[mythtv-users] Odd pauses when starting recorded shows...

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Sep 13 13:46:16 UTC 2005


Lee wrote:

> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
>> mythtv at varga.co.uk wrote:
>>
>>> 1) When I select a recorded show to play from the menu, on about 20% of
>>> them, the screen goes black and there is no sound, it sits there 
>>> like this
>>> for anything from 10-45 seconds and then the show starts and plays as
>>> normal...
>>> I've run the database check and it's all fine and playing the files 
>>> over a
>>> samba share is OK too. Playing videos in MythVideo has no problems... 
>>
>> This is most likely swapping all the "unnecessary" stuff out of 
>> buffers/cache and swapping the playback code back into memory. ...
>
> That isn't it, I watched several shows, in a row and then it happened 
> again.... :(
> Should it be swapping stuff out? There are something like 480MB of 
> free RAM?
>
>> If this is happening multiple times in a single TV-watching session, 
>> it may be caused by an I/O wait situation. ...
>
> No deleting going on, I hit the 'Back' button before the end of the 
> shows...
> Any more possible solutions?

There was a while where Myth was slow starting up playback.  Don't 
remember when it was exactly--just that it got fixed and doesn't happen 
anymore.  This may be causing the delay for you.  Chances are--if it's 
not caused by swapping or I/O wait or some other external problem--you 
wouldn't see it with current development code.  If you don't want to 
upgrade, use the time while you wait for playback to think back and 
remember what happened on the previous episode of the show and you can 
skip over the "last time on" section.  Should be a fair trade.  ;)

>>> 2) Scrolling up and down the recorded shows menu, occasionally 
>>> pauses for
>>> a few seconds, with what sounds like harddrive thrashing about, before
>>> continuing as normal, this is a minor problem, but it's SOOOOOO
>>> annoying... 
>>
>> The first time you scroll past a show, Myth creates a thumbnail image 
>> of that show.  (And, I think with Risto Treksler's new "preview image 
>> honors commflag/cutlist" stuff in recent versions, if you create a 
>> thumbnail by scrolling over a show before commflagging finishes, it 
>> will create a new thumbnail the first time you scroll over the show 
>> after it has been flagged.)  This is causing the delay.
>
> Now you've got something there... After I'd been slowly down the whole 
> list, it didn't do it any more...
> Is there any way to automatically create a thumbnail without comm 
> flagging? It's just that a lot of my stuff is recorded from channels 
> that don't have adverts, so no need for comm flagging...

AIUI, preview images are created "just in time" and not automatically.  
So, even if you do commflagging, it won't create the preview until you 
need the image (i.e. until you scroll over it in the playbackbox).  
Therefore, commflagging has no effect other than possibly causing you to 
re-create previews after the commflagging finishes (but only for those 
shows for whom preview images were created before commflagging finished).

The only way to "automatically" create all the preview images is to 
request them all.  The fastest way to do that is to have MythWeb do it 
for you.  When you click the "Recorded Programs" link, it will create 
the images.

Note, also, that besides commflagging, editing the cutlist will also 
cause Myth to re-create an existing preview.  And, if you cause a 
preview to be while recording a show, it will re-create the preview 
after the recording finishes.

>>> 3) When using the 30 second skip, it skips and then kind of does slow
>>> motion for about 1 sec or 2 and then plays properly. Is this normal? 
>>> or is
>>> there a problem? It's annoying after using the 30sec skip on the 
>>> Tivo for
>>> years... 
>>
>> Never seen this, so if it is normal, my system isn't.  :)  It sounds 
>> like a problem with your sound settings.  For example, make sure you 
>> don't enable, "Aggressive Sound card Buffering."
>
> Aggressive sound card buffering was off already... Anything else to 
> look at?

Still sounds like a sound card/sound configuration issue, but I can't 
think of any specific settings or causes for it.

Mike



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