TheGrebs.com:IRC Logs:#mythtv:2002:10:02

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19:37	<snuckles>	Hi all.
19:39	<snuckles>	I have a question, how many of you are using a remote contol with MythTV?
19:40	<snuckles>	Hello?
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21:16	<snuckles>	hello?
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21:40	<snuckles>	hello?
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22:06	<vektor>	Hey, question.
22:06	<vektor>	Anyone know: can I open the video device multiple times?
22:06	<vektor>	Like, if the other time is to just change the channel?
22:06	<vektor>	Can I do that?
22:16	<Chutt>	nope, you can't
22:17	<vektor>	Ok, thanks.
22:22	-!-	mdz [~mdz@209-6-103-23.c3-0.smr-ubr1.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com] has joined #mythtv
22:25	<mdz>	I am having problems getting smooth playback at any more than 320x240, which is intolerably blurry
22:26	<mdz>	what should I trade off?
22:28	<vektor>	Heh.
22:28	<vektor>	What do you mean by smooth playback?
22:28	<vektor>	And how powerful is your machine?
22:28	<mdz>	Athlon 1.4GHz
22:29	<mdz>	and smooth meaning few enough drops that I don't get skips in audio or obvious choppiness
22:29	<mdz>	there are a lot of knobs here, and I've been fiddling with most of them, and I'm not sure where best to spend my available processing power
22:31	<mdz>	it looks like I can just barely get reasonable quality with rtjpeg using the default quality settings (which look decent) only by disabling deinterlaced playback and audio compression
22:32	<mdz>	it would be nice if I could use the mpeg-2 audio encoder from ffmpeg with mythtv; it's so fast as to be almost free
22:33	<Chutt>	lame at quality level 9 or so should be faster
22:34	<Chutt>	i wasn't too impressed by the libavcodec mp3 encoder
22:49	<mdz>	the mp3 encoder in libavcodec just uses lame
22:49	<mdz>	but it has an mp2 encoder which is very fast
22:51	<mdz>	quality=9 skips a little at the beginning, but seems to smooth out
22:56	<mdz>	it's odd, I can't figure out where my bottleneck is
22:56	<mdz>	my CPU is not maxed out
22:58	<Chutt>	harddrive?
22:58	<vektor>	Make sure you turn on DMA.
22:58	<Chutt>	'zactly.
22:59	<vektor>	Or you will suffer brutally.
22:59	<vektor>	Chutt: I ripped some code off you, hope you don't mind.
22:59	<Chutt>	course not
23:01	* mdz	tries to avoid admitting that he's capturing over NFS
23:01	<Chutt>	hah
23:02	<Chutt>	not enough space locally or something to that effect?
23:02	<mdz>	the machine is diskless
23:02	<Chutt>	ah
23:02	<mdz>	it works out nicely because it is very quiet
23:03	<Chutt>	right
23:03	<mdz>	only 2 moving parts, CPU fan and PS fan
23:03	<mdz>	I've benchmarked it, and the throughput is more than enough for video. I think I may need to use a network card which multitasks better than this one, though
23:03	<Chutt>	well
23:03	<Chutt>	i do a lot of smaller reads, too
23:03	<Chutt>	which kills throughput on most normal ethernet cards
23:04	<mdz>	how small?
23:04	<mdz>	like, less than an ethernet frame?
23:04	<Chutt>	yeah
23:04	<mdz>	uh oh
23:04	<mdz>	they are localized, though, right? cache should win
23:04	<Chutt>	_should_
23:04	<mdz>	unless you're jumping all over the file
23:04	<Chutt>	but
23:05	<Chutt>	should be reading sequentially
23:05	<Chutt>	you're playing back something previously recorded, right?
23:06	<mdz>	that, and timeshifting
23:06	<mdz>	I've been timeshifting for my performance tests
23:06	<Chutt>	hmm
23:06	<mdz>	to find the maximum where I can watch without worrying about interfering with scheduled recordings
23:06	<vektor>	uh...
23:06	<vektor>	the machine is diskless?
23:06	<Chutt>	yeah
23:06	<vektor>	are you _sure_ the network can handle the video rate?
23:06	<Chutt>	i don't think it's going to work :p
23:06	<vektor>	what about latency?
23:07	<vektor>	are you using nfs??
23:07	<mdz>	vektor: yes
23:07	<vektor>	how did you test read speeds?
23:07	<vektor>	Chutt: Do you write async to disk?
23:07	<mdz>	vektor: by playing back high-bitrate mpeg-2 over the network
23:07	<vektor>	two streams at once?
23:07	<Chutt>	no, i sync writes once a second
23:07	<vektor>	what about writing?
23:07	<vektor>	oh man
23:08	<mdz>	vektor: that's what I'm working on now
23:08	<Chutt>	otherwise
23:08	<vektor>	those write syncs will kill him
23:08	<Chutt>	when the kernel dumps its buffers
23:08	<Chutt>	you drop frames
23:08	<vektor>	mdz: but you can happily play back two high bitrate streams at once?
23:08	<mdz>	vektor: haven't tried that
23:08	<vektor>	since if you're timeshifting you're both reading and writing, right?
23:08	<vektor>	so that's two streams
23:08	<mdz>	right
23:08	<vektor>	and that will cause alot of crap to happen
23:08	<vektor>	but the write syncs will really kill you.
23:09	<Chutt>	really can't do without it
23:09	<mdz>	yes, that is the trick
23:09	<vektor>	jeez, get patching :)
23:09	<mdz>	lower bitrates should naturally give me better results
23:10	<vektor>	Chutt: I stole some code from you btw...
23:10	<Chutt>	then you'll go 30 seconds or so, the kernel will say 'hey, look, i've got full disk buffers, i better clear some' and bad things happen =)
23:10	<vektor>	mdz: but you still have to deal with the inherent nfs latency.
23:10	<mdz>	320x240 is no problem, never skips at all in my tests
23:10	<vektor>	ok.
23:10	<Chutt>	vektor, yeah, i saw what you said
23:10	<vektor>	Chutt: oh did i say that already?
23:10	<Chutt>	yup
23:10	<vektor>	damn i'm stupid
23:10	<Chutt>	what're you stealing?
23:10	<vektor>	nothing big
23:11	<vektor>	just diz' freq code and how you use it
23:11	<Chutt>	ah
23:11	<vektor>	have you ever met diz?
23:11	<Chutt>	nope
23:11	<vektor>	he's k-razy.
23:11	<vektor>	hangs on #livid btw
23:11	<vektor>	hard fucking core too.
23:11	<vektor>	dude wrote his own composite decoder ;-)
23:12	<vektor>	(like, composite video stream, not alpha composite) ;-)
23:12	<Chutt>	right
23:13	<vektor>	ok question. around here we sort of have this convention. when we mean alpha composite, we pronounce it 'COMPOS-IT', and when we mean composite video, we say 'compozite'.
23:13	<vektor>	actually it's hard to write how you pronounce something.
23:13	<vektor>	i'm just curious if you pronounce those two differently.
23:13	<vektor>	or if it's just some whack odd canadian thing or something.
23:13	<mdz>	vektor: emphasis on the first syllable vs. the second?
23:13	<Chutt>	i pronounce em both the same
23:13	<vektor>	heh
23:13	<vektor>	mdz: i guess so
23:14	<vektor>	komposite vs comPOS-it.
23:14	<vektor>	yeah, i guess it's 1st vs 2nd.
23:17	* vektor	gone
23:17	<mdz>	looks like utilization on the network is around 8-9mbit/sec in each direction
23:18	<mdz>	I should probably invest in a switch
23:18	<Chutt>	heh
23:18	<Chutt>	aren't the newer seagate drives pretty silent?
23:19	<Chutt>	maybe like a small drive, used for cache, basically?
23:19	<mdz>	yeah, that would be an idea
23:19	<mdz>	I have some small drives lying around, and could experiment to see which is quietest
23:19	<Chutt>	could stick the ringbuffer on there for timeshifting
23:19	<mdz>	I like the idea of pooling the majority of the storage, though
23:19	<mdz>	rather than having to divide it up between machines
23:19	<Chutt>	and implement a cache mechanism
23:19	<Chutt>	where it copies stuff over during/while playing
23:19	<Chutt>	so it reads from the local drive
23:20	<mdz>	but with 512M RAM, I should be able to buffer quite a bit of compressed video
23:20	<Chutt>	but the network copy goes all fast because it's using big reads/writes
23:20	<mdz>	big reads/writes can only help, for disks too
23:20	<Chutt>	yeah
23:21	<Chutt>	i've been thinking about going that route, actually
23:21	<Chutt>	smaller machine in the living room for playback
23:21	<Chutt>	loud beast for recording elsewhere
23:21	<mdz>	exactly
23:21	<mdz>	in fact, the best possible setup would be to do the encoding on the big machine
23:21	<Chutt>	right
23:21	<mdz>	I have so much processor to spare on the server it isn't funny
23:21	<Chutt>	heh
23:22	<mdz>	while the set top box is struggling
23:22	<mdz>	I was thinking about a very fast lossless encoder to shoot it over the network, then do a slow high-quality lossy encode on the server
23:22	<mdz>	but that would just barely fit one stream over the network
23:22	<mdz>	MAYBE
23:22	<Chutt>	my main problem is that the athlon xp i have is too hot for the nice black case i bought for it, especially when i stick it in the stereo rack
23:23	<Chutt>	heh
23:23	<mdz>	a rough calculation said that with a 2:1 ratio or so, it'd be pushing 80mbit easy
23:23	<Chutt>	yeah
23:23	<Chutt>	you'd have to have a dedicated line for that, really
23:23	<mdz>	Chutt: I have a 1.4GHz t-bird for the living room, and an XP 2000+ in the office
23:24	<mdz>	which, like any other desktop, sits and does nothing for 99% of the time
23:24	<Chutt>	heh
23:24	<Chutt>	yeah
23:24	<Chutt>	hrm
23:24	<Chutt>	maybe i'll start playing more with that
23:24	<mdz>	while 10 feet away the other box is gasping for air
23:24	<Chutt>	wonder how hard it'd be to separate the encode/decode processes for timeshifing purposes
23:25	<mdz>	the only real issue I've run into with mythtv in this NFS configuration is that it can take a VERY long time to update the preview bitmaps
23:25	<Chutt>	there's quite a bit of syncing going on between them
23:25	<Chutt>	ah
23:25	<mdz>	it seems like it practically reads the entire file
23:25	<Chutt>	on the playback/delete page?
23:25	<mdz>	right
23:25	<Chutt>	60 seconds worth of it
23:25	<Chutt>	i've been meaning to make that optional
23:25	<Chutt>	since it takes awhile even on a local disk
23:26	<mdz>	how does it decide which frame to take?
23:26	<Chutt>	and it's not really needed with the little preview window
23:26	<mdz>	couldn't it just seek in some random amount and grab one?
23:26	<Chutt>	it goes 60 seconds in
23:26	<mdz>	it shouldn't need to read much just to seek, though, no?
23:26	<Chutt>	well
23:26	<Chutt>	there's no seek table
23:26	<mdz>	I don't know much about nuppelvideo
23:26	<mdz>	ah
23:26	<mdz>	ouch
23:26	<Chutt>	so finding a frame boundary would be kinda difficult
23:27	<Chutt>	i suppose, though
23:27	<Chutt>	it'd be doable
23:27	<mdz>	it looks like I've settled on a pretty usable configuration...480x480, mpeg4, 2200/scale=1, q=1-15, mp3quality=9, deinterlace=1
23:28	<mdz>	seems pretty smooth, with about 20% idle cpu
23:28	<Chutt>	not bad
23:29	<Chutt>	should be fairly watchable
23:36	<mdz>	yep
23:37	<Chutt>	are you using cvs?
23:38	<Chutt>	if you change the first instance of 'linearblend' in libs/libNuppelVideo/tv.cpp to 'postprocess'
23:38	<Chutt>	it'll use mplayer's dering/deblock filters as well
23:38	<Chutt>	little additional cpu, but
23:38	<mdz>	I'm not using cvs at the moment, but I've been meaning to pull it
23:39	<Chutt>	ah
23:46	<mdz>	does it have any new dependencies?
23:47	<mdz>	I believe I sent you mail because I couldn't find the location of the CVS repository on the website...then I caught it in a message to the list or something
23:48	<Chutt>	i don't think i've added anything
23:48	<Chutt>	think the only dependency change is flac 1.0.4 for mythmusic
23:50	<mdz>	damn, now I can't find the CVS repository anymore...is there some reason why it's a well-kept secret? :-)
23:50	<Chutt>	heh
23:51	<Chutt>	i don't want random people grabbing that instead of the main distribution, then emailing me if it doesn't work
23:51	<mdz>	ah
23:51	<Chutt>	just want to deter those who want to run a cvs checkout just because it's newer
23:51	<mdz>	well, I promise not to whine if it doesn't work. I might send bug reports and patches, though.
23:51	<Chutt>	heh
23:52	<Chutt>	that's acceptible =)
23:52	<Chutt>	password is mythtv
23:52	<mdz>	thanks
23:52	<Chutt>	there's a bit of an upgrade process
23:52	<Chutt>	but i think i've got it all documented
23:53	<mdz>	which module is the mythtv stuff in? MC?
23:53	<Chutt>	yea
23:54	<Chutt>	i need to change that sometime
23:54	<mdz>	the other nice thing about the nfsroot is that I can just chroot into it on the server to do builds and installs, much faster than doing it on the set top and doesn't interfere with capture
23:56	<mdz>	and dpkg over NFS is hellishly slow
23:56	<Chutt>	heh
23:56	<Chutt>	i can imagine