[mythtv-users] Playback problem -- random short pauses

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/23/2011 05:20 PM, Steven Adeff wrote:
> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:09 PM, jedi wrote:
>> ...has anyone else suggested to rule out the possibility that the card itself
>> is overheating and that's part of the issue. I have a frontend in an upstairs
>> room that is not always temperature controlled that seems to have issues similar
>> to this. There's a very nice correlation between the GPU temperature and the
>> occurences of the problem.
>>
>>    The problems go away as soon as the room cools down.
> I did on my parent's systems and they were all well within their
> temperature range.

This is a very good point.  Some people have also seen a correlation 
with cooling--and have seen improvement or have fixed the issue by 
setting up additional fan(s) to blow across the card.

Those wanting to investigate can log temperatures during playback with:

nvidia-settings -q $DISPLAY/GPUCoreTemp

(taking the one line with the value out with a grep or whatever) and see 
if the issues are coincident with increases in temp.  (Note, also, you 
may need a slightly different query attribute if you have a multi-core 
GPU or multiple GPUs.)

Oh, and there's also the option of just directing some additional 
cooling fans (even if your GPU has a fan instead of just a heat sink) 
toward the card and seeing if it helps or fixes the issue for you.

Mike