[vdr] Re: buffer is filling up - problem

[Klaus Schmidinger <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de>]

Axel Gruber wrote:
> 
> > And how to increase the Buffer from xxx to ???.
> > Maybe this would help.
> Buy a fastser Processor, HD-Drive :-)))
> 
> Just a Joke :-)
> 
> No - i also donīt know why this happen now !?
> 
> My system was build with exact the same hardware 1 year ago.
> and at this thime with the old Driver (0.8) and a old VDR i was
> able to record from all 4 DVB-S Cardīs without any Problem.
> 
> Now with the newer Drivers and the newer VDR i only kan make 2
> Recordings at same time.
> 
> I have tryed it yesterday.
> 
> If i make 3 or 4 Recordings VDR-Menue get realy slow and
> i get TS-SYNC Problems and package lostīs.
> 
> Perhaps VDR do anything with the new drivers wich uses much more CPU-Power
> or more HD-Traffic.
> 
> Iīm also n ot happy with this situation and if anyone have a idea
> how to solve this - please let me know !

I tried three simultaneous recordings to the local harddisk and only
had a CPU usage of several percent per recording thread. However, I saw
that the EIT threads were using pretty much CPU capacity, depending on
which channel the DVB card was tuned to. These threads used way more
CPU capacity than the recording threads! I assume that this has been
introduced with the changes made to fix the EIT parser after Pro7 had
changed its EPG data (which caused VDR to crash). If the card is tuned
to RTL it uses much less CPU power than if tuned to Pro7, for instance.
Of course, Pro7 broadcasts a lot more EPG data than RTL, so this might
be an explanation why more CPU power is used. But the difference is
so large that I still assume another problem in there. For example, with
EPGBugfixLevel set to 0 (to rule out that overhead) CPU usage of the EIT
thread when tuned to RTL is below the display level of the 'top' command
(i.e. 0.0), while when tuned to Pro7 it is around 10%!

For a quick test whether this could help, I suggest those with buffer
overflow problems should do the following test: insert the line

  void cSIProcessor::SetStatus(bool On)
  {
+    return;//XXX
     ShutDownFilters();
     if (On)

into 'eit.c', which will completely disable the EIT parser. Then test
recording again and see whether the buffer still fills up. Let me know
if the situation has improved through this.

Klaus
-- 
_______________________________________________________________

Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10
CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40
Hofmark 2                               Email:   kls@cadsoft.de
D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de
_______________________________________________________________