Virus Scanner Configuration Question

[accgr]

I recently installed a virus scanner and now my playback skips. Fortunately, it's somewhat rare: once every 15 minutes, and it only happens when I am simultaneously watching one show while recording another. My average CPU usage while simultaneously playing and recording is 30-50%. I excluded both the recordings directory and the gbpvr directory. Does anyone have any suggestions as to other specific files or directories that could be excluded to help playback? Would excluding codec files help? What files (besides those used in the two exluded directories previously mentioned) are used for playback?

[stustunz]

what are you system specs how many hard drives etc

[accgr]

System specs: P4, 2.4Ghz, 1.5GB Ram, 1 Hard Drive, ATI 9550.

[stustunz]

as you only have one harddrive you will find this is a bottle neck so that extra little bit of traffic caused by the virus scanner is enough to tip the scales causing the stuter
so either disable the scanner other than when you want to scan something or buy a second hardrive for recording on
you should always record onto a seperate hardrive anyway so its worth the money for smooth running

[accgr]

The recordings folder is excluded, so it's not being scanned. Do you have any suggestions for excluding other playback-related files?

[stustunz]

i dont think its the fact that its scaning a file used by gbpvr its more the fact that its running at all virus scanners dont use much cpu but take up harddrive/system resources
your system cant handle the extra traffic
i hope its not norton that you have installed

[accgr]

It's Mcafee, not Norton.

How much disk activity is there on the system drive during playback (with no user actions of changing channels, etc)? I assumed that during recording and playback, 99% of the hard drive activity is due to the mpeg files being accessed, and most of the gbpvr/codec functions are in memory (at least cached if not running in RAM). If this is the case, it seems that adding a second hard drive would be of little help, since simultaneous playback and recording would still occur with files on the same drive. Do you have personal experience which might show otherwise, (i.e. had a studdering problem that was fixed with the addition of a hard drive), or have you always had two drives?

[sub]

My lounge PC has pretty similar specs, so you should certainly be ok with that hardware. My machine is dedicated though, so I dont run any virus scanning on it. Others have had problems with virus scanners in the past though.

I would have thought excluding the GB-PVR directory and recordings directory should have done the job, but if its not helping - then I'd suggest uninstalling that virus scanner.

[bgowland]

Are you using timeshift mode for live playback?

If so, is the 'Live TV Buffer Directory' (see Directories tab in Config) part of your Recordings folder? If it isn't, create a sub-folder in your recordings folder and set Config to point at that to see if it helps.

If it doesn't help, then try disabling your AV software temporarily then run a test to prove whether or not it's the culprit.

Cheers,
Brian

[accgr]

Sub, what is your experience (if any) with running GBPVR with only one hard drive? Have you seen this lead to problems while simultaneously recording and playing back files? I tend to record at higher rates (constant bit rate of 8k) and sometimes record two shows while playing back a third all at the same bitrate.