heavy downloading affecting movie playback

sare^baw's · 3 Dec 2007 at 13:52

i download using newsleecher, usually at a rate of 450k, if i am watching a movie using my pc and downloading the sound has little blips, the cpu usage is at 100% and just below, if i pause the downloads the cpu usage drops down to 30% with just the movie playing.

any ideas if its possible t download and still watch my movies without any sound problems, at the moment i need to pause my downloads to watch a movie properly.

shocking · 3 Dec 2007 at 14:26

Try disabling your AV and see if it still happens.

Datamonkey · 3 Dec 2007 at 14:27

I would have thought the best way would to be to go either dual or quad core.

Your basically cpu limited. (So it seems) You could try capping the download. But i dont think its the actual download itself its the app your using.

Dual or quad core should re-move that bottle neck as each app could have a core to itself.

If you have dual or quad already, then there are problems lol

wesley · 3 Dec 2007 at 14:27

how do you watch the movie? stream from net or locally?

i can watch movies locally while downloading from usenet with newsleecher @ 1.4mb/s no problem

but i always enabled the newsleecher to run at background (icon in taskbar) so the cpu will drop to 1%

few usenet readers i tried made the cpu goes up to 100% for few secs when each files downloaded and have to encode. newsleecher and newsbin doesnt.

also using right codec pack does help. i use GOM player

ps. i use single core Pm 2.0ghz laptop

ubern00b · 3 Dec 2007 at 14:55

Sounds like it could be disk access too, check your drives are not running in PIO mode. Just a guess anyway.

sare^baw's · 3 Dec 2007 at 18:03

shocking said:
Try disabling your AV and see if it still happens.

yes this does help considerably, the cpu usage drops afair bit, i dont mind having to disable my av to watch movies.

sare^baw's · 3 Dec 2007 at 18:09

wesley said:
how do you watch the movie? stream from net or locally?

i can watch movies locally while downloading from usenet with newsleecher @ 1.4mb/s no problem

but i always enabled the newsleecher to run at background (icon in taskbar) so the cpu will drop to 1%

few usenet readers i tried made the cpu goes up to 100% for few secs when each files downloaded and have to encode. newsleecher and newsbin doesnt.

also using right codec pack does help. i use GOM player

ps. i use single core Pm 2.0ghz laptop

i am running a p4 3.0ghz, 1gig ram, i watch movies mostly from my hard drive, i either mount the iso or play th dvd files from a folder on my hard drive.

i have never realised my cpu usage drops a fair bit if i minimise the newsleecher to the tray, so if i minimise it and shut down my av then my cpu usage is a lot lower running about 30-40%

i use nvidia purevideo decoder for playing dvds this does audio and video

ubern00b said:
Sounds like it could be disk access too, check your drives are not running in PIO mode. Just a guess anyway.

i just checked my disks and none are running in pio modecheers for the tip tho

Scania · 4 Dec 2007 at 00:40

shocking said:
Try disabling your AV and see if it still happens.

Not the wisest thing to do when downloading in my experience! :eek:

shocking · 4 Dec 2007 at 02:23

I only wanted him to try that for diagnostic purposes

There might be some options within the AV to lower it's processing priority.

Rebelius · 4 Dec 2007 at 02:53

sometimes I used to get stuttering when I'd be watching 720p/5.1 videos from the same hard drive that newsleecher was downloading to and repairing/extracting too - Helped by turning off R'n'E while watching, Solved by moving download folder to a separate hard-drive to the storage one, but that means a lot of copying across form one drive to another.

I never had any problems watching SD stuff though.

My AV's off permanently. :s

Begbie · 4 Dec 2007 at 02:54

Sounds like a hard drive issue, how much does the cpu use when just running the media player?

shocking · 4 Dec 2007 at 03:20

Just another thought... have you got anything indexing the drive?

LeperousDust · 4 Dec 2007 at 03:40

The AV has real time detecting turned on. Turn that off, and manually run the AV over the files you download, or set it to NOT real time detect viruses in certain folders (you can do this with some). Keeping realtime detecting on may not be possible as some AV monitor the actually HTTP/NNTP/Etc sctream coming in and pass through the AV before theyre actually written to disk. This is whats causing your overhead. Whoever mentioned Quad and whatever core is going over the top, the AV program doesn't need to continually monitor the file, just check it when its totally finished ONCE! Anyway newsgroups are probably some of the safest things out there to download from, so i wouldn't worry that much anyway.

bledd · 4 Dec 2007 at 13:52

if disabling av helps, the disable windows defender real-time scanning if you have that

FatRakoon · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:38

The Disk can only have so much data to/from it/the Bus

Have you thought of buying a new HD just for downloading?

I can download up to 16MB/s, send a Movie to the TV, play a sily massive game, defrag all my 6 HDs, burn 4 DVDs at the same time and not once get a flicker on the screen of my game, of the wife's Movies... Oh, plus I fold on both cores.

It has NOTHING to do with having a dual core, although if your PC is an ols one then sure, the CPU might be an issue, but as long as its over say 1 Ghz it should be fine to do both.

RAM - low ammounts of RAM will also cause stuttering like you decribe and again, as long as you have at least 1GB it should be fine... Should be fine with 512MB actually, but who the hell still has only that much?

DeFrag the disk too!

pointy shadow · 4 Dec 2007 at 23:38

Try decreasing the amount of connections used in Newsleecher as it is a CPU hog.

Got similar specs to yourself and NL takes up to 35% CPU when downloading but a dual core CPU will defo stop the issues that you are having.

Do you have Repai and Extract enabled on NL? If so try disabling that as that really uses up the CPU.

Rebelius · 5 Dec 2007 at 02:30

my newsleecher's currently downloading at 800KB/s (roughly my max download speed) over 10 connections and using 5-12% of CPU - an X2 3800+ ... I really can't see what you're doing to make it deserve accusations of being a CPU hog.

pointy shadow · 5 Dec 2007 at 16:00

When I download at full pelt (2.35mb/s) it uses upto 35% CPU.

sare^baw's · 5 Dec 2007 at 16:15

Cheers for all the replies guys, i have been experimenting and i dont think it is the cpu usage thats to blame. These checks were done and when playing a dvd was a dvd iso on E: (seperate 250g drive) mounted to a virtual drive using nero image drive. My kaspersky antivirus was on all the time. Repair and extract was turned off.

My cpu is a p4 3.0ghz and 1g ram.

pc idle cpu 0-1% 187mb memory

newsleecher open and downloading 33-40% and 22mb memory

newleecher minimised to tray and downloading 25-3-% and 220mb memory

newleecher minimised and theatertek playing a dvd 55-65% & 323mb

newsleecher maximised and theatertek playing dvd 85-93 & 325mb

theatertek playing dvd 23-27 & 287mb

I noticed the blips in sound were not happening at the same time as the cpu usage peaking. I also opened outlook express and many ie windows at the same time to make the cpu usage reach 100% and all this did was slow down the dvd picture and the sopund did not break up.

My download folder is on a seperate 250gb drive which i am also using the same drive to play my dvd iso from.

Someone asked if anything is indexing the drives, im not sure what this means but i have the indexing service disabled.

I dont have windows defender installed. My av and firewall is kaspersky internet security. If i close it down while downloading i still get blips in the sound.

Someone asked if i defraged, well i defrag very regularly using O&O

Rebelius · 6 Dec 2007 at 03:44

try downloading to a different drive than the one your ISO's stored on.

You say your download folder is on a spearate drive and then say it's the same one :S