High CPU usage; unable to use hardware decoding?

[sabre]

Hi,

This is really strarting to drive me crazy. First, this is my setup:

PIII, 600MHz, Shuttle AV61 (VIA Apollo pro) mobo
278MB RAM
PVR 250 card (16)
Chaintech Nvidia Geforce4 MX440 64MB video
Sound blaster live 5.1 audio
120 GB seagate HDD
This is dedicated HTPC and want timeshifting etc

I am using trial of SageTV, and also checked with BTV and Wintv.

Problem-->in SageTV (and others) nearly 100% CPU usage when watching Live TV. This is really frustrating b/c when I first set it up is was working fine w/ Live TV - low CPU, no freezing, jerky TV etc. Then, after trying to record once it threw everything off (reinstall did not put it back to previous state). Since CPU usage shot up steps I have already taken -- fresh install of XP (now w/ SP2) and latest drivers for PVR 250, reg hack for PVR 250, found some IRQ conflicts and moved PCI around (anyone know how to resolve these easier-still have to add another card but IRQ conflicts regular on certain PCI/AGP?). (Note: i also have a 64k partition - if i add a directory and save it will it by default save to the new directory and not on C:?)

Cause-->I think I narrowed it down to the inability of the Nvidia MX440 card to provide hardware assisted decoding, since when I only record CPU usage is less than 5%. Thus, I thought the reg hack would work (to allow 250 to offload decoding to video card), but has not.

Questions--> So, first, does the MX440 provide hardware decoding (I am pretty certain it does)? If so, in SageTV, why would the reg hack not work to utilize this when using the Intervideo decoder? (I also had PowerDVD decoder, on first install and that did not work either.) Next, what else should I do to implement hardware decoding on the mx440 (either in SageTV or do I have to do anything in the Nvidia set up)? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

How can I avoid the IRQ conflicts? I did temp fix by removing NIC card and disabling UBS controller, but would like to put these back. Any combo with all installed results in conflicts.

What other video/audio settings should I use, or perhaps my diagnosis is incorrect on the decoding resulting in 100% CPU usage. This is really driving me nuts and must resolve or no point in the project. Thanks for any input.

[salsbst]

Thus, I thought the reg hack would work (to allow 250 to offload decoding to video card), but has not.

Not sure which reg hack you're talking about, but the 250 doesn't do any decoding -- ever.

Make sure you are using Overlay and not VMR9. Overlay uses a ton less CPU.

Can't help you, but can empathize with the IRQ thing, other than to suggest moving the 250 to a different slot, and perhaps using BIOS to force different IRQs. This can sometimes involve reinstalling Windows to get the non-ACPI hardware access layer (the subject of which is worth a search on google).

[sabre]

Thanks for reply. I meant the reg hack noted by Narflex to get the video card to assit (assist the CPU) in decoding.
Is there any way to tell is the video card is actually decoding?

[salsbst]

Don't know, sorry.

[stanger89]

I believe Jeff (Narflex) once said that if you select one of the DXVA MPEG modes (a, b, c, d) and don't get an error then you are definitely using DXVA (ie, the video card is doing some decoding).

[kny3twalker]

So, first, does the MX440 provide hardware decoding (I am pretty certain it does)?

It does but it is not much better
than without in terms of decraesing CPU usage

in powerDVD you just need to make sure to enable hardware acceleration
or use radlight filter manager and make sure use hardware acceleration in checked for the cyberlink video decoder

Problem-->in SageTV (and others) nearly 100% CPU usage when watching Live TV. This is really frustrating b/c when I first set it up is was working fine w/ Live TV - low CPU, no freezing, jerky TV etc. Then, after trying to record once it threw everything off

also you are always recording
I have no idea why that would happen

but your CPU is not very fast
I would expect it to use a lot of CPU usage to playback a recorded TV show or liveTV

can you play a DVD without issues?

if so TV playback requires just a little bit more CPU usage but not much

so that should give you some idea

[sabre]

Thanks guys. I changed to overlay and tried "A" in DXVA MPEG and also Bob and Weave in DXVA in deinterlacing (is this the best for perf or picture?). Should Dscaler be on or off?

So, got CPU usage down to about 55% w/ these settings. Great. So, this was with Intervideo decoder. I hear Sonic is good.

Any other tips to get down CPU usage, or given my "feeble" system, this is likely the best i can do?

[mls]

With that slow of a system, and if you are running WinXP (no idea why you would on anything that slow), be sure to turn off as many extra things that may be running in the background.

Optimize everything you can for speed (none of the fancy frill stuff). Upping to 512Meg (or more) of RAM will help also.

Black Viper's web site has a lot of information about what processes in XP can be safely disabled.

I would like to hear though what combination of decoder and render others may have found that produces the absolute lowest CPU usage (and how good the quality was that way)?

[Opus4]

What recording rate are you using? Lowering it just a bit could help. Anything over 2 - 2.5 GB/hr would max out my p2-400 when using software decoding, so I would think yours could handle more than that.

Have you looked at cpu usage in Windows Task Manager to see if something else is grabbing a lot of cpu time during playback? NAV didn't use a lot of cpu time, but it ate memory until all the video dirs were excluded from it.

Originally posted by mls
I would like to hear though what combination of decoder and render others may have found that produces the absolute lowest CPU usage (and how good the quality was that way)?

That's easy: in my case, I use an Xcard. Practically no cpu usage plus great output & I expect the 350 would have the same results for hardware out only. (Yes, I know that really isn't what you meant.)

Unfortuantely (or: _fortunately_!?), I won't be able to offer many comments on that p2-00 much longer, since I finally decided to replace it.

- Andy

[sabre]

Thanks guys. Recording in 'best' quality. I removed some services according to Viper. I really though that PC100 SDRAM would be cheaper than it is given no new machines really use it anymore, but seems about same price as DDR.

I also tried out the windvd 6 decoder, and seems to work pretty nice. Do not forget you can do the same reg hack as w/ native Intervideo decoder. Before i did it CPU was about 85%, and then after reg went back to about 50%.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by sabre
I also tried out the windvd 6 decoder, and seems to work pretty nice. Do not forget you can do the same reg hack as w/ native Intervideo decoder. Before i did it CPU was about 85%, and then after reg went back to about 50%.

Got to give you a congrats on finding the correct location for the WinDVD 6 reg info, WinDVD is notorious for hiding it