Poor performance, high CPU load in .2 RC3 (2 Viewers)

[sisvpfis]

Hi Folks,

I was searching all through the Forums to gather information on how to speedup my Mediaportal significantly. Sadly I was not that successful as I'd hope I would be.

To the Problem:
I am experiencing a strong leak of performance as soon as I enter the Videos tab in Mediaportal .2 RC3 (different SVN snapshots). As long as I am in the main tab there's no odd behaviour - all keypresses (keyboard and remote) are executed immediately but in the videos tab I've got CPU Load between 80%-100% and all keypresses are executed after 2-3 secs. Videos are however played without any loss of synch of audio and video or any other strange behaviour. Watching TV isn't even possible because of it's choppyness.

I've already learned that some DirectX 9 issues may be involved with this, but I don't want to change Hardware - considering it already worked much better!

Since all the snapshots didn't bring any solution I decided to go back to ver .1.3.
With this version the performance is very good even in the vids tab.

I know that my hardware isn't that Fast but it cannot be an adequate solution for ver .2 RC3 if even the execution of simple menus is running near a 100% CPU load.

Does anybody have a solution for this?




Thanks a lot in advance for your thoughts!!!

Sven


----
ASUS A7N-VM incl. Nforce2
AMD XP 1800+
Twinhan DVB-T
Toshiba SD-M1812
--- running ---
Win XP
Mediaportal .1.3 and .2 RC3

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hi Sven

If you have both MP1.3 and .2RC3 installed.

Question 1. 1.3 works fine, with no lag.
Q 2. fault only appeared straight away on installation of 0.2RC3
Q 3. fault appeared after RC3 svn update.
Q 4. have you tried clean install of 0.2RC3+latest svn (with ALL files deleted in the mediaportal folder prior to install)

Regards

8)

 

[Funky]

Hi,

Have a look at this, maybe it will help you.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewtopic.php?t=8303&highlight=pci+latency

 

[sisvpfis]

Hi Ray,

I don't have both releases installed. I've been playing around with the standard releases of ver .1.3 and .2.0 RC3 and its latest snapshots.

In Mediaportal .1.3 without any CVS I don't experience any lags and the overall menu performance is normal. Performance doesn't seem to change at all with the latest .1.3 CVS but I've got some odd behaviour with the Videos listing. The list is empty although the Path is set right.

To questions 2, 3 and 4:
The lack of performance is already there when I doing the clean install of ver .2 RC3. Even though I was hoping the performance would improve by installing the latest SVNs but unfortunately it didn't. In the startup menu the CPU load is near zero but as soon as I'm entering the videos or tv menu the load increases drammatically to almost 100%. This doesn't change after installing the latest snapshot from 04/13/ around 1am.

Hopefully you've got some ideas, im my opinion there's no reason why one menu should work fine an the others won't!?


Regards

Sven

 

[sisvpfis]

Hi Funky,

I've just played around a little with the latency settings but sadly without any effect on the CPU load in the Video menu But thanks for the hint anyway!


Regards

Sven

 

[Johan]

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 RC4 (2006-04-18)
MediaPortal Skin: MCE
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
.NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
Audio Codec: MPEG/AC3/DTS/LPCM Audio Decoder
Video Codec: Mpeg2Dec Filter
CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Memory: 1 GB
Motherboard: A7V600-X (ASUSTeK Computer INC.)
TV Card Model: -
TV Card Type: -
TV Card Driver: -
Video Card Model: Radeon 9600 Series (128 MB)
Video Card Driver: -
Video Card Resolution: 1024x768
Video Render Type: -
Audio Card Model: SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio
Audio Card Driver: -
Synopsis:: -

I have sort of the same problem.

The menus are slow as hell when the small preview window (in the lower left corner) is showing a movie clip or when it is showing music visualisation.

This is not the case in 0.1.3.0. The movie might be choppy when moving around in the menus but the menus are very fast and smooth. The problem start with 0.2.0.0 RC1 where the menu are slow only if it has to scroll upp the whole menu.

In RC2 and above it takes 1-2 second just to change menu item. My system is old but I am having HTPC ideas and are just testing MediaPortal to see how it works.

What is the difference with preview/visuliasation window from 0.1.3.0 to 0.2.0.0+ versions? It sure eats a lot more CPU power which is never good even with a fast CPU.

Any ideas help?

/Johan

 

[sisvpfis]

Hi Johan,

I've also installed the RC4 lately on my Mediaportal PC (whis is similar to yours in CPU power but it has just 256megs of RAM)

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 RC4
MediaPortal Skin: MCE
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Memory: 256 MB
Motherboard: A7N-VM (ASUSTeK Computer INC.)
TV Card Model: DigitalRise DVB-T (Twinhan)
Video Card Model: Onboard Nvidia nForce2
Video Card Resolution: 1024x768 / 800x600


Unfortunately it's still the same... Vids menu is as slow as before in RC3 :-/ I've also tried it on my Office/Games PC which is an Athlon64 3000+ on ASUS A8V with 1 GB and a Radeon 9800 Pro. This one seems to have enough power to workaround the Vids menu problem ;-)

I agree wiht you that the small video window might be big problem here. Maybe it's already started when entering the vids menu. But why could this be such a problem? Watching videos in small windows doesn't need that much CPU performance... (comparing to the windows desktop)

Again... please HELP!!!! :?


Regards

Sven

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Sven

The best hope of getting MP to work are 512mb ram and a directx 9c compatible graphics card. these will take the strain of your CPU dramatically. When talking about directx cards look nvidia fx5200 or higher.
unfortunately MP is graphics hungry and needs these basic requirements to run smoothly.

 

[Johan]

I have actually narrowed down the problem a lot and I know in which cases the menus (and OSD) are slow. The strange thing is that this should really not be the case and I think it is a programming glitch. (Like I know this! Haha I havn't written a single line of code in my life)

Anyway the problem.

When the AVI or DVD movie contains AC3 stream and ONLY when it is passed through to the S/PDIF, the menus are slow (1-2 seconds delay between menu items). It is not only the vid menu but all OSD activity is very slow like the menu window, volume indication and so on in video mode. If I change the codec to decode the AC3 stream (should really take more CPU power) to normal PCM stereo everything is a smooth as you ever want it to be.


This in my eyes makes no sense!

I hope there will be a fix for this since it seems like my system really are able to handle mediaportal very smoothly.

 

[Johan]

I browsed through different forums on the web regarding mediaportal and I stumbled through someone who similar problems with AC3 sound. His problems was that in TV broadcasts with AC3 the lipsync was off and when he changed to PCM audio everything was OK. So this really seems like a problem with Mediaportal and AC3.