On RE50 I am seeing that any call to mythtranscode uses 99% of my cpu, but it is niced at 19. My problem is that several of my recordings that have been occurring while transcoding is going on have glitches in the video. Is there a way to limit the actual percentage of cpu usage of the mythtranscode process?

Do others have that high of a cpu usage on mythtranscode?

Specs:
RE50
MSI PM8PM-V P4M800 Motherboard
Intel Celeron D 336 Processor 2.80GHZ, 533FSB, 256KB Cache
Corsair VS512MB533D2 512MB DDR2-533 PC2-4200
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 250GB Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
Antec New Solution Series NSK1300 Mini Tower Case (Silver) Retail
PVR-150

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LinHES Release 6.04.00
Mboard MSI PM8PM-V P4M800
CPU - Intel Celeron D 336 Processor 2.80GHZ
Memo - Corsair VS512MB533D2 512MB DDR2-533
Hard D - Hitachi T7K500 250GB Serial ATA
Wireless - Netgear wg311
Tuner Card - PVR-150

Well, in my continued search I found an app called cpulimit that will restrict a process to a % usage instead of using nice or other limiting factors. I am playing with it now and it seems to work ok. Anyone else had experience with this package?

_________________
LinHES Release 6.04.00
Mboard MSI PM8PM-V P4M800
CPU - Intel Celeron D 336 Processor 2.80GHZ
Memo - Corsair VS512MB533D2 512MB DDR2-533
Hard D - Hitachi T7K500 250GB Serial ATA
Wireless - Netgear wg311
Tuner Card - PVR-150

I haven't noticed any problems with stuff I am recording while various Transcodes are running.

I run Transcodes and setup and run Mythburn processes typically at key times my boxes are also recording because that is when I can get to them.

The only thing I have noticed and I see this every time.

Say I have a series of shows from yesterday, that we haven't got to that point in those series yet. I will typically, edit the commercial cutpoints and then use the Loseless transcode to remove that space. Typically I will run 4-5 of these by editing all the cutpoints then kicking all of them off as transcode jobs.

The I will notice that the menu gets really lagging. Sometimes it can take a minute for a button push to respond.

Hardware is set like this:
MBE - Athlon 64 3400+, 1Gig pc3200, PVR-150 - 3 Jobs allowed
SBE1 - Athlon XP 2200+, 1gig pc133, PVR 150 - 1 Job allowed
SBE2 - Duron 1800, 512 M pc3200, PVR 500 - 1 Job allowed.

I haven't done anything to renice any of these.

They are networked via 100 Mbs cable and there is a router/switch and a switch in the network. SBE2 hangs on one router port and the other two are off a switch attached to another Router port.

Visual observations - MBE disks in LVM get extremely busy during this time. Network graph thru RRD shows high level of traffic (compared to all other times) up to 8 Mbps Only monitor CPU usage on the MBE via rrd, but it goes to 98% user and the overall usage shows 100%. Top on the other two boxes will show essentially 100% as well during these times.

Like I say I never see an issue with the Video being captured at that time only annoyance is the responsiveness of the system but I will live with that given the amount of work I can see it is doing.

My capture rates run anywhere from 1.2 gig per hour (normal junk we watch), to 3 gig per hour(Fast moving field items like Nascar), depending on what I am watching. And during some of these Job sessions I have also had 4 captures being accomplished.

This whole set is running on R5C7, gonna update soon, but between Work, College Graduations, and the other stuff just haven't got to it.