[mythtv-users] High load average while recording with 0.19

[Josh Burks]

Hello list, hoping someone may have some ideas on what's causing my
high load average (3.00+).

The other day I upgraded from 0.18.1 to 0.19 (thanks atrpms!) without
problems. With .18.1, I could record one show and playback another
recorded show without breaking a sweat. Now my system struggles to
just record one show without playback. Also, there seems to be twice
as much hard drive activity than what I had with .18.1. Here's some
top snapshots:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recording one show, no playback:
top - 21:31:56 up 50 min,  4 users,  load average: 3.20, 1.28, 0.54
Tasks: 109 total,   2 running, 107 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 15.2% us, 62.6% sy,  9.3% ni,  1.0% id, 11.6% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    508072k total,   480120k used,    27952k free,    43676k buffers
Swap:  1052216k total,        0k used,  1052216k free,   272472k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 5353 root      16   0  190m  18m  10m S 57.3  3.8   2:33.21 mythbackend
 6595 root      32  17 87396  36m  10m R  9.6  7.3   0:05.87 mythcommflag
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recording one show, playback recorded program:
top - 21:38:31 up 57 min,  3 users,  load average: 5.08, 3.56, 1.82
Tasks: 108 total,   2 running, 106 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 36.8% us, 61.9% sy,  1.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    508072k total,   503892k used,     4180k free,    35504k buffers
Swap:  1052216k total,      256k used,  1051960k free,   246556k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 5353 root      16   0  191m  19m  10m S 54.6  3.8   6:11.07 mythbackend
 6663 mythtv    15   0  226m  85m  34m S 16.5 17.3   0:07.14 mythfrontend
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

When watching a show while recording, the audio is jerky (on half
second, off half second). Oh, and livetv is isn't any better. I can
start watching a channel and it's jerky, but if I pause it for about
10 seconds,  the pausing goes away.

Here's my system specs:

1.7 Pentium 4
512 MB DDR
MSI Motherboard, using the onboard Intel i810 video (sorry, no nvidia).
1 - PVR-250
Fedora Core 3/ATRPMS

Any thoughts?

Josh