Yesterday I noticed that 100% of my Windows 10 dedicated Channels server was being used. I checked and saw that I had 3 jobs recording and a ComSkip running in 2 threads.
When the ComSkip ended, the disk usage dropped under 20%. Using 100% of a resource seems risky to me unless the ComSkip is running at a lower priority than most other things. Do I have to worry about this?
I believe Comskip on windows runs in low priority. Comskip does task the hard drives though.
I have my own INI to use less CPU during PrimeTime ... Comskip doc below.
play_nice_start=2000
;Start time in 24 hour format when CPU load reduction should be used, 14:00 is written as 1400
play_nice_end=2300
;End time in 24 hour format when CPU load reduction should be used, 14:00 is written as 1400
play_nice_sleep=10 (0-MAXINT)
It was "disk" usage and not "memory" usage? I don't understand how ComSkip would consume your disk unless you have a disk that is already 99% full. I can understand how it might consumer your memory while its running.
Has nothing to do with disk space it is Disk Usage not space usage. Taskmanager performance shows % of disk usage not space usage.
Ah, never remember that being a thing I was worried about in system performance. Learn something new every day.
When Comskip is running I could hear my Disk spinning like crazy that is why I added Playnice during Prime Time.
Yes it was 100% Disk Usage. I have plenty of memory and CPU power.
Not sure what %100 Disk Usage in Windows means, was that just for the comskip process or overall?
Comskip is disk intensive since it has to read the whole recorded file and parse it for multiple things, so it may read the file more than once. If you examine the comskip log file you can see it looks for the logo, changes in black level, audio change in volume and #channels, closed captions, etc.
Really don't think you have to worry about that 100% you saw. I think it means it was 100% utilized and not being lazy?
When ComSkip ended, the disk usage dropped from 100% to about 18%. 100% means that the disk is getting more requests than it can process, so requests will have to wait in line for processing. Unless ComSkip is given a lower priority for disk access than the recording jobs, the recording jobs will suffer. I do not know if there is a priority system in effect.
I don't think your assumption is true. It just means that it is using all available capability of the channel. It doesn't meant that one process is taking 100%, only that it is never going idle. I expect its still serving all requests as they come in. I wouldn't expect a modern system to allow one process to consume all of anything. You would expect if you have a large file to read or write to a disk for it to go as fast as it can, right?
A hard disk can only do one thing at a time. If three requests come in at the same time, one will start to execute and two will have to wait in line. They will all get processed eventually. However, if the line gets too long while a realtime recording is happening the processing time for a particular request may take longer than the time it takes for the next incoming packet to be processed.
A packet is not a whole file copy. If that was the case, then a DVR would only be able to record one thing at at time. The request is broken up into pieces so that it can sequence different larger requests at the same time. Bottom line, I don't think its a problem for it to go to 100%. Just my opinion.
Windows also has priorities for disk io, so it would also be good to check on that. You can see that in the “Resource monitor” that is launched from the Task Manager’s “Performance” tab. Within Resource Monitor, click the disk tab and in the middle you will see all the processes that are using disk resources, along with their priority. If comskip is below normal or less I wouldn’t be concerned with the disk being 100% busy during processing.
I have the same issue. When it runs you can't watch any recordings with out it pausing every 10 seconds. It used to work well.
I am starting to see this as well Comskip seems to be causing Interrupted recordings on my HDHR Recordings ... When Comskip is not running everything is fine.
I've solved the issue by replacing my 2tb HDD with a SSD. The HDD was about 75% full and very fragmented. That slowed everything down, even when comskip wasn't running.