[mythtv-users] Video stutters with Internal DVD Player

[Chris Purves]

On Saturday 13 December 2008 10:17:07 Brian Phillips wrote:
> >
> > I am having problems with DVD playback.  The video stutters slightly
> > every few seconds.  I have tried various decoder settings:  ffmpeg,
> > libmpeg2, XvMC, all to no avail.  If I set mplayer as the DVD player,
> > the playback is smooth (mplayer is using libmpeg2 for decoding
> > according to the mythfrontend log) so it does not appear to be a
> > hardware issue.
> >
> > There are no entries in mythfrontend.log when the stutter happens.
> >
> > I am running mythtv 0.21 on mythbuntu.
> > Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT
> > PIONEER  DVD-RW  DVR-212D (SATA)
>
> Have you checked top to see if it's a CPU, RAM, or IO (disk access) issue?
> The wa% is very useful sometimes as it can show you there is a hang up with
> your DVD drive.

Yes, I should have mentioned in my original post.  While watching a movie, the 
load average is typically 1.0 (for dual core AMD64).  %CPU for mythfrontend.re 
varies between 10-50%.  There is plenty of free RAM as well.  %wa is between 
5-10%.  I am running a dedicated frontend so I would expect that resources 
wouldn't be a problem.

> Do you play DVDs from disk or ISO?  Have you tried to rip the DVD to ISO
> and play the ISO back to see if it's your DVD player?  Do you mount ISO's
> over a network drive and play those, in which case it could be a bandwidth
> issue?

I am playing DVD's directly from the disc.  MPlayer works without stuttering, 
but I could try ripping to ISO if you think that would be useful.

-- 
Chris Purves

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he 
sings." - Robert Burns