[mythtv-users] Does Fast Forward Work for anyone?

[Misty P]

allene222 wrote:
> When FF is set to 3x is goes a little faster maybe, maybe not.  On 5x
> is jerks ahead 1 second every second - not too useful.
>
> P4-2.4G, eVGA6200 under XvMC using a 1080i test file.  My goal is to
> build a ATSC system and this is a feasibility project.
>
> The CPU usage under normal play is about 55% and under FF about 30%
>
> I have asked this question a couple of times and got no reply so was
> wanting to know if FF worked for anyone as a start.
>
> Again, any help is appreciated as well as knowing if FF can work on a
> 1080i source.

Is this on a combined frontend/backend, or are they seperate?  If seperate, 
what is the network between the two?

If it's a combined frontend/backend, I'd look at the disk system. 
Specifically, if you're using DMA or PIO mode to talk to the disk.  But 
that's 'over the line' into linux-specific stuff, rather than myth-specific 
stuff.


As a starter, you might want to grep through dmesg's output, and see if your 
disks are coming up as PIO or DMA.  Like so:

$ dmesg | grep DMA | more

[   45.600414] ata1.00: ATA-7: MAXTOR STM3500630AS, 3.AAE, max UDMA/133
[   45.658640] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   46.451415] ata2.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203B, SB03, max UDMA/100, 
ATA
PI AN
[   46.609289] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100


So the hard drive and DVD drive on my frontend are both using DMA.  That's 
good.  PIA = slow, old, for compatability reasons.