[mythtv-users] PVR350 video out very slow (Nvidia way better)

Nick Kaijaks nick at kaijaks.co.uk
Fri Feb 6 14:44:49 EST 2004


> Well a PVR350 is a PVR350, so the only "customizable" things 
> in that file are the fbN and the busID.
> 
> Yes I did set them to correct values (I would not habe an 
> image otherwise :-).

True enough! I actually run a separate vnc X session to do stuff which
isn't attached to any real output, so I forget you wouldn't get anything
at all with these wrong. It's just you said you grabbed the XF86Config
from the list, which could mean copying it verbatim and hoping it's
right!

> I did follow the ivtv wiki but found it had some limitations. 
> I mean having installed with FC1 and ATrpms with Jarod's 
> guide, I could not do the
> following:
> 
> ivtvfbctl /dev/fb0 -noglobalalpha -localalpha
> 
> The file ivtvfbctl not being anywhere on my machine.

I must admit I first tried using mythtv/ivtv based on some mandrake rpms
but I couldn't adequately troubleshoot (from my position of ignorance
:-), so I ended up compiling from source, because I could at least then
follow things step-by-step. YMMV.

Anyway, from what I've read, ivtvfbctl controls how translucent overlays
are handled by the framebuffer. I think it's done internally for the
OSDs in mythtv, so you shouldn't need to do it for that. I don't think
it'll affect your choppy video. However, I found it important to use it
when I was troubleshooting my setup with dd etc, as it made a difference
to what I saw when doing direct device copying at the console.

> I did also follow the instructions in the list, and looking 
> at them as well as at the wiki again I realize I do not have 
> the following in modules.conf:
> 
> post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video0 -u 
> 0x3000 post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d 
> /dev/video16 -u 0x3000 post-install ivtv 
> /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video32 -u 0x3000 
> post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video224 -u 0x3000

I think that's probably a red herring too - those lines just force ivtv
to use NTSC on all the devices, which is default in the sources anyway.

It's worth going through all the sanity tests in the wiki if you can,
like dd to a file and test it in mplayer (which should work fine from
what you're saying about success with the nVidia TV-out), and then dd
from capture device direct to encoder. I found that there were many
little tweaks to the settings I needed to check here and there as I went
through the HowTo, any of which would stop things working right (e.g. my
'insmod saa7127 output_select' needed to be different from the suggested
default). Also confusing are the subtle differences among XFConfig86,
modules.conf files that different people have found to succeed.

I'm sure you'll fix it soon enough - it's just a bit of a journey!

Best,
Nick



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