Screen capturing results in a high CPU utilisation

[gurkensalat]

Hi everyone,

I have a Ubuntu 11.04 in a VirtualBox. I started VLC via terminal with this command:

Code: Select all

vlc screen:// --sout='#transcode{vcodec=h264,acodec=mp4a}:std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=file.mp4}' --screen-fps=5.0

This starts VLC and it will record the screen. The problem is the CPU. It is 100% at one core.
If I reduce the screen resolution to 1024x768 and give two cores to the virtual machine the CPU is only 20-30% while capturing.
I tried out different codecs, actually AVI was the best performing with 40% instead of 100% CPU. But 10 sec had about 400MB. That's way too much.
So i chose h264, it's best performing while it only needs about 0.5MB per minute. That's fine.

But are there any solutions to reduce the CPU utilisation while capturing? I tried out the VP8 codec, which skype uses for video. But that was much more lame than h264.
The problem is, one core would be fantastic, I don't want to give 2 cores to the virtual machine.
Has anyone solutions for this? Any other codec maybe? Thanks a lot guys.