HD-PVR pegs processor at 100%

[SDeGonge]

Just installed my HD-PVR and it causes my processors CPU usage to go to 100% while video is playing. If I start to record a program and stop watching so it's recording in the background the usage drops to about 10%. I think it's my video card that's causing this but not sure. Would like to hear some expert opinions.
Note: HD200 works fine with the HD-PVR stream, not stutter.

Video card: ATI Radeon x700
Processor: Pentium 4 3GHz
Memory: 3GB
HD: 1TB 64k clusters

If it's a video card issue I would appreciate replacement suggestions. Note that I also have the 2250 installed (that's working fine).


Also,
I noticed that it creates .TS files. Is there an option to save as MP4? I saw that the arcsoft software lets you do this.
Can I also change the bitrate like the arcsoft program?

\/ \/ \/ ---didn't update signature yet.

[jerryt]

You are discribing video playback without Hardware Acceleration.

You need to verify that you are using the Arcsoft video decoder or another known H.264 hardware decoding video codec. Then if it does not work you may need to upgrade your video card.

[JetreL]

Some video cards that you may want to try are:

ATI 3600 and faster cards or
Nvidia 9600 and faster cards

Depending on what you may want to spend a HD100/HD200 would also resolve the issue. When I first got into using SageTV and HD I kept going back and forth with fighting playback issues. Then I purchased a HD100 and have never regretted it. I currently run both a HD100 and a HD200 on my home network and very rarely have any issues with playback.

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by jerryt

You are discribing video playback without Hardware Acceleration.

You need to verify that you are using the Arcsoft video decoder or another known H.264 hardware decoding video codec. Then if it does not work you may need to upgrade your video card.

Using Arcsoft for H.264 encoding. Think it's the video card because I will stream to the TS file and playback on my HD200 is fine but playback on the PC sucks.

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by JetreL

Some video cards that you may want to try are:

ATI 3600 and faster cards or
Nvidia 9600 and faster cards

Yea...I think I'll need a new video card. The problem is that I only have Pcie 1.1 (short connector) on my motherboard, no Pcie 2.0. If I had to, would a 2.0 video card physically fit into a 1.1 slot?

[eric3a]

Using Arcsoft for H.264 encoding. Think it's the video card because I will stream to the TS file and playback on my HD200 is fine but playback on the PC sucks.

What's your decoding codec when playing though?

Looks to me like your playback codec is using software decoding, and is not hardware accelerated.
Make sure your playback uses the Arcsoft codecs.
Eric

[texneus]

Codec (actually it's only a decoder we're interested in here) won't matter at this point. A different decoder may or may not help, but what is certain is that in computer time lines the x700 is ancient and does not support accelerated H.264 playback (in all likely hood it has pretty minimal MPG2 support as well). If the computer is this old the CPU probably is too. Upgrading the video to something that was designed to handle video will probably make drastic overall improvements all around.

OP: 'Fraid it's video card upgrade time. If you only have a PCIe x1 slot, how is your x700 card plugged in? Give us your MB & CPU stats I'm sure somebody will chime in with a recommendation.

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by texneus

OP: 'Fraid it's video card upgrade time. If you only have a PCIe x1 slot, how is your x700 card plugged in? Give us your MB & CPU stats I'm sure somebody will chime in with a recommendation.

x700 is AGP
MoBoard is a Gigabyte GA-8i915g Pro Rev 2
Processor is a Pentium 4 3GHz Dual Core

Chime away

[Beefcake550]

Give up....AGP HD accel. doesn't work (maybe does with a lot of work).

Leave that computer for recording purposes only....get another extender, it'll be cheaper.

Sorry for the bad news.

[sunray]

Another option:

You may be able to just get by with a new AGP video card despite what the previous poster said. I'm using a HIS AGP 2600 XT card to view Hi-Def (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) movies with only a 3.2 ghz single core Pentuim 4. The problem is that the codecs used by the 3 main Hi-Def players (PowerDVD , WinDVD and Total Media Theater 3) which offer hardware acceleration is that they have had those codecs locked so as to prevent them from being used by outside programs such as Sage. Cyberlink (PowerDVD) does sell a standalone version of its codec pack for use with outside programs but I have no experience with it. If the Cyberlink standalone codec works with hardware acceleration under Sage you are in business. But buying a new AGP card plus the codec will cost nearly $100 with no guarentee it will work

Cyberlink Codec pack for WinXP
http://www.cyberlink.com/store/hd-26...buy_en_US.html

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by SDeGonge

x700 is AGP
MoBoard is a Gigabyte GA-8i915g Pro Rev 2
Processor is a Pentium 4 3GHz Dual Core

Just had the box open and I saw that my video card is actually in a Pcie 16 slot so I guess I was wrong about the AGP. I just ordered an nVidia GeForce 9600 GT.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ZT-96TES3P-FDL

[SDeGonge]

Update: I installed nVidia 9600GT video card in hopes that playback would be improved but same issue 100% on the cpu.

I think that replacing my old ATI x700 card was a step in the right direction. I think I now have to conecntrate on the video decoders.

My H.264 video decoder is set to "ArcSoft Video Decoder" which is the only choice I have.

My Video Renderer, which I think is where the problem is, is set to VMR9. The other choices are EVR, and video overlay.

For the Video Renderer do I need a different codec for TS playback?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Chriscic]

Use EVR.

It's been a while since I used the Arcsoft codec for playback in Sage (it seemed to want to "take over" my system and mucked up Zoom Player), but you may need to open TME and make sure hardware acceleration is selected in one of those menus/dialogs. Hardware accel in Sage may not kick in until you do this.

Let us know if it works.

[SDeGonge]

Hardware Acceleration is enabled but I just don't think Sage is using it. In TME I see the difference when I disable it. CPU usage goes from 25% to 100%. In sage it's 100% all the time. I must be missing some setting in Sage or the renderer or Codec is incorrect.