Ok, my box has been running for quite some time now, starting at R4V?, has has numerous fresh installs and upgrades (they get easier every time by the way, awesome job guys) and is currently running R5A26. It has always had jerky video when watching live TV or recordings, most evident in a scrolling news ticker or panning shot, just enough to be annoying, and I am on a quest once again to find the problem.

The machine is a AMD Athlon-M 2400+
1GB 333MHZ Memory
300 GB Seagate drive (problem also evident when using a 160GB seagate drive)
ABIT NF7-S (NForce 2) motherboard
PVR 250
Nvidia 5200

When I SSH into the machine TOP reports something like:
CPU 20% us 1% sy 0.0% ni 74% id 0.0% wa .7% hi 1.3% si
It stays very consistant so I don't think the machine is overtaxed from a processor standpoint.

Load Average varies, I saw a low of about .44, .74, .72 and a high of 1.7, 1.06, .83 I believe this may be pointing to a problem, but I don't fully understand what this means.

things I have tried: Verified that DMA is turned on and the hard drive has good access times. I have turned off commercial flagging, turned off closed captioning, moved the capture card around, overclocked the processor from 1800mhz to 2000mhz, turned off the integrated sound card and installed a different one, upgraded to 1GB of memory and increased the memory speed from 266 to 333 mhz (didn't think this one would help, just couldn't pass up the price), changed capture resolution and bitrate both up and down, tried XVMC and many many combinations of options in the playback settings.

Nothing I have done has ever changed the behavior jerkiness, when I move a captured video over to my desktop box it plays perfectly smooth (my desktop is slower than the myth box) so I know the capture is fine. DVDs play with no problems at all, very smooth, I use XINE with the tvtime filter.

Someone please give me some ideas of other things I can look into to solve this issue.

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)

If you are using the svideo out from your fx 5200 have you read this post:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... bob+svideo

no, I am using a 52" mitsubishi DLP with the regular VGA connection. DVD palyback is perfect so I am fairly certain it is not a video mode issue with the TV.

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)

What resolution are you running in on your myth box & desktop machine? Maybe your myth machine can't handle the res (if its higher)

I have the same problem. I'm hooked up to a Sony GW3 (LCD rear projector) using DVI. Pans and news tickers are always jerkey. This is just standard def TV, the CPU isn't close to being pegged so I don't think that is the issue.

Interestingly I'm also running a Mobile Athelon 2400+ with a Geforce 5200 card and an Abit AN7 motherboard. Video is coming in via a PVR 250 card.

My suspicion is something is getting out of sync between the tv refresh rate (from the X server), ntsc video frame rate (59.94), and maybe the video app updating the display. If something gets out of sync I think a frame or two is dropped resulting in the jerkeyness. Not sure but that's my current theory.

Do people using TV-out not see this? Anyone using DVI or RGB out not have the problem?

I'm using a 59.94Hz mode line but I still see the problem (though the X logs only show 59.9Hz.) I wonder if using a card with native component output instead of DVI would improve things? I also don't think this shows up when using a computer monitor since the refresh rate is typically much higher than ntsc video which avoids any sync problems. But then I may not know what I'm talking aboot...

I normally run at 1200x666 @ 60 (magic number for my set), but I have also ran at 800x600 to test that theory. Unfortunately it made no difference



I also thought that could be the issue at one time, but if that is the case, why don't DVDs exhibit the same behavior? Does xine deal with refresh rates better than mplayer? Also, I don't see this behavior with SNES games using ZSNES (2D sidescrolling games should be really bad but they play fine) or in visulizations in mythmusic. The behavior seems to be limited to watching live and recorded TV. Do you see the jumpiness in all these areas or just TV viewing?

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)

I just realizes ZSNES and mythmusic visulizations runs at whatever resolution and refresh I want it to so nevermind that example

_________________
AMD BE-2400
ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
4GB Ram
Nvidia 9400 Fanless
2 HDHomerun (dual tuner)