[mythtv-users] How do I get full frame rate?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 13 Oct 2013 16:17:21 +1300, you wrote:

>On Sat, 12 Oct 2013 18:48:34 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>On 10/12/2013 06:41 PM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>>> On Sat, 12 Oct 2013 18:28:49 -0700, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> I had an ATI HD4850 that I was having trouble with dropped frames on (and other issues) that I just replaced with an NVIDIA
>>>> GeForce GTX 760.
>>>>
>>>> I have just tried all combinations of decoders & renderer with no de-interlacer enabled on a 720P live auto race (it had a
>>>> scrolling leader board that allowed me to tell if it was dropping frames) I had a second monitor tuned to the same channel
>>>> driven by a Centronics ZAT502HD digital tuner that does not drop frames for comparison.
>>>> The best I got was with the Nvidia decoder, and that appears to be 15 frames per second. I even went so far as to connect the
>>>> Centronics tuner to the computers monitor, and proved that the problem was not the monitor.
>>>>
>>>> The system is an Intel Core I7 CPU 920 running at 2.67 GHz, 6 GB RAM doing nothing else.
>>>> The display is a Dell 3008WFP 2560x1600/60 monitor connected by dual link DVI.
>>>> I'm running the 325.8 64 bit NVIDIA driver.
>>>>
>>>> What am I missing?
>>> Until you said you were using a 2560x1600 monitor, I could see no
>>> reason for any problems.  What mode are you running the monitor in -
>>> are you having the Nvidia drivers upscale 720p to 2560x1600, or are
>>> you getting the monitor to do that (by having MythTV change the screen
>>> mode to match the content being played)?  I would think the latter
>>> would work.  Is that what the Centronics tuner does?  Get your monitor
>>> to tell you what mode it is in while using both sources.  There is
>>> usually a monitor menu somewhere that does that.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>>I tried both, neither worked. Having MythTV change resolutions really screwed up my display settings since it did not change the
>>resolution back when it exited, and the video was the wrong aspect ratio (tall & skinny, taller than it was wide).
>
>A GTX 760 should be easily capable of doing what you want, even with
>2560x1600.  Your i7-900 CPU is probably a little old to do it all in
>CPU alone though - but you could try that and see what happens.
>
>I am going to make some suggestions of things to check - you may well
>have found all these already, but they are things I have met in the
>past that have caused problems.
>
>Do have the option set for "Separate modes for GUI and TV playback"
>(Setup > Appearance > Page 2: Video Mode Settings)?  It should have
>given you back the right aspect ratio for the GUI at the end of
>playback if you have.  If not, it sounds like there may be a bug
>somewhere.
>
>Do you have the Paint engine setting on Auto (Settings > Appearance >
>Page 1: Theme / Screen Settings)?  If you have been using older
>versions of MythTV, that may still be some other value as the database
>upgrades do not change it.  Auto seems to be the best setting for it
>now.
>
>Are your settings actually using VDPAU properly?  Check the CPU usage
>while playing back your 720p recording - CPU use should be low.  If
>not, it is not actually using VDPAU.
>
>In your VDPAU settings, how many CPU cores is VDPAU set to use (Setup
>> Video > Playback > Page 3: Playback Profiles > Edit > Max CPUs)?  On
>that same screen, is the Video Renderer set to vdpau?  In the next
>screen, do you have vdpauhqscaling in the Custom filters setting?
>
>Is your dual-link DVI cable actually working in dual-link?  Is it
>possible to swap it with the (presumably HDMI) cable that is known to
>work on the Centronics tuner?
>
>
>Some pages to look at for more ideas:
>
>http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU
>http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Frame_display_timing

And the next thing to do is to get some logs.  The best way to do that
is to use mythavtest - it will just give the logs for playing a file,
without any other extraneous stuff.  I am not sure of what your
experience level with using a command prompt is, so let me know if you
need more (or less) detail.  You need to run mythavtest from a
terminal on the X desktop, so it will be able to find the X screen to
display on.  You should be logged in as the same user as mythfrontend.
First find the file for the 720p recording you want to play.  In
Mythfrontend, go to the recording and use the I key twice, and scroll
down if necessary, until you can see the Recorded File Name.  Then use
the cd command to go to each of your storage group directories and use
the ls command to see if that file is in that directory.  Once you
find the file, you run mythavtest from that directory.

Try this command:

  mythavtest <your reccording file name> | tee mythavtest.log

Play the file until you have seen the things that are causing problems
happening.  Then exit mythavtest and take a look at mythavtest.log.
See if there is anything that stands out.  You can also try setting
some logging options.  Run

  mythavtest --help
  mythavtest -v help

for the options.  Setting --loglevel to show more or setting a -v
option such as -v playback might provide some more useful information.
Then you can post a copy of your mythavtest.log here, or if it is too
large, post it on somewhere like pastebin.com and post a URL here.