CPU Time

[Jaybird180]

I'm now on BTV 4.7.1 and noticed poor performance watching a recording while a recording in progress. BTV is using about 70%+. Besides getting a hardware based tuner are there strategies I can use to reduce CPU usage?

Note: BTV purchase decision was made because of great performance doing this. IIRC I've had it >2 years.

Alternatively to my above question, is there a listing of Windows services I can disable on a dedicated system and still keep BTV functional? The system is dedicated to BTV and DVDs via PowerDVD5.

Note: I haven't run Resource Monitor while recording and watching a DVD but performance is acceptable.

[gjunky]

Could you please post your hardware and OS specs?

Do you play any other media on this PC?

[Jaybird180]

How do I display my signature?



Oh there it is:
Add WinXP SP2

[Jakesty]

Actually, like you mentioned, a HW based encoder is the best you can do to increase performance. Depending on what kind of tuners you have and where you store the recordings, there's a lot of info on how to configure multiple HD's in BTV. Typically HD1 is your OS and page file, and HD2 is your recordings, and it is usually formated with 64k clusters to increase performance.
Also be aware that the guide updates in the evening and it severally affects performance during that time. Even on very fast computers, it's a pig.

[gjunky]

are you running showsqueeze or smartchapter on your recordings? Do you have a time constraint set? These can be real CPU hogs. As Jakesty mentioned, HW based tuners are the best. Not only in CPU performance but also in picture quality. I run a double analog and a HD tuner on a 2.6Ghz machine and all three can be recording without any problem and they do it all do a single HD.

There are several articles on the internet about tweaking XP. You might want to do a google search. Here are some examples:
http://tweak-easy.blogspot.com/2008/...vices-and.html
http://kadaitcha.cx/performance.html
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
(I just grabbed a few. You might want to do your own search)

If you have the option, I would still recommend a HW tuner. You won't regret it.

-gjunky

[Jaybird180]

I think I may go the HW tuner route, but I seem to recall faster performance. It was prior to adding more files to the library.

Here's the drive setup
HD1: OS only
HD2: Archived storage, BTV recordings- Listed in Library
HD3: Default recordings go here
HD4: The External- More archives, listed in Library. This is usually turned off

Showsqueeze and Smartskip are set to run 1200-0730
Default recording format is MPEG2, Showsqueezed to DivX