D Prophet II GeForce2 GTS 64MB
HD: 300GB Seagate Ultra-ATA
DVD: Some LG type, can't remember exactly.

This system is not a PVR.  It may become a PVR type
system later, but for now it doesn't have a TV card in
it.  All I want to do is play videos that I FTP to it,
play DVDs, and maybe get into some MAME action too
later on.  But most importantly, it must play videos. 


The problem I'm having is that the video jerks about
once a second.  This happens on all video: DVDs, DivX,
MPEGs, everything.  The player doesn't make a
difference: I've tried Mplayer, VLC, and Xine, all
with the same exact result.  It doesn't seem to matter
what distro I try:  Fedora Core 4 and Kubuntu gave the
same result.  Under Win2K however, video playback is
perfect with VLC and Windows Media Player so the
hardware should be OK.  It's not the sound, because
using Mplayer with -nosound gave the same result. 
Video drivers don't seem to make a difference: using
the open-source nv drivers and using nVidia's drivers
gives the same result.  It's not the DMA settings: 
both the HD and the DVD have DMA on.  Dropping the AGP
settings to 2X instead of 4X in the BIOS did nothing. 
Doing the "echo 1024 > /proc/....I can't remember the
rest off hand" had no effect.  Turning off double
buffering with xvattr doesn't seem to do anything. 
It's not the video processor (I think that's what it's
called anyways): using xv is the best, but still
chops.  Using gl, x11, or any others makes things
worse.  It's not the processor being overworked:
looking at CPU usage with top, it's using 20% at the
most during playback.  The type of partition doesn't
seem to matter: both ext3 and jfs give the same
result.  It's definately not the memory, since it had
PC100 in it before but I decided to buy PC133 to see
if it would help.  It didn't.  And yes, I did set the
memory speed in the BIOS as well after upgrading.  

I can't remember everything I've tried, but the only
thing that seems to help is adding Option "NvAPG" "1"
to my xorg.conf.  The jerk is still there, but at
least the video is somewhat watchable.  I can't find
anything else to try by searching online, or think of
any other reasons why this is happening.  If anyone
can help me out, I would really appreciate it.  I want
my media box...

Thanks
Brent


		
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