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Tasklist

FS#57789 - High CPU usage/temp with VLC 3.0

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Mike Cloaked (mcloaked) - Sunday, 11 March 2018, 14:24 GMT
Last edited by Levente Polyak (anthraxx) - Tuesday, 25 September 2018, 19:04 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Upstream Bugs
Status Closed
Assigned To Levente Polyak (anthraxx)
Architecture x86_64
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description: Start VLC after updating from earlier version to 3.0.1-2 - temperature of CPU starts to rise even before playing a video and cooling fans run up.


Additional info:
* package version(s) 3.0.1-2
* config and/or log files etc.


Steps to reproduce:
Update to vlc 3.0.1-2. Start vlc within plasma desktop. CPU usage and temp rise both before and after playing video from the Playlist View set as docked which was the setup I have been running previously without issues.

I tried a different approach. Firstly I removed the vlc config with "rm -fr .config/vlc", and then restarted vlc clean. There was no abnormal cpu load or temperature rise. I could play a video using Media -> Open file, but if I selected View Playlist from the View menu, then as soon as I went to Computer -> My Videos then the cpu temp would begin to rise, and would then stay high if playing video files and after stopping playback!

Selecting vaapi from the codecs menu tab made no difference.

I am suspecting a bug but I am not sure how to probe this further.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Levente Polyak (anthraxx)
Tuesday, 25 September 2018, 19:04 GMT
Reason for closing:  Upstream
Additional comments about closing:  Upstream bug, tickets in the comments
Comment by Mike Cloaked (mcloaked) - Sunday, 11 March 2018, 16:50 GMT
OK it seems that if a user has been using VLC previously in versions <3.0 and had run it without change after updating vlc (2.2.8-4 -> 3.0.1-2), then the CPU high load results.

So I have found a procedure to work around this high CPU problem, but needs to be done immediately after upgrading vlc to version 3.0 or higher from a version <3.0.

Start by doing:

rm -fr .local/share/vlc
rm -fr .config/vlc

and also removing any .cache entries for vlc, and then start vlc 3.0.1 clean, and then go directly to Tools -> Preferences and select "All" from the "Show Settings" item at the bottom left of the Preferences screen. Then scroll down to Playlist and click on it, then uncheck "Automatically preparse items", and "Save". Then close vlc down, and start it up again, before then going to "View"->"Playlist" and select from the file tree to get to the videos in the user area, leading to no high CPU usage.

With this set of steps the problem is no longer present. It shouldn't be necessary to go through this process at all if the upgrade of VLC was set up to avoid the issue. So I would leave this bug open until there it is sure that this issue is resolved in a new version of vlc > 3.0.1-2
Comment by Levente Polyak (anthraxx) - Sunday, 11 March 2018, 18:44 GMT
If you think this is a bug, report it upstream, not here. We will clearly never ever delete anything form any home directory.
Comment by Mike Cloaked (mcloaked) - Sunday, 11 March 2018, 20:13 GMT Comment by Mike Cloaked (mcloaked) - Sunday, 11 March 2018, 20:33 GMT
There is another report upstream too that seems to be the same issue seen in Windows - https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/19682

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