xruns with video monitor and certain plugins

hi,
with my otherwise reasonably reliable studio box (4core amd64, echo audiofire12 sound card<-TI chipset fw controller, recent avlinux2016 w. 4.6.5-rt10-avl1(x86_64) kernel, ardour5.8.0) i’m experiencing lot of of xruns whenever i use video monitor window. video import works fine but when i open the xjadeo window, the frequency of droputs rises to unacceptable level (like every 3 seconds with just simple playback). the obvious ways of troubleshooting - bigger buffer in jack settings and lo-res version of video - don’t help much.

i’ve noticed similar behavior when i open the gui of some plugins, for example robin gaerus stereo phase scope, i think the problems might be related somehow.

anyone some idea how to fix this? i’m mixing a film sountrack and it’s driving me crazy!

thanks,
tomas

That sounds like the graphics-card [driver] is interfering with audio i/o. Do some other unrelated graphics operations also cause x-runs? e.g. switching desktops or running glxgears, or playing some video with vlc or mplayer. What video-card is in the system (lspci should tell)?

thanks x42,
yes, there seems to be some kind of correlation with other graphics operations too, although with varying impact (for example, playing a full-hd youtube video via chrome while simultaneously playing back a 32-track ardour session produces high cpu load - up to 80% - but no xruns, while a sd video file via mpv media player in the same situation produces much lower cpu load but lot of xruns) .

also, graphics-related actions inside ardour itself (like scrolling, zooming etc.) tend to worsen the situation.

video-card according to lscpi: [AMD/ATI] Turks PRO [Radeon HD 6570/7570/8550], dual-head setup

sometimes it seems that the real PITA of linux audio is - erm - video.
anyway, what to do? is there a painless way to fix this? or should i try different gc driver (which?) or even different card (any recommendations?)
thanks!

c’mon people! am i the only one with this kind of troubles?

It seems you may be the only one having these problems. Most Ardour users probably don’t use xjadeo and those that do might have different hardware than you.

My computers are all Intel + Nvidia so I can not help you. You might try the open source and closed source amd graphics drivers to see if it makes a difference. Or perhaps your firewire hardware and your graphics card share the same irq ? Perhaps moving the graphics card to a different slot could help ? You could also try using motherboard audio or a external USB audio device while working with this video project ?