[mythtv-users] Mythtranscode Locks Up the X Server. Whattheheck?

[William Powers]

I'm trying to auto-transcode OTA digital TV recordings to DVD res MPEG 
4, mostly to save space but also to reduce the playback load.  However, 
whenever mythtranscode kicks off, the X server goes to (almost) 100% CPU 
and the box becomes completely unresponsive to the keyboard and mouse.  
I can, however, ssh into the box, which is how I know that the X server 
is running away.  Since the X server is niced at 0, while mythtranscode 
is niced to (-)17, transcodings take forever and the box remains 
unresponsive until the transcoding is finished.  I can't even kill the 
transcoder 'cause it just gets respawned immediately.  Rebooting doesn't 
help either. 

About the only things I can do is to switch VT's and/or telinit to level 
3.  After a very long delay (minutes) the screen will switch to console 
mode and mythtranscode will get most of the CPU.  After that, I can't 
get back into X until the transoding is finished.

Currently running svn version 8859 but I had the same behavior with 
0.18.1.  OS is FC4 up-to-date as of two days ago but I had the problem 
before I updated.  The X driver for the GF 5200 is "nvidia" v. 7676 but 
I had the same behavior with 8178 and 7174 as well as the xorg "nv" 
driver.  I also swapped the 5200 for a GF3 Ti200 - same results.

Frankly, I have no clue why running the transcoder would freak out the X 
server.  Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.