[mythtv-users] Re: Choppy Video Problems

[Chris Picton]

On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 06:34 -0500,  Childe Roland wrote:
> Even when I'm not recording anything the MythTV box seems to like to
> hog a LOT of RAM.  I went into the System Status menu and it told me
> it was using about 450 MB of my 501 of RAM.  I did a refresh and it
> went down to 316 MB, I would think that that is still wayyyyy too much
> for something at an idle.  WHat have you guys experienced?  Should it
> be using that much RAM while it's not active???

Try opening a cmd line prompt and running 'free'

The second line tells you your actual mem usage:

mythtv root # free
             total       used       free     shared   buffers     cached
Mem:        483836     476464       7372          0     66456     279204
-/+ buffers/cache:     130804     353032
Swap:       500432       8496     491936


I have ~ 483 Megs RAM, 476 used, but only 130 megs is used by running
programs.  The linux kernel is using the rest for file buffers and
cache.  The buffer/cache is available for use by the system though, so
it will be freed up if needed.



> 
> On 5/22/05, <SB> Childe Roland <rolandchilde at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am having a problem with my new KnoppMyth box.
> > 
> > 1. Everytime I change the channel the video and sound skip some.
> > Sometimes this continues, but can be fixed by pausing the video and
> > waiting a few seconds
> > 2. Both Live tv and recorded seem to have extremely low frame rates.
> > The video is much more choppy than it should be
> > 
> > I don't think it is my system (see specs below) and the TV Tuner
> > should have hardware encoding.
> > 
> > I think these problems are both related to the HDD. When I run the
> > "hdparm -Tt" test I get a cached read in the 400's (MB/sec), but the
> > timing buffered disk reads only gives me between 9 and 20 MB/sec.
> > The drive is extremely old and only supports ATA 33.
> > 
> > Could this be the problem?? I'd like to upgrade to get more space, but
> > it won't be worth it if it's not going to give me a full 30 fps. Also,
> > is it perhaps a setting in MythTV that I have missed?
> > 
> > 
> > My specs -
> > Athlon Sempron 2400+
> > 512 MB DDR 333
> > 20 GB ATA-33 HDD
> > Hauppauge PVR-150 (non MCE)
> > 
> > Machine Status:
> > Load: 1.30, 0.61, 0.23
> > RAM: 501MB, 396 MB used, 105 MB (20%) free
> > Swap: 490 MB, 0 used
> > --
> > =============================
> > <SB> Childe Roland
> > "I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans."
> > 
> 
> 
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        Chris Picton | PGP Key ID: 9D28A988 (wwwkeys.pgp.net)
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