[MPlayer-users] are threads working?

[Grant]

>> I'm launching mplayer with -lavdopts threads=2 but how can I find out
>> if multiple threads are actually being used?  There is no mention of
>> them in mplayer's output, even with -v.
>
> Run "ps auH" (assuming mplayer is launched by the same user) and see if
> all threads are using CPU (through there probably will be a cache thread
> not using CPU).

There seems to always be one more thread than I have specified which
uses most of the CPU.  For example, if I use threads=2, there are 3
mplayer threads running with one using about 60% and the other two
using about 25% each.  If I use threads=8, there are 9 threads with
one using 50% and the others using about 10% each.  Is that the
expected behavior?

I'm surprised more CPU isn't being used by each thread because
playback is a little choppy.  Maybe that means decoding is not the
problem?  I'm on a dual-core Pandaboard ES (ARM) device and I actually
seem to get slightly better performance from threads=8 than threads=2.
 I use -vo sdl because I get terrible performance otherwise.

Could it help if I lock one core to mplayer?  If so, how can I do that?

- Grant