pyTivo Discussion Forum

Ganlron · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5

I'm running on pyTivo on my Macbook Pro and while it's working awesome, I've been avoiding transcoding by using VisualHub to convert the video files into mpgs as when I attempt to transcode on the fly (say from .avi or .mp4), it takes a large amount of time.

Just curious if there's any tweaks I can make to ffmpeg to have it transcode faster? It just seems odd that VisualHub which uses ffmpeg as well, can convert the file in 30 minutes where as when I use it via pyTivo in 30 minutes I've transcoded all of 10 minutes of the video.

krkeegan · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject:

You know another user is reporting slow transcoding speeds on a mac too. I am beginning to think there is some issue in there. Can you check why the python CPU usage is while pyTivo is transcoding? It should be only 1% while ffmpeg should be 70-90%.

Other Thread

Iluvatar · Joined: 29 Feb 2008 Posts: 13

using pytivo on my mac for the past 6 months i can say it was a definite problem. ffmpeg very rarely went over 40% while python process was the rest. always took a very long time to transcode on the mac and finally i had to go back to using the pc laptop. was tried with 10.4.11 and up to 10.5.1 with the latest python packages and various ffmpeg versions up to the latest available. i updated macports and various dependencies for ffmpeg on a weekly basis.

python on the mac is very slow. Sad

Ganlron · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5

Actually you know, I saw the exact same thing. The pyTivo process varied in CPU utilization between 1% to 90% while ffmpeg was hovering constantly at about 17%.

I'll test again tonight when I'm home and post some ps captures

Also came across an odd issue when trying out the hack83 folder browsing and multiple shares. If I had a share with folders it worked without issue, however if the share had no folders, only videos when I viewed the information on the tivo about a video and went back the share showed as empty. I had to return to the now playing list and then back to the share to choose another file. There was an error from pyTivo when I checked it, I'll see if I can replicate it again tonight and post the error.

krkeegan · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject:

Your error with hack83 sounds possible. I am not sure I ever tested that situation. I will look into that.

If you want to try a beta concept that wgw is working on try this:

Edit plugins/video/transcode.py

Find the following line: (Around line 57)

Ganlron · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5

Okay, I'll give that a whirl. I just did a transcoding of a small video to get a ps and pyTivo consistently gobbles up processor usage. Here's some examples:

derek 140 80.4 0.9 100868 19232 ?? R 5:56pm 0:18.08 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python /Applications/pyTivo/pyTivo.py
derek 338 43.2 0.2 614064 5220 ?? S 6:02pm 0:07.81 /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/The Library/TiVoShows/Movies/daisy_crazy.avi -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -b 4096K -maxrate 17408k -bufsize 1024k -aspect 4:3 -s 544x480 -comment pyTivo.py -ab 384k -ar 48000 -acodec ac3 -f vob -

derek 140 83.3 0.9 100868 19232 ?? S 5:56pm 0:35.63 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python /Applications/pyTivo/pyTivo.py
derek 338 37.2 0.2 614032 5188 ?? R 6:02pm 0:17.10 /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/The Library/TiVoShows/Movies/daisy_crazy.avi -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -b 4096K -maxrate 17408k -bufsize 1024k -aspect 4:3 -s 544x480 -comment pyTivo.py -ab 384k -ar 48000 -acodec ac3 -f vob -

derek 140 73.3 0.9 100868 19236 ?? R 5:56pm 0:44.74 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python /Applications/pyTivo/pyTivo.py
derek 338 46.9 0.2 614040 5200 ?? R 6:02pm 0:22.01 /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/The Library/TiVoShows/Movies/daisy_crazy.avi -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -b 4096K -maxrate 17408k -bufsize 1024k -aspect 4:3 -s 544x480 -comment pyTivo.py -ab 384k -ar 48000 -acodec ac3 -f vob -

I'll see if that beta concept makes a difference.

sdwr98 · Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

Well, that most definitely chopped off the Python CPU utilization for me - it's now hovering around 1.1%

ffmpeg is still only going at about 17-20%, but I am going to put the -threads 2 option on and see if that helps.

Scott

Ganlron · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5

Yup, huge difference here too with that change.

derek 9879 98.9 0.3 614152 5328 s000 R+ 7:37pm 0:26.91 /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -i /Volumes/The Library/TiVoShows/Movies/daisy_crazy.avi -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -b 4096K -maxrate 17408k -bufsize 1024k -aspect 4:3 -s 544x480 -comment pyTivo.py -ab 384k -ar 48000 -acodec ac3 -f vob -
derek 1948 1.2 0.9 101972 19720 s000 S+ 7:20pm 0:04.03 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python /Applications/pyTivo/pyTivo.py

Let me know if -threads 2 made much of a difference. I noticed when VisualHub does the transcoding it uses -threads 4 so might

krkeegan · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:19 pm Post subject:

very cool, glad to hear that at least helped part of the problem.

Keep me posted about the threads 2 idea.

real_armooo · pyTivo Creator Joined: 23 Mar 2008 Posts: 42

krkeegan · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:47 pm Post subject:

Very true. This may be a bandwidth limitation too if you are not using a wired connection.

Ganlron · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5

Well I don't know if that is the issue. I'm using a wireless connection on the TiVo but in comparison a 1GB pre-transcoded file finishes transferring to the TiVo in less than 10 minutes.

Now with the beta change, transcoding on the fly is at least watchable. I put a 700MB MP4 file up on the share and it's streaming to the TiVo in a watchable fashion, though the transcoding/transfer appears to just be keeping ahead of the TiVo playing the file. I may see if I can try the -threads 2 myself tonight and see if the file finishes transcoding quicker (VisualHub which I normally use to pre-transcode the files seems to use -threads 4 and it'll finish a normal file in 20-30 minutes)

krkeegan · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject:

dizziness · Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 34

Recent WGW stem fixed the Python CPU usage problem on the Mac. Python now runs at %0.8 and FFMPEG over 100%. Excellent work guys!

krkeegan · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:05 pm Post subject:

cool, and I have not seen any adverse effects on windows or linux so I think we are good to include this.