High CPU usage when video is paused?

[poochie2]

Is it normal to have a high cpu usage (10-25%) when a video is paused (tried VOB and MKV on Windows and OSX Intel)?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Nope. VLC version?

[poochie2]

- 0.9.8 on OSX, always happens, even with an mp3 file! (Edit: 0.8.6i does the same)
- 0.8.6f on win sometimes does so sometimes doesn't, can be a 5% of CPU sometimes or a 20% on others, 0% otherwise (this happened with the same mkv open after doing play/pause) (Edit: 0.9.6, which I had around, does the same thing, but this machine was tested on remote desktop [didn't think that would change anything while paused], with a standard desktop usage I only get 2% spikes on an Athlon X2 2.0 GHz...so this seems more like a OSX issue)
- doesn't happen on my desktop win machine with 0.8.6i or with 0.8.6f, I shall later try the latest build on my server.

[jskartman]

I have observed this "bug" too

Under ubuntu karmic, when i pause a video the cpu load decreases from 80-40% CPU (depend on the video quality,codecs...) to 10-20% CPU.

The expected behaviour is that VLC uses 0% CPU when the video is paused as Mplayer does.

Regards

[jskartman]

vlc 1.0.2

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This is normal behaviour. The video filtering and rendering pipeline runs also when paused. This is required for OSD to work. This is also required to redraw the current frame if it becomes damaged (in the X11 sense of damaged).

If you want zero usage, update to VLC 1.1, stop the input, and make sure your Qt4 theme does not use an interval timer internally (some of them do).