[MPlayer-users] Rather high CPU usage on arm (Raspberry Pi) when streaming.

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 06:53:25AM +0100, David Woodfall wrote:
> I'm finding CPU usage is between 20-40% on my Pi board when streaming
> radio URLs:
> 
> mplayer -playlist  http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx
> 
> is a good example. Local files tend to be ~= the 10% mark.

Too little information I am afraid.
Did you try capturing with -dumpstream and then playing that file?
I doubt your local files are in WMA format, in which case the comparison
doesn't make sense.
Also cpu frequency scaling unless you have disabled it will result in
CPU usage numbers being completely misleading.
The commands "perf record mplayer ..." and then after it is finished
"perf report" will tell where all the CPU time is used.
Also, which MPlayer version you are using would be helpful information.
However with the ridiculously outdated CPU of the Pi that kind of CPU
usage is most likely as expected, as it doesn't even include NEON,
which causes issues for the data conversions required.
In addition if whatever distribution you uses uses "softfloat" instead
of "hardfloat" that is likely to cost you a significant amount of
performance, as well as if your MPlayer isn't compiled specifically
for it (runtime CPU detection is a mess and basically does not work
on ARM, as a result generic distribution binaries a generally useless
performance-wise).