On 6/24/05, Poul Petersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Now, in these last couple of days I've solely been struggling to get > > audio working. Finally, it looks like that's a go. However, during > > this testing, I see the system crawling. The backend is sucking up > > ~55% of CPU time (according to top) for a single recording for a > > single card. But I've got 2 cards, and I expect this machine to also > > be a FE for HDTV. Yes, the cards are cheapo analog cards using bttv > > drivers (WinTV Go cards). But I thought if I spent the money on a > > decent CPU, I wouldn't have to worry about the amount of cycles > > absorbed by the lesser card. > > Hmm. That does seem a little high for a frame grabber, but > then it all depends on what settings you are using. I've got a > XP 2200+ with two WinTV Radio cards (and an Air2PC card incidentally). > I have the bttv cards set to capture 480x480 Mpeg4 and when they > capture they use about 38% of the cpu each. > > Personally, I'd ditch the bttv cards and get some flavor > of PVR. I had weird crashes that seemed to be the result of > starting simultaneous bttv recordings on a single backend. > When I "stripped" my bttv cards across backends, the problem > lessened, but every now and then I would be recording three > shows at once (so at least two on one of the backends) and it > would blow up (not everytime mind you - and if I rebooted the > machines regularly it would further lessen the problem) But since > I added a PVR250, my machine has been up for months. I'll > probably buy a PVR500 or two shortly and throw away my WinTV > cards... > > -poul >
Thanks for the suggestion. I do remember reading threads about the different resolutions, what was optimal for a situation, but don't really remember CPU coming into play. But I should have figured on that. I'll lower my bitrate a bit (mpeg4 also), I think I've got it cranked pretty high, something like 6000 I think. I wanted it high so I could transcode lower afterwards; sort of a "give me the best recording possibly, and then transcode that" strategy. However, maybe I'll just start on a lower bitrate to begin with, and then take out the transcoding step since the originals will be around the same size.. I'd really like to get a few of the PVR flavors here, but I had a very hard time justifying what I have, to add to it at this point would really be a bad idea. I am certainly looking for that as a solution in my future, but I would like to get this deployed as is for now, and then upgrade to PVR's later as the need arises for more cards. Thanks! _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
