[mythtv-users] High load average while recording with 0.19

[Khanh Tran]

On 4/30/06, Josh Burks <dotnofoolin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello list, hoping someone may have some ideas on what's causing my
> high load average (3.00+).
>
> The other day I upgraded from 0.18.1 to 0.19 (thanks atrpms!) without
> problems. With .18.1, I could record one show and playback another
> recorded show without breaking a sweat. Now my system struggles to
> just record one show without playback. Also, there seems to be twice
> as much hard drive activity than what I had with .18.1. Here's some
> top snapshots:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Recording one show, no playback:
> top - 21:31:56 up 50 min,  4 users,  load average: 3.20, 1.28, 0.54
> Tasks: 109 total,   2 running, 107 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 15.2% us, 62.6% sy,  9.3% ni,  1.0% id, 11.6% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
> Mem:    508072k total,   480120k used,    27952k free,    43676k buffers
> Swap:  1052216k total,        0k used,  1052216k free,   272472k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  5353 root      16   0  190m  18m  10m S 57.3  3.8   2:33.21 mythbackend
>  6595 root      32  17 87396  36m  10m R  9.6  7.3   0:05.87 mythcommflag
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Recording one show, playback recorded program:
> top - 21:38:31 up 57 min,  3 users,  load average: 5.08, 3.56, 1.82
> Tasks: 108 total,   2 running, 106 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 36.8% us, 61.9% sy,  1.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
> Mem:    508072k total,   503892k used,     4180k free,    35504k buffers
> Swap:  1052216k total,      256k used,  1051960k free,   246556k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  5353 root      16   0  191m  19m  10m S 54.6  3.8   6:11.07 mythbackend
>  6663 mythtv    15   0  226m  85m  34m S 16.5 17.3   0:07.14 mythfrontend
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> When watching a show while recording, the audio is jerky (on half
> second, off half second). Oh, and livetv is isn't any better. I can
> start watching a channel and it's jerky, but if I pause it for about
> 10 seconds,  the pausing goes away.
>
> Here's my system specs:
>
> 1.7 Pentium 4
> 512 MB DDR
> MSI Motherboard, using the onboard Intel i810 video (sorry, no nvidia).
> 1 - PVR-250
> Fedora Core 3/ATRPMS
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Josh
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>

I have a similar system (one of the original Asus Pundits) with 2x
PVR-250, 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 and 512MB of RAM.  I since went to 768Mb of
RAM and a 2.2Ghz processor, but the performance was about the same. 
0.19 does show up a bit heavier in top since 0.18.1, but it still
works without that kind of stuttering.

What bitrates are you capturing at?  Do you have DMA set for your hard drive?