[mythtv-users] Slow video, Max CPU, bad sound

[David Peach]

Somehow I waylayed my reply off the list. Here is my most recent reply to
you Craig. I think you were the only one to get it.

> I guess at this point I am kind of lost as to weather your trying to use
> OSS or Alsa.

I think I am too. :(  I was originally wanting ALSA running because that
is what the MythTV documentation indicated it preferred. But as I was
goofing around with things, it seemed that OSS was what Myth was trying to
use. So I killed ALSA and went with the driver that said it was OSS for my
card. That was when I went from bad static to locking up Myth (computer
still worked). I then got ALSA loaded again and back to the static, and
video, such as it is, will play.

> Also, I am not sure specificly what program your getting
> sound problems with. Is it mplayer?

I have no idea. Live TV or any recordings will not play with sound other
than static. I don't know what mplayer has to do with this other than it
was a prerequisite for getting MythTV running. Is there some way I can
test mplayer outside of Myth to see if that is my problem?

I am a week and a half into this installation and I still do not have it
working. Would I be better off by dumping it all and starting over? Maybe
with compiling everything myself instead of using the RPMs? That sounds
very drastic to me and I really don't want to have to do that.

I appreciate you sticking with me on this.

David

>> Thanks for the reply. I mentioned that I got ALSA turned off and OSS
>> only.
>> That is what was locking everything up. When I went back to ALSA I got
>> my
>> (play for a couple of seconds and then pause) video and static back.
>>
>>> 1) Try a different sound or video player and see if you get sound.
>>
>> When I use XawTV, it works fine. I have to unmute the line in of the
>> sound
>> card though. In MythTV, MythMusic works just fine, either from a ripped
>> CD
>> or one in the tray.
>>
>>> 2) What your player here is trying to do is use Alsa's legacy OSS
>>> support
>>> which you may not have enabled. You might instead want to switch to
>>> /dev/adsp (which is alsa's primary device).
>>
>> In one place of the Setup it let me choose /dev/adsp. In mythtvsetup it
>> only had /dev/dsp and /dev/sound/dsp. I manually changed it to /dev/adsp
>> but that did not change anything. When I went back to mythtvsetup it was
>> gone and back to /dev/dsp.
>>
>>> 3) If this doesn't work, you can check to see if the alsa modules
>>> loaded
>>> by typing lsmod on the command prompt. You are looking for things like
>>> snd-yursoundmodule, snd-pcm, snd-pcm-oss (for the backwards
>>> compatability
>>> to oss). If your module and pcm are not both loaded, it will not work
>>> at
>>> all.
>>
>> My sound module is snd-via82xx. Here is the sound information from the
>> output:
>> [snip]
>> snd-seq-oss            32000   0  (unused)
>> snd-seq-midi-event      6080   0  [snd-seq-oss]
>> snd-seq                42544   2  [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
>> snd-pcm-oss            43652   0
>> snd-mixer-oss          14200   0  [snd-pcm-oss]
>> snd-via82xx            15360   0
>> snd-pcm                79588   0  [snd-pcm-oss snd-via82xx]
>> snd-timer              18436   0  [snd-seq snd-pcm]
>> snd-ac97-codec         45720   0  [snd-via82xx]
>> snd-mpu401-uart         4704   0  [snd-via82xx]
>> snd-rawmidi            17760   0  [snd-mpu401-uart]
>> snd-seq-device          5832   0  [snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-rawmidi]
>> snd-page-alloc          9044   0  [snd-via82xx snd-pcm]
>> snd                    41380   0  [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event
>> snd-seq
>> snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-via82xx snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec
>> snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
>> [snip]
>> soundcore               6340   0  [snd bttv]
>>
>>> 4) If it looks like its playing but you can't hear anything (might even
>>> be
>>> the case even though it gives you the error message you stated), its
>>> probably because you never unmuted the alsa outputs.
>>
>> I hear plenty of static. I did not mute/unmute anything in alsamixer.
>> All
>> the changes I have made with mixer settings has been through KMix as per
>> the MythTV documentation.
>>
>> Am I right to assume that my problem is mostly related to sound? I
>> understand that it has much to do with MythTV's performance.
>>
>> Thanks again.
>>
>> David
>>
>>>>> I was getting no sound except loud static. This was while using the
>>>>> /dev/dsp as my sound device. But as I read on the list here when
>>>>> using
>>>>> ALSA (which I believe I am since it is loaded in my Services Manager
>>>>> of
>>>>> Mandrake) to add an entry into my mysql database for "ALSA:hw:0,0". I
>>>>> have
>>>>> also chosen that as my sound device in mythtvsetup and mythfrontend
>>>>> Settings. Now I get no sound at all.
>>>>
>>>> I have now gotten OSS working (I think) and ALSA turned off (I know).
>>>> But
>>>> this is what I get now:
>>>> Opening OSS audio device '/dev/dsp'.
>>>> player: Can't open audio device: /dev/dsp
>>>>
>>>> Along with this, mythTV just completely hangs and I have to do a
>>>> Cntl-C
>>>> from the command line to stop the frontend.
>>>>
>>>> I am running the via82cxxx_audio driver for my VT8233 [AC97 Audio
>>>> Controller] on board sound. This is an MSI K7T266 Pro motherboard.
>>
>>
>
>