XBMC resource intensive?
#1
I noticed when scrolling through my movies my CPU jumps up to 95-100%. Why is scrolling through my media list so CPU intensive?

I first noticed this when playing my mkv's while scrolling through the movie list. It would create a horrible stutter. I do realize decoding mkv's are fairly resource intensive but i also tried scrolling with no video playing and it still jumped up to 95-100% CPU power.

I am currently using the most current Mac Mini Unibody 2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM.
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#2
With default skin, Confluence?
My skins:

Amber
Quartz

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#3
Using PM3.HD

After i am done ripping a movie, i'll test a few different skins.
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#4
Tried with also Confluence and Transparency. Same result. 90-100% CPU usage.
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#5
anonymoususer Wrote:I noticed when scrolling through my movies my CPU jumps up to 95-100%. Why is scrolling through my media list so CPU intensive?

I first noticed this when playing my mkv's while scrolling through the movie list. It would create a horrible stutter. I do realize decoding mkv's are fairly resource intensive but i also tried scrolling with no video playing and it still jumped up to 95-100% CPU power.

I am currently using the most current Mac Mini Unibody 2.4Ghz with 4GB RAM.

XBMC is creating thumbs for all those movies you have, loading and rendering those thumbs. In other words, stop diddling around in the movie list while playing a movie Smile
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#6
This is somewhat off-topic, but I cannot find a thread relating to this. What shortcut (keyboard or remote) do you use to make the video go to full-screen again once you "back out" of it.

I know I can stop the video when it is playing in the small box on the home screen by pressing "x"... but what if I would like to resume the video?
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#7
bmcclure937 Wrote:This is somewhat off-topic, but I cannot find a thread relating to this. What shortcut (keyboard or remote) do you use to make the video go to full-screen again once you "back out" of it.

I know I can stop the video when it is playing in the small box on the home screen by pressing "x"... but what if I would like to resume the video?

Tab Smile
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#8
davilla Wrote:XBMC is creating thumbs for all those movies you have, loading and rendering those thumbs. In other words, stop diddling around in the movie list while playing a movie Smile

LOL i'll try not to do that. But it runs at 90-100% CPU power when flipping through my movie list with no movie playing and no other apps running in the background. I'm no developer but that seems awfully in-efficient. When i do the same scrolling of pictures in iPhoto (library view or individual photo) it fluctuates between 40-70% CPU power. These photos are much larger in size and i would assume much more intensive to render. However that is not the case according to Activity Monitor.
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#9
anonymoususer Wrote:LOL i'll try not to do that. But it runs at 90-100% CPU power when flipping through my movie list with no movie playing and no other apps running in the background. I'm no developer but that seems awfully in-efficient. When i do the same scrolling of pictures in iPhoto (library view or individual photo) it fluctuates between 40-70% CPU power. These photos are much larger in size and i would assume much more intensive to render. However that is not the case according to Activity Monitor.

A photo is a single frame and no decoding is involved. Videos have to be decoded to make a thumb. Also note that 100 percent reported is 1/2 the CPU usage for a core2duo. Run 'top' and look at percent idle.

Flipping through a movie list is not trivial, fetch info, render info, make thumb, etc.

We do welcome patches if you can come up with a better solution.
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#10
davilla Wrote:A photo is a single frame and no decoding is involved. Videos have to be decoded to make a thumb. Also note that 100 percent reported is 1/2 the CPU usage for a core2duo. Run 'top' and look at percent idle.

Flipping through a movie list is not trivial, fetch info, render info, make thumb, etc.

We do welcome patches if you can come up with a better solution.

I'm not talking about video. No video is running when scrolling and CPU usage is at 100%.

% User 84
% System 16
% Idle 0

Thanks for the wise ass comment about me doing a patch. Wink
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#11
anonymoususer Wrote:I'm not talking about video. No video is running when scrolling and CPU usage is at 100%.

% User 84
% System 16
% Idle 0

When making a thumb, you have to decode to get a picture. ie just like playing a video except you only grab one frame.
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#12
lol to the "Patch" comment.

Seriously though I really do agree with Anonymoususer on this topic. I'm fairly new to XBMC and so far love it, but it really does make my mac work hard for it. It's a MBP 2.53 4Gb ram so not a lightweight in power.
Whenever I run XBMC though the cpu usage goes up to 160% whereas i never really work my mac very hard with everything else i do on it but XBMC seems to use lots and lots of resources, all my fans kick-in and my available free ram drops by 1.5gb even tho xbmc says it's only using 350mb!

I did think first of all, when i added my media to the library it'd have to work hard for a while whilst it downloaded movie info and art etc but it says it's completed all the work on that now but it's hardly made a dent in the overall system performance.

It does seem strange that something open source is so hungry, don't get me wrong, i love the effort people have put into this and made it free. :-)

The only skin I have on is Aeon Nox, which I love and have seen running on a fairly crappy old windows xp laptop which didn't seem to have any problems at all

Any ideas please ppl?
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#13
XBMC uses OpenGL (2.0, I believe) to render it's user interface with your refresh rate settings. Doing this XBMC is grab lots of info, creating thumbs for all those movies you have, loading and rendering those thumbs.

So besides having decent hardware (I prefer AMD Fusion with a SSD) there are only 2 options:
  • A patch to update to the newest OpenGL versions;
  • event-based GUI rendering (on the roadmap for XBMC 13 or even 14 or 15).
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#14
If you're troubleshooting anything at least get a debug log and take a gander at what is going on.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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