I have added the buffersize tv option and now it works. Even if I use the minimum 16MB buffersize it works fine. I guess there's something wrong with the default dynamic buffersize. I'm sorry I forgot to specify my system and mplayer-mencoder version. I'm running Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable and here is the version information: jaime at sgautomatizacion:~$ mplayer --version Unknown option on the command line: --version Error parsing option on the command line: --version MPlayer SVN-r29142-4.3.3 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team jaime at sgautomatizacion:~$ dpkg -l | grep mplayer ii mplayer 1.0~rc3+svn20090405-1 movie player for Unix-like systems ii mplayer-doc 1.0~rc3+svn20090405-1 documentation for MPlayer ii mplayer-skin-blue 1.6-2 blue skin for mplayer jaime at sgautomatizacion:~$ mencoder --version MEncoder dev-SVN-r26940 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.93GHz (Family: 15, Model: 4, Stepping: 9) CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1 Compiled with runtime CPU detection. --version is not an MEncoder option Exiting... (error parsing command line) jaime at sgautomatizacion:~$ dpkg -l | grep mencoder ii mencoder 1:1.0.rc2svn20080706-0.1 MPlayer's Movie Encoder Jaime Alberto Silva Colorado Gerente SG Automatizaci?n Ltda. Pereira \ Risaralda \ Colombia http://www.sgautomatizacion.com On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Jaime Alberto Silva < jaimealbertosilva at gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone! > > I need help with a problem I'm having since I migrated a system from an IDE > drive to a new SATA drive. > > The old drive was an 80GB IDE Drive that came with the machine, a Compaq > SR1717LA. > > I've been upgrading the machine since I bought it, now it has 1GB RAM (I'm > about to buy it the other GB, it only supports 2, 1 per slot), it also has > a KWorld V-Stream Studio TV Terminator card for TV and analog video > grabbing. > > I have been using mplayer to watch TV and my own script + mencoder + cron > to record TV shows. > > Everything was working fine until this week I installed a new 500 GB Maxtor > SATA II disk and migrated the hole system there. I did that because the IDE > drive has now about 4 years been used for recording and I'm afraid it will > die soon, so I plan to keep using it to store the TV shows until it dies and > then buy a new one. Howerer, since I want to be sure nothing is missing in > the new disc I'm going to keep the old disc untouched for a few weeks, so > everything is running on the new disc now. > > Here comes the problem, now when I run mplayer to watch TV or mencoder to > record I keep getting this message: > > video buffer full - dropping frame > > And recordings and TV watching are bumpy, what I mean is it keeps stopping > and jumping forward. > > Googling about it all I found is on this mail list and says that it happens > when DMA is off, so I checked and also found that SATA drives always have > DMA on, here is the info I get for the new drive with hdparm: > > # hdparm -i /dev/sda > > /dev/sda: > > Model=Maxtor, FwRev=HA431DN0, SerialNo=H8120TDH > Config={ Fixed } > RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4 > BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=16384kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 > CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=976773168 > IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} > PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 > DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 > UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6 > AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled > Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 0: > ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7 > > * signifies the current active mode > > As you can see it is running in UDMA5. As a reference I looked at the info > for the old drive: > > # hdparm -i /dev/hda > > /dev/hda: > > Model=HDS728080PLAT20, FwRev=PF2OA28A, SerialNo=PFD215S7S7S0BM > Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs } > RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=51 > BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=1719kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 > CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488 > IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} > PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 > DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 > UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 > AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled > Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1: > ATA/ATAPI-2,3,4,5,6,7 > > * signifies the current active mode > > As you can see both drives run with UDMA5 (remember /dev/sda is the new > drive and /dev/hda is the old drive). > > I also ran speed test for both drives. Here is the output for the new one: > > # hdparm -tT /dev/sda > > /dev/sda: > Timing cached reads: 1030 MB in 2.00 seconds = 514.92 MB/sec > Timing buffered disk reads: 198 MB in 3.01 seconds = 65.73 MB/sec > > And this is the output for the old drive: > > # hdparm -tT /dev/hda > > /dev/hda: > Timing cached reads: 1032 MB in 2.00 seconds = 515.74 MB/sec > Timing buffered disk reads: 174 MB in 3.02 seconds = 57.60 MB/sec > > To me, it seems both have similar performance, so I don't get why I'm > having this "video buffer full" problem. > > As for the file systems, the old drive has a mix of primary and logical > partitions in ext3 and xfs for home. For the new drive I'm using a primary > partition of 100MB in ext4 for /boot and in the other partition I put an LVM > VG with LVs for /, /usr, /home, /var, /publico and /pruebas all of them with > ext4 format. > > Can someone please tell me what is wrong? > > Thanks a lot. > >
