I've been running R5A16 on a AMD 2400+ with 512MB RAM, a 200 GB HD and a PVR-150. It's been working great - very few problems at all. I'm running IVTV drivers 0.3.8.

I wanted to add a larger HD and an additional capture card, so off to read the forums and any other info I could find...

I installed the new drive and converted it to LVM and copied the contents of the myth partition to the new space. Seemed to be working fine, all the existing recordings showed up and played fine.

Since I had the machine down, I thought I'd add the new PVR-150 as well. When the machine booted - all seemed well, the new card was recognized just fine and after some adjustments - I could capture from both cards.

I've had a few issues - I'm hoping that I might get to the bottom of them here...

First, mysql seemed to have some issues during one or more of the reboots (using reboot - I seem to recall in my background that using shutdown is more polite) and there was some coprruption issues during the checks. Here is an exerpt:



I think this caused my encoders to be numbered wrong! At first they went from Encoder 1 and 2 to Encoder 2 and 4. After a few more reboots - they ended up as Encoder 11 and 12.

Any ideas how to change them back? I looked in the database - but I know little about mysql and have no idea how to change them... I'm sure that I'd break some linkage or something...

The second issue has to do with the recorded file sizes. Ever since I've been using Myth, the file size for a default recording has been 1.1 GB per 30 minutes recorded. Since these changes, the size has dropped to 1 GB. If I change to the High Quality profile, the file size stays at 1GB as well.

I've noticed that there are occasional stutters in the video (maybe one small drop out in a 30 min recording). If I'm watching live TV - there is occassionally some dropouts as well, perhaps slightly more frequently. I've never noticed them with the old setup.

This makes me wonder if I'm hitting a throughput limit. I have a ECS MB with a VIA chipset - but my understanding is that the VIA issues have to do with lockups and not throughput issues. DMA is enabled on both drives and they test at about the same speed with hdparm.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Rob

Try running mythtv-setup and clearing your card settings. The order you add the cards will determine the order that they're assigned in, but that means you have to know which one is video0 and which one is video1, this means checking the IVTV section in the dmesg log. See the CheckingLogFiles page on the wiki.

Frankly i found it easier to swap slots so that the old card stayed video0 and new card was video1.

Thanks. I've removed the card in the menu - but haven't chosen the "clear card settings" in mythtv-setup. I'll try that - I'd really like the encoders to be properly numbered...

The file size and throughput issues are definitely related to the new LVM volume. If I remount the old hda4 on /myth, the issue disappears. I'll have to do some more reading on LVM, I guess...

Well, I've checked everything I can think of - but the file sizes continue to be less than what they were with the other drive.

I don't see too many issues with video dropouts or stuttering, so I'll just leave it on LVM and see how it runs for a bit.

Perhaps I'm worrying about nothing.

This worked great for re-assigning the encoder numbers, as long as I rebooted after removing and re-adding the capture cards. The first time I did it - I didn't restart Myth for some time afterwards, so it didn't appear to work.

Thanks for the suggestion!