Mailing List Archive: Video is choppy where is was not before

Video is choppy where is was not before

Aug 31, 2002, 6:29 PM

Post #1 of 3 (2218 views)

I bought a new motherboard and cpu this week,

AMD 1900+
SiS 735 based MB

I installed all the required software and found that the video was now
choppy. The picture was clear, but the picture would pause for a second and
then speed up to catch up after pausing. So I thought it may have something
to do w/ the hardware. I switched back to the other box running mythtv-0.5,
the same thing was happening (it was the same software, I installed the old
Via MB and 1.7 Ghz Celeron back into the computer). So I am thinking the
hardware is not the problem, just something in my configuration. I tried
all different resolutions and settings in the settings.txt. I tried using
the open source "nv" driver. Nothing worked. Here's my config

Nvidia Geforce4 MX
Athlon XP 1900+
ECS SiS 735 MB
256 (2100) DDR RAM
wintv hauppage card
soundblaster live (using the alsa driver 0.9rc3)
kernel is 2.4.18, nothing fancy, just the one from kernel.org

I also went back to mythtv-0.4, same choppy video. I also recompiled X w/
default settings. Weird. Anyone have any ideas?

thanks,
Chris
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Preston A. Elder prez@goth.net
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 15:27:30 -0400
To: mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Subject: [mythtv] MythTV does not appear to work with FB setups

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Hash: SHA1

Hey,

I'm trying to use MythTV on a setup using vesafb as the X driver (mainly
because a native one doesnt exist for my vid card yet).

I can use xawtv, but I have to provide the options -fb -nodga to be able to
do
it, which is probably whats screwing me up here.

The error message I'm getting from MythTV tho, is rather bizarre:

$ mythtv
Probed: Television
Probed: Composite1
Probed: S-Video
Probed: Composite3
Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
libavcodec: CPU flags: mmx mmxext 3dnow
using rtjpeg
strange error flushing buffer ...
Couldn't find Xv support, exiting

An X box pops up for a while, and dissapears again promptly. I have xv
installed.

Incidentally, I tried running mythfrontend, just to check it out, however I
couldnt click the mouse on it, my mouse cursor kept going BEHIND the window
(and I noticed the window did not have any window decorations). I'll
assume
this is because its not ment to be run directly *grin*.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

*sigh* I also just found out the underlying web server xmltv uses to grab
its
listings does not have my cable provider listed ... what a pain in the butt.

- --
PreZ
Systems Administrator
GOTH.NET

Goth Code '98: tSKeba5qaSabsaaaGbaa75KAASWGuajmsvbieqcL4BaaLb3F4
nId5mefqmDjmmgm#haxthgzpj4GiysNkycSRGHabiabOkauNSW

GOTH.NET - http://www.goth.net
Free online resource for the gothic community.
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Re: Video is choppy where is was not before [ In reply to ]

richard at earthmen

Sep 1, 2002, 1:22 AM

Post #2 of 3 (2124 views)

Permalink

On Sun, 2002-09-01 at 11:29, kleeschu@mindspring.com wrote:
> I bought a new motherboard and cpu this week,
>
> AMD 1900+
> SiS 735 based MB
>
>
> I installed all the required software and found that the video was now
> choppy. The picture was clear, but the picture would pause for a second and
> then speed up to catch up after pausing. So I thought it may have something
> to do w/ the hardware. I switched back to the other box running mythtv-0.5,
> the same thing was happening (it was the same software, I installed the old
> Via MB and 1.7 Ghz Celeron back into the computer). So I am thinking the
> hardware is not the problem, just something in my configuration. I tried
> all different resolutions and settings in the settings.txt. I tried using
> the open source "nv" driver. Nothing worked. Here's my config
>

It sounds like the hard drive may not be keeping up with the job. What
does hdparm -tT /dev/hda (or whatever harddrive you are writing your
video output to), i.e. have you tuned your harddrive with hdparm
(numbers you should see here should be up around 40 MB/sec for the
second number hdparm will give you, numbers MUCH lower than this (say
lower than 20-30 MB/sec depending on harddrive) may mean you are not
running with DMA turned on. hdparm -d1 -c1 /dev/hda is usually a good
start. Now, its possible that you know all this stuff and are thinking
"Of course I've tuned my hard drive". I'm not sure what chipset you have
on the SiS motherboard, but the 2.4.18 had a bug with newest VIA ide
chipsets which did not allow them to make drives go into DMA mode.
Update to 2.4.19 and try the hdparm stuff and see if your problem
improves.

Hope that helps,
Richard.

Re: Video is choppy where is was not before [ In reply to ]

kleeschu at mindspring

Sep 1, 2002, 9:07 AM

Post #3 of 3 (2178 views)

Permalink

yes, this was exactly it. I toiled for 2 days and finally thought of this 2
min. after i sent the help request. thanks!

Chris

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Richard Jones richard@earthmen.com
Date: 01 Sep 2002 18:22:48 +1000
To: mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Subject: Re: [mythtv] Video is choppy where is was not before

On Sun, 2002-09-01 at 11:29, kleeschu@mindspring.com wrote:
> I bought a new motherboard and cpu this week,
>
> AMD 1900+
> SiS 735 based MB
>
>
> I installed all the required software and found that the video was now
> choppy. The picture was clear, but the picture would pause for a second
and
> then speed up to catch up after pausing. So I thought it may have
something
> to do w/ the hardware. I switched back to the other box running
mythtv-0.5,
> the same thing was happening (it was the same software, I installed the
old
> Via MB and 1.7 Ghz Celeron back into the computer). So I am thinking the
> hardware is not the problem, just something in my configuration. I tried
> all different resolutions and settings in the settings.txt. I tried using
> the open source "nv" driver. Nothing worked. Here's my config
>

It sounds like the hard drive may not be keeping up with the job. What
does hdparm -tT /dev/hda (or whatever harddrive you are writing your
video output to), i.e. have you tuned your harddrive with hdparm
(numbers you should see here should be up around 40 MB/sec for the
second number hdparm will give you, numbers MUCH lower than this (say
lower than 20-30 MB/sec depending on harddrive) may mean you are not
running with DMA turned on. hdparm -d1 -c1 /dev/hda is usually a good
start. Now, its possible that you know all this stuff and are thinking
"Of course I've tuned my hard drive". I'm not sure what chipset you have
on the SiS motherboard, but the 2.4.18 had a bug with newest VIA ide
chipsets which did not allow them to make drives go into DMA mode.
Update to 2.4.19 and try the hdparm stuff and see if your problem
improves.

Hope that helps,
Richard.

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mythtv-dev@snowman.net
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