New CPU update

[doubledose]

I just dropped in a new cpu into my server machine. I pulled out a core 2 E6600 and put in a Q9400 quad core and started my 2 hdtv fusion cards recording and then my hdhome run tuner recording 2 channels and then set my 2 hd pvr's to record also. 6 tuners in all and only had 3-4% cpu usage. So with this now I am hoping it will show squeeze faster.
Wayne

[Jakesty]

You have just stated the problem somewhat. You have 3-4% CPU. CPU is hardly the bottleneck in your system when you have that many tuners. It's the hard drives. You'd need a faster array, like RAID0 (or raid 10) to make a bigger difference, especially if you're hitting that drive with concurrent Showsqueezing jobs.
I'm not saying you won't see an improvement, just that you'd see much more with the drives providing the data much faster to the CPU.

[Wolfie351]

1TB drives are about $80 and dropping every day, put your money towards storage and you'll never have to showsqueeze.

[doubledose]

Storage is not a problem for me. I guess when I posted the first post I was thinking one thing and typed another. I should of said smart chapter creation with restricted time. I only allow smart chapter generation to run at a certain time frame.
Since I added a 3rd hard drive in the pool at the same time, I am not sure how that works with data speed. In my mind I am thinking it could be writing to all 3 of these drives at the same time, But I don't know how this pooling works with the data management.

Wayne

[Jakesty]

I'm using ComSkip to do my Smartchapter identification, and it's great. A 1/2 hour show used to take 20-30 mins to run under BTV. Now it's in the 3-5 min range. On a software raid 0 array too, it's especially nice when it's processing several shows at once. I don't really have to wait long for it to catch up.

[Dave Gestens]

Originally Posted by doubledose

Storage is not a problem for me. I guess when I posted the first post I was thinking one thing and typed another. I should of said smart chapter creation with restricted time. I only allow smart chapter generation to run at a certain time frame.
Since I added a 3rd hard drive in the pool at the same time, I am not sure how that works with data speed. In my mind I am thinking it could be writing to all 3 of these drives at the same time, But I don't know how this pooling works with the data management.

Wayne

The pooling will work great for you. I have a very similar setup with 3 drives. I set up a single video folder on each drive and added each to the pool. The pool will write to the drive with the most free space. So what this works out to is that very soon all 3 drives end up with roughly the same amount of free space and get used roughly equally. Once they are roughly balanced it ends up writing in almost a round robin manner. Usually when I have multiple concurrent recordings going they are writing to all 3 drives at the same time.

In the past I had my system configured in a raid 0 and lost a drive. And since the data is stripped across all the drives I lost ALL of my recordings. I considered a raid 1+0 (Raid 10) but did not want to give up half the space I bought to mirroring the data.

I think the drive pooling is a simple effective way to automatically manage the space and still let us use all the space we purchased. It could be smarter, but it works well.

[Jakesty]

Dave Gestens is correct in that Raid 0 doubles your chances for loss. That is why in my system I move the data over to the 1.5TB drive after a couple of days. Batch scripts that do the job for me. I'm now looking to do the compression at the time that the files are being moved, then move them. The idea being 1) very fast to compress on Raid0, 2) gives me a couple of days to watch and delete a bunch of the shows therefore reducing the stress on the system performing all of this work.
Although Comskip is crazy fast, I would not say that for me it has been super accurate. There are a ton of options to play with, probably too many and you'd need a degree to understand how they can inter-relate to get the best identification of commercials.