I would love to have a feature where mythcommflag can be set to do any combination of the following:

avoid recordings
avoid tv or playback

That is to say, I would not have to tell mythcommflag when to start or what time range to use. It would itself check my schedule of scheduled recordings and run in the times when nothing is recording and/or nothing is playing back. This is nicer for slower machines that produce jerky video when mythcommflag runs during a recording or playback. A variation would be to set the nice level based on what else is happening at the same time. So very nice when recording or playback is happening, to very aggressive when no recording or playback is happening. Then the user doesn't have to give mythcommflag one range of time to work in. It would simply be opportunistic and do as much work as it can as early as it can subject to these constraints. Does this feature exist, or is it easy to implement?

I have this problem because I'm using a slow CPU with a PVR350, and it seems to give choppy video when mythcommflag runs during a recording (the hard disk pounds heavily more than if I"m only recording). Mythcommflag being nice (nice 17) is not enough to ensure that the video doesn't get choppy. What can I do?

Yeah, that might be nice. Unfortunately you're telling the wrong folks. KnoppMyth is a distribution which includes MythTV, and Cecil's energy is focused mainly on the ease of installation and system integration issues. You need to suggest stuff like this to the MythTV developers. OBTW - asbestos undies are recommended for that visit.

I agree with everything TJC said. It should go to myth users, then myth developers (mailing lists). I've been mulling something along the lines of having it throttle way back (using "nice"?) if you're doing any playback of TV or videos, including Xine.

When I'm playing back HD, I can definitely tell if commflag is running, and have to go kill it. If it were less obtrusive, I'd be able to let it run in a much more generous timeslot. Now, I've got a "no go" period for all primetime until after midnight. Of course, I'm not watching TV for 6 hrs/night! So it could get some good work done, if I were able to let it run.

Anyway, I bet most HD viewers would agree that HD playback and commflag don't mix well. I'm on an AMD64 3200.

So I bet there would be acceptance of this enhancement, if it were properly presented, ideally through some brainstorming with other users on the developers mailing list.

I run mythjobqueue on my backened PC and it runs all commflag jobs there. Might be a good idea to do the same, leave your frontend for watching.

Okay guys, I will take this up with the original myth group. But since you
all have opinions I'm not done yet.

Having a separate frontend and backend won't quite do it, because the
mythcommflag seems to make the recording process put artifacts into
the video. So as long as recording and flagging are happening on the same box, trouble happens.

Anyway, here is an idea that I have been mulling over but haven't tried: if I understand correctly, there is some place in the configs where it is possible to let mythtv turn the PC off and then back on again at a specified time, using some motherboard/BIOS features. And I think one can actually configure the command that is used to shutdown the box and/or wake it up? Again I have to check the details. My box runs 24/7, and I record shows at all kinds of times even when I'm asleep. How about letting the "shutdown command" be something that *enables* mythcommflag, and then have the "wakeup command" be something that shuts out mythcommflag. That way instead of sleeping by literally switching itself off, it will go into "mythcommflag permitted" mode. And the existing program logic will make sure the box is "awake" when it is time to record or view shows (and mythcommflag will be banned then).
Does this sound feasible or am I missing something? Basically this would be a way to get the same effect without having to mess too much with actual mythtv code. Might it work?

I'm happy to say I don't know what you guys are complaining about!

I see *better* performance in mythcommflag in R5B7 than I did in the earlier 0.18 myth release. I can simultaneously record two shows, commflag the same, and watch a third show (at 1080i no less) without missing a beat. This new 0.19 release is working great for me.

I'm running a P4 3GHz HT processor w/1G of RAM. I get best results by turning OFF the "sync to opengl" and "real time priority" options.

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