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vicentereyes

Member

Registered: 2017-02-17

Posts: 5

Laptop running really hot when watching hardware accelerated video

Because everyone online says hardware acceleration is really convenient and useful, I decided to start using it.
I went to the Hardware video acceleration page on the wiki and read that I had to install some packages
So I installed the packages libva-intel-driver, gstreamer-vaapi and libvdpau-va-gl (and set the VDPAU_DRIVER environment variable).

according to gnome system monitor, when watching a video I'm using noticeably less CPU (totem drops cpu usage from ~6% to ~2%), but with HW acceleration enabled, the fan will kick in consistently a few seconds after opening a video, which didn't happen without HW acceleration, and the Core temps (as shown by the "sensors" command) go up ~20°C in just about 20 seconds
I suppose I'm missing something or doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is.

I have a MacBook Pro (8.1) with intel graphics

Last edited by vicentereyes (2017-02-17 14:41:18)

positronik

Member

Registered: 2016-02-08

Posts: 94

Re: Laptop running really hot when watching hardware accelerated video

Edit: I think you should decide whether to use vdpau or vaapi first and check that it is working.

Edit2: you should only use vaapi since you have intel as suggested in the wiki.

Last edited by positronik (2017-02-17 15:31:19)

vicentereyes

Member

Registered: 2017-02-17

Posts: 5

Re: Laptop running really hot when watching hardware accelerated video

Ok. I uninstalled vdpau and started using mpv together with intel_gpu_top to check what was happening. Totem still made the computer overheat, but mpv didn't. I uninstalled gstreamer-vaapi to be able to use vaapi with mpv but not with totem. vainfo succeeds (vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile - 1.7.3). But when using mpv with --hwdec=no the gpu still reaches 14-15% which about the same (or 2-3% less than what) it reaches with --hwdec=vaapi. Interestingly, when using totem (shouldn't use the gpu because gstreamer-vaapi isn't installed), gpu usage gets to 30%.

Reply to edit2: In any case, the wiki suggests installing both in the "tip" box below Installation

Edit: it should be noted that in mpv, even though gpu usage is similar with both hwdec=vaapi and hwdec=no, cpu is notoriously different

Last edited by vicentereyes (2017-02-17 23:12:18)