[vdr] Re: picture distortion during recording and replay

[Rainer Zocholl <UseNet-Posting-Nospam-74308-@zocki.toppoint.de>]

(André Weidemann)  06.12.04 21:26


>Hi,
>a few weeks ago I re-installed my system on a new machine with a new
>motherboard (Biostar M7VIZ). I installed Debian Sarge and Kernel
>2.6.9. I'm running this machine without a harddrive and RootFS via
>NFS. My DVB card is a Technotrend DVB-Sat rev 1.5 with a CI and an
>Alphacrypt CAM.

>Eversince I upgraded my machine I'm having picture distortions during
>a recording, and I don't know why. 


What speed gives the command

#hdparm -tT /dev/hda
asuming hda is your vidoe disc.

if below 10Mb/s have a look if DMA is activated
#hdparm -I /dev/hda

Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
        Buffer size: 2048.0kB   ECC bytes: 4    Queue depth: 1
        Standby timer values: spec'd by standard, no device specific minimum
        r/w multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
             Cycle time: no flow control=240ns  IORDY flow control=120ns


Maybe(usually) you need new drivers for your new board.

>One thing in fact is a bit weird.
>The interrupts the device is generating are quite high.


>The recorded files however are all fine and have no distortions at all
>but viewing them with vdr is no fun since the distortions are there
>during replay again. During replay there are around 200-400 interrupts
>per second generated by the DVB card.

msi:~/video/VDR# cat /proc/interrupts && sleep 10 &&  cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0
  0:    2375261          XT-PIC  timer
  1:          2          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  4:      36540          XT-PIC  lirc_serial
  5:   77176033          XT-PIC  usb-ohci, saa7146 (0), saa7146 (1), saa7146 (2), eth0
  7:     182299          XT-PIC  usb-ohci
  8:          3          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:          0          XT-PIC  acpi
 10:         17          XT-PIC  bttv0, bt878
 11:        165          XT-PIC  usb-ohci
 14:     539473          XT-PIC  ide0
NMI:          0
ERR:          0

           CPU0
  0:    2376266          XT-PIC  timer
  1:          2          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  4:      36632          XT-PIC  lirc_serial
  5:   77207679          XT-PIC  usb-ohci, saa7146 (0), saa7146 (1), saa7146 (2), eth0
  7:     182373          XT-PIC  usb-ohci
  8:          3          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:          0          XT-PIC  acpi
 10:         17          XT-PIC  bttv0, bt878
 11:        165          XT-PIC  usb-ohci
 14:     539682          XT-PIC  ide0
NMI:          0
ERR:          0

31646 Interrupts on 5 in 10 seconds, 3164 per second...
Wow that's a lot! only 300us each...(recording 1 channel. 4 cards)
But see1ms to be no problem.
(Timer: 1005/10sec)


#top
 load average: 0.45, 0.39, 0.36
137 processes: 131 sleeping, 5 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  15.9% user,  13.1% system,   0.0% nice,  71.0% idle
Mem:    514980K total,   509956K used,     5024K free,    10424K buffers
Swap:   489972K total,      396K used,   489576K free,   425368K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
14959 root       9   0 17628  17M  1608 S     7.7  3.4   9:26 vdr
14972 root      15   0 17628  17M  1608 R     6.1  3.4  10:38 vdr
14963 root      13   0 17628  17M  1608 R     4.5  3.4   9:29 vdr
14969 root      10   0 17628  17M  1608 S     2.1  3.4   6:34 vdr
 2037 root       9   0 17628  17M  1608 S     0.7  3.4   0:26 vdr
 8763 root      13   0   976  976   736 R     0.7  0.1   0:00 top
    3 root      19  19     0    0     0 RWN   0.5  0.0   2:25 ksoftirqd_CPU0
 6199 root       9   0 17628  17M  1608 S     0.1  3.4   0:00 vdr
    1 root       8   0   472  472   412 S     0.0  0.0   0:04 init
...

That's a lot load IMHO.

Rainer