In suse 11.2 when play a video file the media players eats up to 50% cpu and pulseaudio another 18-20% with compiz turn on, when i turn the compiz off media player goes down to 7-8 % and pulseaudio 1-2%. With audio files the picture is different - 2-3 % sometimes 7% pulseaudio and there is not matter if compiz is turned off or on.
Is there some kind of configuration should be done ?
I tried also in KDE4 with kwin turned on and with video files media players use 14 % CPU, pulseaudio 7% and kwin himself another 14 %. In case with playing audio files everyting is fine pulseaudio 2 % and kwin 1 %.
Any idea what makes video playing in using so much CPU power?
Which gfx-card, videoplayer and video-driver do you use?
Dependant on your PC age/cpu and upon your graphic card, and your graphic driver, and upon your destkop (LXDE ? Xfce ? Gnome ? KDE ? ) , and upon whether you are playing full screen or in a small window, those % values actually looks reasonable for some cases.
NVIDIA® GeForce 8300 , AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600 , nvidia drivers 190.53 . The players I have tried vlc, smplayer , gnomeplayer, xine, kaffeine, totem, whaam , parole media and kmplayer .
I run suse 10.3 on another comp with NVIDIA® GeForce 6200 AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ and nvidia drivers 173.14 , KDE3 and Gnome, compiz on - vlc takes 3 -7 % , smplayer 3-6 % CPU power . On that system there is no pulseaudio running.
There was a kernel update lately, did you reinstall the driver?
Please post output of:
zypper lr -d
ls -l /etc/X11
Are you playing the IDENTICAL video in both cases? A different bit rate can increase the CPU by over 100% (for dual or quad cores).
It also depends on the used video-driver (that’s why I was asking about it). →VDPAU for example will minimize cpu-usage quit a bit for some codecs (I’m not sure whether the 173.x-driver support that, though) .
However, obviously this is a problem with the settings of compiz (at least video-wise). I haven’t used Compiz for a while now, but I remember that proper video-support has to be activated via the Compiz Configuration Manager. So is it enabled?
I don’t quite understand why Pulseaudio is hogging so much cpu-power…
one@linux:~> zypper lr -d
| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
—±------------------------------------±--------------------------------------------------±--------±--------±---------±---------±--------------------------------------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | OpenOffice.org_EXTRAS | Addons for OpenOffice.org (openSUSE_11.2) | Yes | No | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/EXTRAS/openSUSE_11.2/ |
2 | OpenOffice.org_STABLE | Stable Version of OpenOffice.org (openSUSE_11.2) | Yes | No | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/OpenOffice.org:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.2 |
3 | adds–_Download_1 | adds-- Download | Yes | Yes | 99 | plaindir | dir:///home/11.2/YAST2 |
4 | adds–_Picasa | adds-- Picasa | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386 |
5 | adds-google | adds-- google | No | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64 |
6 | download.nvidia.com-opensuse | adds-- NVIDIA Repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.2/ |
7 | download.videolan.org-SuSE | adds-- VideoLan Repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /pub/videolan/vlc/SuSE/11.2/ |
8 | ftp.skynet.be-suse | adds-- Packman Repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /pub/packman/suse/11.2 |
9 | google-chrome | adds-- google-chrome | No | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64 |
10 | http-download.opensuse.org-36ea6dd1 | – Updates for openSUSE 11.2-0 | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /update/11.2 |
11 | openSUSE 11.2-0 | – openSUSE 11.2-0 | Yes | No | 99 | yast2 | cd:/// |
12 | repo-debug | – openSUSE-11.2-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | Index of /debug/distribution/11.2/repo/oss |
13 | repo-non-oss | – openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/11.2/repo/non-oss |
14 | repo-oss | – openSUSE-11.2-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/11.2/repo/oss |
15 | repo-source | – openSUSE-11.2-Source | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | Index of /source/distribution/11.2/repo/oss |
16 | virtualbox | adds-- VirtualBox for openSUSE 11.1 / 11.2 | Yes | Yes | 120 | rpm-md | Index of /virtualbox/rpm/opensuse/11.2/ |
one@linux:~>
one@linux:~> ls -l /etc/X11
total 88
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 3006 2010-01-17 15:09 baghirarc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 fs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-01-16 14:34 fvwm2
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 112 2010-01-17 15:09 kstylerc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 lbxproxy
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-01-17 16:51 pekwm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 proxymngr
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 117 2003-03-03 12:08 qt_gtk_fnt2fntrc
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 2398 2010-01-17 16:14 qt_plugins_3.3rc
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1182 2010-01-17 15:09 qtrc
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 rstart
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 x11perfcomp
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 0 2010-01-16 11:13 xawtvrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-01-20 17:38 xdm
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5708 2009-10-24 05:25 xim
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 xim.d
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2010-01-25 16:10 xinit
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1353 2003-04-13 00:11 Xmodmap
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1049 2001-06-20 15:01 Xmodmap.remote
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 849 2010-01-16 03:03 xorg.conf.install
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 4017 2009-04-22 16:51 Xresources
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-11-03 02:33 xsm
one@linux:~>
I played exatly the same video files on both comps. I have tried different avi, mp4, mkv, vob files with all sort of audio and video codecs , but obviously the problem is not with codecs, because the CPU usage differed in 1-2 % only, pulseaudio also. There is some strange connection with composite managers because in case of playng video files with compiz turned on - compiz goes to 12-15% CPU steady usage (i tried with checked and unchecked YV12 colourspace option) and if I played them in kwin turned on - kwin goes 12-14% CPU steady usage. When i quit players compiz or kwin goes back to 1-2 % . That does not happend with audio files or other kind of files. With composite manager turned off players takes 5-6 % CPU and pulseaudio to 1%.The compiz configuration is identical to both machines.
With Suse 10.3 and compiz on , players takes only 4-5% CPU power and compiz takes 1% from time to time. It works absolutely smooth, the only increase in CPU up to 20% is if I played HD 1080 video with x246 video and mkv container in that case it is question of volume and codec but even in that case compiz never goes above 4% and that is from time to time not all the time video playing.
With vlc and smplayer I tried all the combination of video and audio outputs available, but there is no significant difference.
You obviously mix Videolan-packages with Packman. Remove Videolan and switch all multimedia-packages to Packman.
Again:
By this I mean a special module in the settings manager for video-support - this might have changed after I stopped using Compiz, but have a look for that just to be sure.
Indeed, mixing videolan and packman repositories is a bad idea. In fact you have so many repositories selected I’m surprised your openSUSE even runs at all. I recommend 4 and only 4 respositories: OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. No others. None. And if you install rpms from other repositories I hope you knew exactly what you were doing.
That what i did , deleted all the packages in vlc repo , then deleted the vlc repo itself, restarted the comp then reinstalled the packages from Packman repo , restarted the comp but the result was the same 
.
I also prefer Packman but in vlc there are libdcss and one two more packs needed, speaking of which , I can not understant why for at least two years gmerlin I have installed from Packman does not work , it used to work before that in suse 10.2 , since 10.3 till 11.2 it gives only segmentation fault. I have tried installing right on fresh installation as only added soft in order to eliminate any other conflict and everything else needed only from Packman but still it does not work.
Don’t waste any time on trying to run this without documenting it and contacting the packager.
The is one of the beauty’s of openSUSE is the superb support provided by the Packman packagers.
Take a look at the packman page: PackMan :: Package details for gmerlin and note that Toni Graffy is the packager. Just contact him. The link is on the Packman page. He is a very agreeable and nice person (he also has an account here on our forum but he has not visited for a while).
Thank you for the tip, I will send him a mail, actually I did send him a mail once year ago for the gmerlin problem, but there was no answer 
now will try again