[mythtv-users] Setting Nice / Renicing The Encoder Process

[Thomas M Hughes]

Background: I'm running MythTv 0.14 under Debian Unstable on a 1.4 GHz
AMD Athlon.

I was curious if it is possible to nice / renice the MythTv encode
process while it's recording television.  Normally, it'd be a simple
matter of finding the high CPU% process and grabbing it's number and
using renice, but for some reason the encoding does not actually
register in 'top' or 'ps aux' that I can see.

I ask because I currently use my MythTv machine as a desktop machine for
a number of reasons.  This works out well enough most of the time, but I
have to be careful when the backend is recording something to make sure
that I do not max out my CPU load, resulting in a stuttery recording.
One solution would be to renice everything else to a higher number
(something like 5, or 10), but that's really sort of a pain.  I'd much
rather find the encoder process and renice it to -5 or -10.

Anyone have any suggestions?  If you need anymore information, please
feel free to ask.  I appreciate any help that can be provided.

-- 
Thomas
thomas at amberilis.org