Help - I just installed R5A16 and I am experiencing a lot of stuttering during playback.

When I run the frontend with output going to a file, the log is full of prebuffering pause messages.

My setup is this:

Backend
---------------
2 x PVR250
intel P4 2.8GHz
512MB ram
4x250GB WD SATA drives

Frontend
---------------
intel P4 3GHZ
512MB ram
80GB UIDE drive
nvidia FX5200 video
ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard
onboard Marvel/Yukon Gigabit ethernet controller

the frontend and backend are connected via 100BT ethernet through a netgear switch.

I have tried setting the frontend to +s for setuid, and re-nicing the frontend process, but no luck

I have put a packet sniffer on the lan, but see nothing out of the ordinary, the CPU on the frontend seems fine, and any shows captured on the backend do not contain any stutter or freeze, so it seems to be isolated to the frontend, but I am out of ideas

any help is appreciated

Have you tried turning on agressive buffering for the FE?

for playback settings I am using libmpeg2, realtime priority threads, and extra audio buffering.

in looking at the system itself, there appears to be lots of memory available, and the cpu never gets above 20%

I'm having exactly the same problem. The box used to handle recording / playback fine, I'm not sure when it started to go pear shaped. Here is the ouput of top on this system.