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Full Version: 100% CPU load after any video playback
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Ever since I've updated to Isengard, I am experiencing a very weird bug.
The system starts perfectly normal, the GUI is responsive and animations look smooth.
I can browse my library and other menus and the system looks as it should be.
CPU-KODI remains under 10% according to the debug output.

When I start a video playback, everything still looks normal and the CPU load is still perfectly fine, for instance reaching a maximum of around 40% when watching a 720p x264 encoded MKV.

BUT once I stop the playback, or the playing file comes to an end, Kodi's CPU load jumps to 100% (and even over 100%)
The entire GUI becomes extremely slow and unresponsive, keyboard/remote clicks can take several seconds to register, and even if they do, the menus on the main screen appear not to scroll as they should.
I might for instance be shown the Videos submenu (files, add-ons), while the weather menu is selected.

Perhaps the most distinctive thing I've noticed is that the scrolling text effect, such as in the RSS feed (which I have already disabled with no result) or where a file name is too long to be displayed, is going into overdrive. The text is racing by so fast it's near impossible to read.

The only way to restore everything back to normal is to exit and restart kodi altogether. Until the next playback, after which the system sure as anything c**ps itself again.

Here is a pastebin dump of a debug.log for a clean session: start application > play a file > stop playback > CPU load 100% > Quit kodi
http://paste.ubuntu.com/12214624/

I have even already reinstalled my entire OS (Kubuntu 15.04) and Kodi, but the problem hasn't disappeared. All started with v 15.0.

These are the specs of my system:

Kubuntu 15.04 64-Bit up-to-date as of today 2015-08-29
Kodi 15.1 Git:d496682 installed directly from the vivid repository using

KDE Plasma 5.2.2
Kernel 3.19.0-26-generic x86_64
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz x4
GPU: [AMD/ATI] Pitcairn XT [Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition]
using fglrx driver 2:15.200-0ubuntu4
12GB RAM (always more than 10GB free)

The only add-on I am running is the TVHeadend HTSP client v 2.1.17

It's really frustrating, so I am considering downgrading to 14/Helix again, but of course I'd rather help finding a bug, that makes Kodi totally unusable on what I reckon is some pretty grunty hardware for a media PC.
fglrx is not supported, try the radeon OSS driver. It will even give you proper hardware decoding Wink
I just purged fglrx* (and subsequently reinstalled mesa), which indeed seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks.
Curious why it worked with Helix though.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if going back to the radeon driver stack permanently is an option, as I'm also using the PC for gaming (Steam mainly)
And last time I tried the open source drivers, which admittedly is a few years back, they just wouldn't fly, so to speak. Terrible fps.

Hope they've improved.
Was fglrx just recently unsupported? I have been dealing with the same exact issue that OP was describing.
Radeon HD 7800, Core i5-3570.
After a fresh Ubuntu 15.04 install & installation of Kodi, the issues started, and I couldn't figure out what was causing it, because I had a previous 15.04 install working perfectly a few days prior.
Using the x-org drivers seemed to help, but this is an HTPC and I want the extra options that AMD Catalyst Control Center gives me.

I was able to fix the issue by completely purging Kodi 15.2 and installing 15.0.

This version doesn't have the laggy scrolling CPU hog behavior after 1 video has played issue. It has also alleviated a few other seemingly unrelated problems, like the kodi window going blank occasionally when switching from fullscreen > windowed and vice versa, and also an issue where my GUI would lock up after the PC resumed from sleep (I usually have Kodi up and running most of the time on this PC). The box was still responsive because I could ctrl+alt+f2 into a terminal and reboot the thing.
Yes. FGLRX is not supported by us and users running it should directly contact AMD for support.

You are free to use whatever you want ... we are free to not support whatever we want. fglrx is not supported and will never be.
Word em up.
I was just posting my experience to hopefully help someone else that's dealing with this frustrating issue.
Btw. your 100% issues is known since > 3 years. I - myself - reported this to AMD closed source department. I also identified the change they did for iirc driver version 12.6 and told them directly ... but guess what: no interest at all.

Now they implemented VAAPI in their driver, but guess what: It's not thread safe and driver is deadlocking after the first frame ... I even sent them patches to fix that - but - they don't care.

For a long history on why AMD fglrx is totally unwanted by us, see: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=XvBA and http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...xbmc&num=1 - we invested more than 6 months of our life to fix AMD's crucial bug and no one cared at all ... so yeah, this is the result. fglrx can f*ck itself ... not even a minimal interest in supporting this pain ...

Use the radeon oss driver and enjoy proper VDPAU support with hw deinterlacing, mpeg2, mpeg4, h264 decoding support and post processing.
Cool, thank you for all the info! I'll give the OSS drivers another shot and see if I can recreate all of my AMD Catalyst settings using other means.

For some reason I had trouble finding info on this specific issue, maybe my Google skills aren't up to snuff anymore. I thought the issue was unrelated to Kodi, so I was searching for the wrong stuff. I mean, it is unrelated to Kodi, but Kodi was the particular application that I was having trouble with.