[AG-TECH] Issues with a new AG 3.1 installation.

[Jason Bell]

Migel

I recently conducted some CPU usage statistics whilst MPEG4 streaming (Not 4 MPEG4 streams, but 3 plus DV).

I was encoding and decoding on a Dell T3400 Core 2 Quad CPU machine running Fedora 8!

*	3 x Mpeg4 streams as Large

*	1 x DV Stream @ 36 megs a second

Core 1 - 	28%
Core 2 -	29%
Core 3 -	46%
Core 4 -	47%

Note: these values change every second, but average usage across all 4 cores is around 40%.

Output on TOP

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
29456 jastest   30  10  202m  19m 6004 R   38  1.0 488:18.97 vic
 3269 jastest   30  10 90240  23m 7276 S   35  1.2   3:32.75 vic
 1482 jastest   30  10 94784  31m 7312 R   33  1.5  18:18.08 vic
 1486 jastest   30  10 94664  30m 7316 S   33  1.5  17:11.20 vic
 2798 root      20   0  419m  55m  13m S   13  2.8 162:08.95 X

I hope this information is useful.

Cheers,
Jason.

-----Original Message-----
From: Miguel Sáez [mailto:msaez at cesga.es] 
Sent: Tuesday, 20 May 2008 01:21 AM
To: AG-TECH list
Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] Issues with a new AG 3.1 installation.

Hello,

I have been doing some tests today, the first one was with V4L who 
didn't work at all.

Then i did some tests changing the video parameters such as fps, 
encoding and size of the video streams with V4L2.
At the moment seems the computer i'm using as AG Video with the 4 
capturers can't handle it;

- With H.264 (mpeg4) at 24fps and video size large, one of the cameras 
freezes in about 5min max.
- With H.264 (mpeg4) at 24fps and video size normal, one of the cameras 
freezes in about 10-15min.
- With H.264 (mpeg4) at 24fps and video size small, everything worked 
without any problem for 1'5 hours.
- With H.264 (mpeg4) at 3fps and video size large, everything worked.
Also did the same tests listed above marking h264 as encoder, same results.

After those tests i tried with H.261 at 24fps and everything worked fine.

When i did the tests i also looked at the %CPU used with the 'top' 
command and each vic process (H.264 @ mpeg4, 24fps, large size) were 
using between 80%-90% of the CPU and with for example H.261 doesn't 
really use more than 1% of the CPU each vic proccess. So that's what i 
guess my computer can't handle it, so ... no i'm asking what kind of 
computer do you need to be able to support 4 video capturers at H.264?.

The computer i'm using is a: 2x Dual Intel Xeon @ 2.80GHz, 2GB Ram and a 
160GB HDD.

Greetings.

Douglas Kosovic escribió:
> Hi Miguel,
>
> Now that I think about it, if you are capturing four 720x576 PAL video 
> streams, you're most likely hitting PCI bus saturation issues. The 
> four Pinnacle PCTV PCI capture cards would be sharing the limited PCI 
> bus bandwidth (as most motherboards don't have independent PCI buses 
> for each of the PCI slots). PCI has a peak bandwidth of 127MB/s and 
> depending on the fps capture rate, would leave just 8 MB/s leeway.
>
> One workaround might be to not select 'large' on all the video 
> streams, or use a PCI-e x1 Bt878 quad-input capture card which are 
> starting to get cheaper.
>
> I might even add some code to vic which stops the vic capture, then 
> sleeps for a period of time and restarts the capture if the 
> VIDIOC_DQBUF I/O error happens more than a 100 times in a row.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Doug
>
> Douglas Kosovic wrote:
>> Hi Miguel,
>>
>> You might like to try setting the VideoProducers to V4L instead of 
>> V4L2 and see if you get similar issues.
>>
>> Sorry I'm not sure what the cause of the issue is, but will try to 
>> reproduce next week.
>>
>>
>> Doug
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov on behalf of Miguel Sáez
>> Sent: Fri 5/16/2008 9:37 PM
>> To: AG-TECH list
>> Subject: [AG-TECH] Issues with a new AG 3.1 installation.
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm currently testing a new AcessGrid 3.1 installation with 2 computers;
>> - The first one is a Linux Fedora Core 9 (kernel: 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686)
>> with 4 video capturers connected to 4 cameras. This computer is working
>> as H264 video producer with a Service Manager launched.
>> The 4 video capturers are Pinnacle PCTV Rave (chipset: Conexant FUSION
>> 878A).
>> - The last computer is under Windows XP SP3 working as a H264 video
>> consumer.
>>
>> I start the AGServiceManager on the linux computer and then on the
>> windows computer i launch my venue client and i configure there the
>> consumer and producer video services. When i connect to my venue
>> everything works fine; vic gets launched i can see all the videos
>> perfectly and smooth but after a few time, (about 20-30min) one of the
>> cameras freezes completly (it's random the camera that freezes) and i
>> start getting the same error all the time in the console where i
>> launched the ServiceManager:
>>
>> ioctl VIDIOC_DQBUF: Input/output error
>>
>> Also if i check the dmesg output i get errors there, for all the other
>> devices (bttv1, bttv2 and bttv3):
>>
>> bttv0: SCERR @ 369d9000,bits: HSYNC OFLOW FBUS SCERR*
>> bttv0: timeout: drop=41 irq=114623/114624, risc=369d9000, bits: HSYNC
>> OFLOW FBUS:
>>
>> I have checked if the video capturer cards where being loaded with the
>> right module and driver and seems they are.
>>
>> At this point i don't what else i should check or do, so if anyone got a
>> clue about what's wrong any kind of help would be appreciated.
>>
>> Greetings,
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
====================================================
Miguel Ángel Sáez Llorente
Técnico de Comunicacións
 
Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia (CESGA)
Avenida de Vigo, s/n (Campus Sur)
15705 Santiago de Compostela - ESPAÑA
 
E-mail:      msaez at cesga.es
Tel:         +34  981 56 98 10 (ext. 246)
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Web:         http://www.cesga.es/
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