A specific App needs more CPU

I have an EyeTV which displays live TV on my Mac. When it's in the background, it often skips and stutters. Can I allocated more CPU time specifically to that app? How?

G4 dual 1.25GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.3), ( London, UK )

Posted on Dec 8, 2005 5:47 AM

23 replies

Dec 30, 2005 5:20 PM in response to Al Van Malsen

Safari may not be the problem; it may be Java and Flash...

Jan 4, 2006 10:41 AM in response to William Donelson

For what reason do you think that it is processor contrained? Just because an app is only using a little bit of CPU time does not necessarily mean that lack of CPU time is causing the problem you are having. Is your total CPU utilization at 100% when the problem occurs? As mentoned in other responses items such as availabel video RAM, available real RAM, hard drive speed, etc, could all be having an impact. it could also be that the app has built-in code that tells it to lower its CPU priority when in the background. It might be useful to find out if anyone else with a similar setup is having the same problem - if so that could indicate a hardware constraint - if not then it could indicate a software issue.

Jan 23, 2006 6:57 AM in response to William Donelson

There must be some way to hack the system to give more time to a specific app.

Jan 23, 2006 7:24 AM in response to William Donelson

Have you even bothered to try any of the many suggestions you have been offered? If so, what have you tried?

Jan 23, 2006 11:28 AM in response to Al Van Malsen

Have you even bothered

That's pretty insulting and confrontational. Nothing I have tried has worked.

You say "many", but there are actually not many Plausible suggestions above.

1) I have 1 Gb of RAM already, I'm not buying more unless you're offering.
2) I repeatedly close, clear, massage and coddle Safari to no effect.
3) I have cleared the Java caches etc and now have 10.4.4 as well, no help.
4) I am using Pith Helmet with Safari to block Flash advertisements (yech). This does help AFTER the page is loaded, but not when switching pages, reloading, or viewing pages with extensive Java and/or Javascript
5) I do NOT want Firefox as it performs very poorly on many webpages, and ranks lower than Safari on a web standards article I read about.

So, still have no way to tell the system to provide fewer cycles to Safari or Java or whatever, or more cycles to EyeTV.

Jan 23, 2006 11:42 AM in response to William Donelson

William

Yes, I agree, Safari can be a real pig, and although I keep trying it (and have been since the day of its first release) I cannot get it to perform as it should. Messing with the system is not gonna help here. Use Opera or Camino which are both better than Safari.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

http://www.opera.com/

Matthew Whiting

Jan 24, 2006 12:59 AM in response to matthew whiting

I found this, which may help

SpeedFreak
http://home.comcast.net/~jeff.ulicny/software/utils.html

I will try it and report here.

Jan 24, 2006 2:11 AM in response to William Donelson

SpeedFreak does seem to make the EyeTV work a bit better.

The app has a "HOLD" feature, so I bring EyeTV to the front, wait for it to be accelerated, then click the Hold button to keep more CPU allocated to it.

I am seeing some improvement in reduced stutters in the live TV etc.

Here's something very interesting: It appears that Java applets are the most greedy and least considerate, but not all Java applets! ...

We have three virtual tour websites which use Flash and Java extensively. The oldest is Explore the Taj Mahal http://www.taj-mahal.net - when I view a Java panorama, the EyeTV skips and stutters badly. SpeedFreak does not really help, even if accelerate-EyeTV is Held.

The next oldest is Explore Kew Gardens http://www.explore-kew-gardens.net - when I view a Java panorama there, there is very little stuttering in the EyeTV app.

Go figure!

BTW- the Flash plugin that I have does not seem to be too greedy when running the virtual tours.

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A specific App needs more CPU