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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:17 pm 
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:37 am
Posts: 38
right now my mythtv pc is a p4 1.8ghz with 512mb of ram, nvidia video card (don't recall at this moment)

it's fine for playing back normal xvid files, but I backed up a bluray movie onto a 720p spec xvid file, and that file is very very choppy. The file is approximately 4.5gb

I do not use mythtv for recording/transcoding/watching tv, only for video playback.


Is there any one piece that makes more of a difference? more ram, more cpu? Does the video card make any real difference for playback?

thanks!


edit: blurg, the specs of my mythtv pc are in my signature. I guess it's been a while since I was here.

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noob. please forgive my ignorance.
running: r5e50, pvr350, p4 1.7ghz 512mb ram, nvidia fx5200, 27" flat tube tv


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:29 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:00 am
Posts: 9551
Location: Arlington, MA
Have you done the normal performance diagnostics? Running "top" in a remote session while you try to watch a problem video should tell the tale.

Off the cuff I'd guess CPU. Xvid uses MPEG4 and there's no video card acceleration support for that (unlike for MPEG2). More memory might help but only if you're running out of buffers or swapping. Running top is really the place to start because it will tell you all of these things.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:50 pm 
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:55 pm
Posts: 1381
Location: Farmington, MI USA
I agree with tjc - CPU. I couldn't get my P4 2.4Ghz to playback HD without stuttering (this was back in the R5D1 days) no matter what playback settings I tried. Went to an AMD 3200+ single core and have no problems. Also have a P4 3.06Ghz HT that handles HD playback without issues.

One question though: Is your 5200 PCI or AGP? There have been posts on these forums indicating that a PCI card doesn't have the throughput for reliable HD playback (don't recall the specifics, may have been OSD related).

As tjc mentioned, top should point you in the right direction...


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:08 pm 
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Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:37 am
Posts: 38
yeah... normal xvid has mplayer running < 10%

720p xvid ramps it up to 97%

the video card is AGP btw, but I think we've determined that it's not the bottle neck at this point.

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noob. please forgive my ignorance.
running: r5e50, pvr350, p4 1.7ghz 512mb ram, nvidia fx5200, 27" flat tube tv


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:21 pm 
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Joined: Fri Sep 19, 2003 6:37 pm
Posts: 2659
Location: Whittier, Ca
tjc wrote:
Off the cuff I'd guess CPU.
What he said.


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