Arch Linux

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,350

[SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

Since updating VLC to vlc 3.0.1-2 on my Lenovo Y510P laptop, playing a video sets the fan running up quite high with elevated CPU temperatures. I only use the Intel internal graphics (00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)), and not the discrete graphics card (1:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] (rev a1))  in this laptop. Before the update to VLC 3.0 playing videos did not cause excess CPU usage or high temperatures. Does anyone else see something similar, and if so is there a work around?  Thanks.

Last edited by mcloaked (2018-03-11 16:44:45)

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Mike C

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,074

Re: [SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

Terminal output? Make sure that a VAAPI decoder variant is explicitly selected (or unselected) in the hardware decoding listbox in the output/codecs tab.

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,350

Re: [SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

I tried selecting VAAPI and it seems to make no difference. I will run VLC later on a different machine and see if that shows up similar problems or not. By the way playing video in youtube showns normal CPU levels and no abnormal rise in temperatures. Also the temperatures begin to rise as soon as vlc loads, and even before I start playing any video!

Edit: 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! I am suspecting a bug but I am not sure how to probe this further.

Edit2: I don't know if it matters but I am running vlc from within the plasma desktop -  all packages up to date as of today.

Edit3: I have reported at https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/57789

Last edited by mcloaked (2018-03-11 14:24:34)

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Mike C

Scorpick

Member

Registered: 2016-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

Following your steps, cpu load rise only for couple seconds.
vlc parses metadata of files in Playlist and when selecting My Videos, it checks everywhere.
You can turn off this functionality in Settings -> Show All -> Playlist -> Automatically Preparse Items.
Looks like it doesn't remember the metadata after checking, so it does it every time.

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,350

Re: [SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

Following your steps, cpu load rise only for couple seconds.
vlc parses metadata of files in Playlist and when selecting My Videos, it checks everywhere.
You can turn off this functionality in Settings -> Show All -> Playlist -> Automatically Preparse Items.
Looks like it doesn't remember the metadata after checking, so it does it every time.

OK - I had to look around to find that setting - which is in Preferences - then went to advanced, and then selected "all" instead of "simple" before I got to scroll down to "Playlist" and then unchecked "Automatically preparse items". However the machine still ran the fans up and the temperatures still stayed high for some minutes before I closed vlc and the  fans went quiet again. So that does not appear to resolve it for me.  Even if it was the preparsing causing high CPU load the programme should do any preparsing without running up CPU loading to the extent that the fans are needed to keep the machine cool.

Edit: After restarting VLC several times after making the changes above, on starting about the third time it eventually showed a different set of icons in the file tree and the CPU stopped running high.  So it is now settled but I am not sure if it was a question of allowing it to run hot for long enough for the preparsing to end, despite turning it offf, or something else.  I will check this on other machines and see if it is just on this one or if it happens elsewhere before marking the title solved or not. Either way there is something not right if starting vlc has this effect.

Last edited by mcloaked (2018-03-11 16:18:30)

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Mike C

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,350

Re: [SOLVED] High CPU temps with vlc 3.0.1-2

OK it seems that if I had been using VLC previously and run it without change after updating vlc (2.2.8-4 -> 3.0.1-2), then the CPU high load results. So starting by doing:

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

and also removing any .cache entries for vlc, and then starting vlc 3.0.1 clean, and then going directly to Tools -> Preferences and selecting "All" from the "Show Settings" item at the bottom left of the Preferences screen.  Then scrolling down to Playlist and clicking on it, and then unchecking "Automatically preparse items", and then "Save". Then closing vlc down and starting it up again, before then going to "View"->"Playlist" and selecting from the file tree to get to the videos in the user area, no longer results in high CPU usage.

With this set of steps the problem is no longer present. So I will mark this as solved - though it shouldn't be necessary to go through this process at all if the upgrade of VLC was set up to avoid the issue.

Edit: Perhaps the default should be that "Automatically preparse items" should be "False" not "True", particularly if the user has significant numbers of video files (in my case hundreds of files totalling around 81GB)

Last edited by mcloaked (2018-03-11 16:55:14)

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Mike C