[Libav-user] System-wide issues when decoding high data rate h.264 video

[Douglas Beck]

I'm experiencing something unusual with Libav and was hoping perhaps 
someone out there might have some insight.

I have a very basic single-threaded boiler plate video decoder running 
and it's been working very well in general.

The stream I'm decoding is constant bit rate h.264 and all key frames, 
1080p.  The data rate is very high, but Libav handles it very well 
(roughly 100MB/sec).

However, and this is the key observation, if I open a browser and bring 
up a YouTube video (it can be paused and the browser minimized), I start 
to see system-wide issues while decoding: mouse pointer motion stutters, 
Windows becomes less responsive, receiving this data over UDP starts to 
experience packet loss, and will eventually lead to a BSOD if left long 
enough.

I'm hoping someone can give me some pointers as to why Libav is behaving 
strangely as a result of bring up a YouTube video and if there is 
anything I can do to relieve this behavior.

Thanks in advance,
Doug