[mythtv-users] Unreasonably high CPU usage when playing HD content? Suggestions?

[Rick Hudson]

Michael T. Dean wrote:

>> So you're saying that playing an unscaled video should be possible
>> regardless of whether it's bigger than the maximum XvImage size? I guess
>> I need to find out if mythtv is indeed trying to scale the video to
>> something else for some reason.
> 
> It would be unscaled, but it wouldn't be able to use Xv to render the 
> video.  While Xv does scaling "for free," it also does a lot 
> more--including allowing fast transfer of video data to the graphics 
> device.  Without Xv, you're stuck with other much-less-efficient 
> mechanisms, so your CPU usage would go way up compared to rendering with 
> Xv--exactly as you're seeing.

That's very useful information because it explains why the CPU usage doesn't
scale with the number of pixels it has to render when Xv can't be used.

> I'm glad to hear you got the 720p working, but if you are using the i810 
> drivers (and IIRC that they're older and broken and the intel drivers are
> newer and working),

I am using the newer intel driver. I couldn't get any kind of HD output at all
with the i810 drivers (blank screens and lockups) and those problems all went
away with the new driver.

> you may still want to switch so you can actually get Xv support and drop
> your CPU usage even more.

Yes - CPU usage went way down for SD video with the intel driver because of 
Xv. Even 1024x720 video only loads my Pentium-M by about 20%.

-- 
Rick Hudson