[mythtvnz] Pixellation Every ~ 20 minutes

Fri Oct 5 00:15:07 BST 2012

On 5 October 2012 09:41, Paulgir <paulgir at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 05 Oct 2012 05:49:30 +1300, Pieter De Wit <pieter at insync.za.net> wrote:
>
> On 4/10/2012 22:34, Nick Rout wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 4, 2012 8:07 PM, "Curtis Walker" <sultanoswing at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Odd problem this.
> >
> > On all TV recordings, after around 20 minutes, the picture starts becoming pixellated. Over the next 30 or so seconds it becomes more and more pixellated until it looks like an impressionist painting. The sound is generally OK, but does have the odd, brief "glitch" (a noise like a modem negotiating). After no more than a minute, the picture and sound suddenly return to normal.
> >
> > I'm fairly sure this is not a reception issue, since it seems to occur so regularly, and at roughly the same time in each recording, and for the rest of the recording picture and sound are perfect. Signal strength and SNR are fine (98% and 2.3dB respectively, and this is representative). Same thing occurs on all channels.
> >
> > It doesn't appear to be related to the playback, as the same pixellation occurs in the same place whether viewing the recording on desktop (nvidia) or Laptop (intel integrated), although it sounds similar to symptoms reported by others on mythtv <0.25 which people ascribed to vdpau and buffer settings.
> >
> > Could be some scheduled process is running every 20 minutes or so on my disks? Although why it occurs ~20 minutes into a recording, and never at other times, doesn't seem to fit with this either.
> >
> > Hmmmm ....
>
> I have seen similar stuff. I thought it was to do with the networking between my HDHR and my backend. I should indicate further.
>
>
> Quite correct Nick. If you drop a few packets from the h264 stream, it does this, the more your drop, the worst the result (logical, I know :) ). I used to see this with program changes (I am sure most of you have seen my rants on the main list), but since then I took a certain supplier to task on a $99 deal for a 120gig SSD, problem gone :)
>
> Why this happens at the 20 min mark is hard to say, can you tell us more about your setup ? Perhaps more details around CPU,memory,disk,mount points ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pieter
>
>
> In my case I have a combined BE/FE wit an Intel G620 2.6 GHz CPU,4GB RAM OS is on a separate drive to storage and is not performing comm flagging or transcoding.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
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Ahhhhh. Glad (in some ways) to see I'm not the only one then.

Specs (Desktop):
ASUS P7P55D-E-Pro
Core 2 Duo i750
8GB RAM
Geforce 460 GTX (drivers 304.51)
Hauppage HVR-2210 (built-in kernel drivers + firmware NXP7164-2010-03-10.1.fw)
System drive: Samsung 830 (ext4); media drive (/mnt/media) Seagate
Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 1TB (ext4) w/470GB free space
Arch Linux (kernel 3.5.4, Gnome 3.2)
This is a combined local FE/BE machine on taniwha-net using mythtv,
arch pkg 0.25.2-1, so no over-the-network issues

Specs (Laptop):
HP Folio 13, core i5
Integrated Intel Graphics
128GB SSD
Arch Linux (kernel 3.5.4, Gnome 3.2)
FE machine connected to BE via wireless G (WRT54GL, Tomato 1.28)

Log from day and time from an example of when pixellation occurred.
Program is "Go Diego Go" (Channel Four, H.264, SD 480, 2.0 sound)
scheduled from 0820 to 0850. Pixellation started 21:10 minutes into
the recording i.e. around 0841, got slowly worse until completely
smeared at 22:10, then resolved suddenly at 22:55. Although it's a 4:3
aspect recording, the pixel smears extend into the black side bars of
the picture.

Here's the log:

2012-09-26 08:19:55.248911 I [992/1307] TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:3989
(TuningNewRecorder) - TVRec(1): rec->GetPathname():
'/mnt/media/mythtv/4301_20120926082000.mpg'
2012-09-26 08:20:13.078247 W [992/1745] TFWWrite
ThreadedFileWriter.cpp:499 (DiskLoop) -
TFW(/mnt/media/mythtv/4301_20120926082000.mpg:56): write(61100) cnt 15
total 818552 -- took a long time, 1663 ms
2012-09-26 08:23:31.214100 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:24:57.583625 N [992/1338] Expire autoexpire.cpp:263
(CalcParams) - AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space:
102.0 GB w/freq: 14 min
2012-09-26 08:28:36.218878 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:33:38.224655 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:38:44.231152 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:38:57.589742 N [992/1338] Expire autoexpire.cpp:263
(CalcParams) - AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space:
102.0 GB w/freq: 14 min
2012-09-26 08:43:48.237017 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:45:49.350493 I [992/1793] Metadata_39 jobqueue.cpp:2151
(DoMetadataLookupThread) - JobQueue: Metadata Lookup Starting for "Go
Diego Go" recorded from channel 4301 at 2012-09-26T08:20:00
2012-09-26 08:45:49.350941 I [992/1795] SystemManager
system-unix.cpp:263 (run) - Starting process manager
2012-09-26 08:45:49.351130 I [992/1796] SystemSignalManager
system-unix.cpp:485 (run) - Starting process signal handler
2012-09-26 08:45:49.355944 I [992/1797] SystemIOHandlerR
system-unix.cpp:90 (run) - Starting IO manager (read)
2012-09-26 08:45:49.356029 I [992/1798] SystemIOHandlerW
system-unix.cpp:90 (run) - Starting IO manager (write)
2012-09-26 08:45:50.286250 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1360
(HandleAnnounce) - MainServer::ANN Monitor
2012-09-26 08:45:50.286265 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1362
(HandleAnnounce) - adding: taniwha-desktop as a client (events: 0)
2012-09-26 08:45:50.286901 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1360
(HandleAnnounce) - MainServer::ANN Monitor
2012-09-26 08:45:50.286913 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1362
(HandleAnnounce) - adding: taniwha-desktop as a client (events: 1)
2012-09-26 08:48:52.243113 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:50:00.004754 I [992/1307] TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:1029
(HandleStateChange) - TVRec(1): Changing from RecordingOnly to None
2012-09-26 08:50:00.005061 E [992/1748] DVBRead
dvbstreamhandler.cpp:214 (RunTS) - DVBSH(/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0):
Device EOF detected
2012-09-26 08:50:00.435109 I [992/992] CoreContext scheduler.cpp:638
(UpdateRecStatus) - Updating status for "Go Diego Go" on cardid 1
(Recording => Recorded)
2012-09-26 08:50:00.458742 I [992/1335] Scheduler scheduler.cpp:2034
(HandleReschedule) - Reschedule requested for id 0.
2012-09-26 08:50:00.479037 I [992/1307] TVRecEvent
recordinginfo.cpp:1113 (FinishedRecording) - Finished recording Go
Diego Go: channel 4301
2012-09-26 08:50:00.525543 I [992/1335] Scheduler scheduler.cpp:2081
(HandleReschedule) - Reschedule interrupted, will retry
2012-09-26 08:50:00.525568 I [992/1335] Scheduler scheduler.cpp:2034
(HandleReschedule) - Reschedule requested for id 0.
2012-09-26 08:50:00.573833 I [992/1335] Scheduler scheduler.cpp:2094
(HandleReschedule) - Scheduled 0 items in 0.0 = 0.00 match + 0.05
place
2012-09-26 08:50:00.724612 I [992/1854] ProcessRequest
mainserver.cpp:1360 (HandleAnnounce) - MainServer::ANN Monitor
2012-09-26 08:50:00.724618 I [992/1854] ProcessRequest
mainserver.cpp:1362 (HandleAnnounce) - adding: taniwha-desktop as a
client (events: 0)
2012-09-26 08:50:00.724853 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1360
(HandleAnnounce) - MainServer::ANN Monitor
2012-09-26 08:50:00.724868 I [992] ProcessRequest mainserver.cpp:1362
(HandleAnnounce) - adding: taniwha-desktop as a client (events: 1)
2012-09-26 08:52:57.592815 N [992/1338] Expire autoexpire.cpp:263
(CalcParams) - AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space:
100.0 GB w/freq: 15 min
2012-09-26 08:53:54.248818 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 08:58:58.255214 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 09:04:04.261442 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 09:07:57.596617 N [992/1338] Expire autoexpire.cpp:263
(CalcParams) - AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space:
100.0 GB w/freq: 15 min
2012-09-26 09:09:07.267769 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 09:14:13.274213 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 09:19:14.280495 I [992/1337] HouseKeeping
housekeeper.cpp:225 (RunHouseKeeping) - Running housekeeping thread
2012-09-26 09:22:57.599553 N [992/1338] Expire autoexpire.cpp:263
(CalcParams) - AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space:
100.0 GB w/freq: 15 min

Looks like some housekeeping, metadata, SystemManager I/O process is
happening around the pixellation time (0843-0845).