I just upgraded my systems to 5.5 and I now am experiencing a problem with the playback of content that was recorded in HD.

I have a master backend with 2x Hauppauge 250 cards and a HD HomeRun for HD content. When using R5F27 I could watch content captured on the HD HomeRun on the frontend machines with no issue, but since the upgrade when I try to watch the HD content the frontend spikes to 100% CPU useage and mythfrontend essentially locks up (completely unresponsive to remote or kbd input).

Content captured via the Hauppauge cards plays back fine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Have you played with different Playback Profiles? Setup>TV Settings>Playback>Pg3

I went from CPU+ to High Quality and things look much better. Maybe try CPU-- to start just to test?

See the hints. Search for "CPU hogging". The playback profiles suggestion is also good advice, but definitely check X.

OBTW - "top" will tell you which process is eating all the time...

I tried changing the playback profile - does not appear to make any difference

it is the frontend that is spiking, not X - or so says top

if i am in the frontend at one of the menus, mythfrontend is using up about 1-2% of the CPU, if I go into the recorded programs with the small preview window running, for a regular recording off the Hauppauge 250, mythfrontend is using up about 15-17% CPU, and if i highligh a recording off the HD HomeRun with the preview window running, mythfrontend is using up about 80% of the CPU.

If I make a selection for playback - for a recording from the 250 CPU usage is about 15%, for the HomeRun it goes to 100% and basically hangs mythfrontend.

the frontend is P4 (dual core) 3GHz, 1GB RAM, and a nvidia FX5200 video card

again fwiw this is completely new to 5.5 as the system used to playback these HD recordings just fine, and had CPU to spare.

I have also made the 'UseEvents' etc. changes to my xorg.conf file

also, playing content form the videos section (mostly mp4 files) has mplayer using up about 3-5% CPU

any other thoughts/suggestions appreciated

That's plenty of CPU. I would double-check that you've made _all_ of the modifications to xorg.conf suggested in the MythTV wiki page:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Xv ... _xorg.conf

Not only that but the installer should have made most if not all the 'UseEvents' related changes for you. The only one I'm aware of that it doesn't do automatically is the:

for using XvMC in certain modes.

I actually use a custom profile called Simple that does everything with the ffmpeg and Xv and it'll play HD content using the internal player on my slower single core Athlon 64 3200+ at 80-85% CPU for the FE. Using XvMC drops this considerably.

I am having the same problem as Troy!

Everything with CPU usage was fine in R5F27, now I am always hitting 100% CPU usage with mythfrontend. Xorg is staying at around 7-10%.

In addition, when I play things in X outside of mythfrontend, with mplayer or VLC, everything is fine. No stalling etc.

So what playback profile are you using, and have you tried adjusting it?

BTW - This is listed in the R5.5 Hints as an area to beware of and that may need to be customized. If you get the wrong playback profile it will bog down or even hang the system. I had issues with CPU+ because it makes some bad assumptions about when and how to use XvMC.

This is the same issue that I am having and posted about earlier. I've been using the same playback profile since R5F27 under .21 compiled from SVN and it worked fine. I still have not found a solution to get XvmC working right under R5.5.

A link to your thread might be nice... http://knoppmyth.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18502

Also searching. Somebody else was just saying that they hadn't read the XvMC page linked above and from the R5.5 Hints carefully enough and got it working after revisiting that. http://knoppmyth.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18506&highlight=xvmc

Along with that, check which driver X is using to make sure it's one that is capable of XvMC support. If your card isn't self identifying correctly it might be falling back to the nv or vesa driver.

<cranky>FWIW, it's a lot easier for people to help debug when you "show your work" like this. You may very well have done your homework and found a real XvMC issue rather than just a borked configuration, but you're not making it easy to tell. BTW - This is not meant as a flame, just a bop on the head with the foam hammer.</cranky>

I don’t know about everyone else, but I did try all the suggestions by tjc in his ‘hints’ post, and by others in related posts. I have made several modifications to my xorg.conf file, tried different NVIDIA drivers, and tried all the different playback profile types. I still could not get my mythfrontend cpu usage below 100% for certain HD playback. The best I could do was about 90% usage with most HD recordings using XvMC.

Due to this issue, and several others that I could not resolve (such as no sound on v1.1 Dragon) http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 6&start=60

I was forced to go back to R5F27 due to over 30 hours of unsuccessful tinkering time, and a very low WAF after missing many recordings.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for everyone’s support, and Cecil’s hard work on R5.5. At this point in time, I just don’t have the knoppmyth or linux knowledge base to troubleshoot my particular problems with R5.5. All my issues were resolved by going back to R5F27.

Hey troy, did you ever get your system going? If so, what did you do?

I have just done a test Auto Install of R5.5 on a PVR-350
system and it is doing the same thing with SD.

R5F27 has mythfrontend using 1.5% of the CPU and R5.5
has mythfrontend using say 30% of the CPU. This is on a
stock PVR-350 (Athlon 1400 MSI motherboard) system with
the TV attached to the PVR-350 where the video stream is
passed straight from the hard drive to the PVR-350 without
decoding by the CPU as the PVR-350 does it. I wonder if there
is an Xv setting I have to enable somewhere...

So this is not just an Nvidia thing or an HD thing.

EDIT: The CPU came back down to 3% when I manually
went into setup (TV Settings -> Playback page 9) and
turned on "Use PVR-350 TV Out". That is still twice what
it uses in R5F27.

Cliff

I have been struggling with stuttering on HD playback as well as live tv. xorg running at 99%. I tried changing playback profile to slim, still no help.
Changed the following settings in xorg.conf
nvagp 3
UseEDID true

No more stuttering, My Samsung 50" dlp looks great. xorg running at 19% during live tv HD.