[MPlayer-users] Process X using too much CPU

[Jonathan Rogers]

Dirk wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Hello,
> 
> when playing videos using "mplayer -vo xv" the process X uses about
> 50% CPU (on an athlon XP 1800+) and the video quality is poor.
> 
> This did not happen before I upgraded my SuSE 8.0 to 8.2. Before, the
> total CPU usage was less than 5%. I was using -vo xv because this was
> the only -vo driver to use so litte CPU and giving such a good video - 
> no drops
> no hangs - even when recoring withh mencoder at the same time and
> the total CPU usage was at 95%.

The main advantage of Xvideo (xv) is that it allows the hardware to do 
colorspace conversion and scaling (for fullscreen). Probably almost all 
video cards these days do have that capability, but not all XFree 
drivers know about it. I use the NVidia binary driver for my Vanta and 
xv works quite well. If I used the driver that comes with XFree for 
Nvidia cards, the card wouldn't be doing conversions in hardware, so I 
suspect it is a driver issue for you. Was it the same video hardware 
when there was little CPU usage?

Jonathan Rogers