Streaming VLC CPU Load

[arkman]

Getting near 100% CPU utilization when streaming MPEG-4 (XviD, x264) to mvpmc via VLC on my Athlon XP 2600+.  Using self-compiled vlc-0.9.8a,  ffmpeg-0.5, and dongle from @ a month ago.

I have tried encoding the source video using several different methods and applications, results are the same.  I have tried the DVD, SVCD, and VCD modes in VLC setup in mvpmc.  I have also tried adjusting vlc on the command line using --canvas-width and --canvas-height.  Any suggestions on how to reduce VLC's CPU usage?



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[Roger Heflin-3]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Ark Man <arkman@...> wrote:

> Getting near 100% CPU utilization when streaming MPEG-4 (XviD, x264) to
> mvpmc via VLC on my Athlon XP 2600+.  Using self-compiled vlc-0.9.8a,
> ffmpeg-0.5, and dongle from @ a month ago.
>
> I have tried encoding the source video using several different methods and
> applications, results are the same.  I have tried the DVD, SVCD, and VCD
> modes in VLC setup in mvpmc.  I have also tried adjusting vlc on the command
> line using --canvas-width and --canvas-height.  Any suggestions on how to
> reduce VLC's CPU usage?
>

What is the resolution of the starting files?

If either of them are HD mpeg-4 files then there is not much you can do, and
100% cpu is what can be expected and there is really no way to fix it.   Almost
no effort is required on the re-encode, the bulk of the cpu time is
the decoding part
and depends on the original file's codec type, and the resolution of
the original file.

I have jobs to transcode 1080i and 720p and both transcode down to the
same resolution
and bit rate, but the 1080i is almost 2x slower because of the decode
being much worse.

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[arkman]

The resolution of the starting file is 480x480.  In an attempt to see if the problem is decoding or the re-encode, I renamed a MPEG-2 file created by my PVR-150 to avi so VLC would stream it.  Still 100% CPU utilization.  I don't think a decode could be much easier than that.  If it's fair to then assume that the problem isn't the source file, is there something wrong with my VLC?

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Roger Heflin <rogerheflin@...> wrote:

What is the resolution of the starting files?

If either of them are HD mpeg-4 files then there is not much you can do, and
100% cpu is what can be expected and there is really no way to fix it.   Almost
no effort is required on the re-encode, the bulk of the cpu time is
the decoding part
and depends on the original file's codec type, and the resolution of
the original file.

I have jobs to transcode 1080i and 720p and both transcode down to the
same resolution
and bit rate, but the 1080i is almost 2x slower because of the decode
being much worse.

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[Florian Overkamp-3]

Ark Man wrote:
> The resolution of the starting file is 480x480.  In an attempt to see if
> the problem is decoding or the re-encode, I renamed a MPEG-2 file
> created by my PVR-150 to avi so VLC would stream it.  Still 100% CPU
> utilization.  I don't think a decode could be much easier than that.  If
> it's fair to then assume that the problem isn't the source file, is
> there something wrong with my VLC?

Howdy

I'm also very much interested in more input on how to tame VLC in these
setups. I have a reasonably recent server with an intel E2160@1800 CPU,
and even though that is not a very exciting processor I think it should
be able to deal with one stream to decode. However it really has a hard
time and the load skyrockets. I've done some drastic options:

VLCOPTS="--ffmpeg-skip-frame=1 --ffmpeg-skip-idct=1
--ffmpeg-skiploopfilter=4 --sout-transcode-audio-sync
--freetype-fontsize=22"

But still, not much joy.

Any hints would be much appreciated...

Florian

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[Roger Heflin-3]

Florian Overkamp wrote:

> Ark Man wrote:
>> The resolution of the starting file is 480x480.  In an attempt to see if
>> the problem is decoding or the re-encode, I renamed a MPEG-2 file
>> created by my PVR-150 to avi so VLC would stream it.  Still 100% CPU
>> utilization.  I don't think a decode could be much easier than that.  If
>> it's fair to then assume that the problem isn't the source file, is
>> there something wrong with my VLC?
>
> Howdy
>
> I'm also very much interested in more input on how to tame VLC in these
> setups. I have a reasonably recent server with an intel E2160@1800 CPU,
> and even though that is not a very exciting processor I think it should
> be able to deal with one stream to decode. However it really has a hard
> time and the load skyrockets. I've done some drastic options:
>
> VLCOPTS="--ffmpeg-skip-frame=1 --ffmpeg-skip-idct=1
> --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter=4 --sout-transcode-audio-sync
> --freetype-fontsize=22"
>
> But still, not much joy.
>
> Any hints would be much appreciated...
>
> Florian

If you are trying to watch/transcode 1080i stuff on a 2160, then it
likely won't work, that is a marginal speed to deal with 1080i.
720p and lower should be fine.   And there is really nothing you can
do to fix it except to do something like transcode the stuff before
hand to a lower resolution.    No amount of options is really going to
fix is as the killer is the original decode, not the recode, and all
frames have to be originally decoded to do just about anything...

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[Roger Heflin-3]

Ark Man wrote:
> The resolution of the starting file is 480x480.  In an attempt to see if the
> problem is decoding or the re-encode, I renamed a MPEG-2 file created by my
> PVR-150 to avi so VLC would stream it.  Still 100% CPU utilization.  I don't
> think a decode could be much easier than that.  If it's fair to then assume
> that the problem isn't the source file, is there something wrong with my
> VLC?
>
>

Quit top posting, ie post your responses *UNDER* the message you are
replying to.

Make sure that when you run configure that it finds an assembler
program, if it does not it will use slower C code, I understand that
there are some assembly sections to speed up things quite a bit.

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processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com
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