[t_hah]

Today, I have been messing around with music videos that I have in MPEG format. I watched some NIN and Johnny Cash music videos that I have gotten off the web. Anyhow.
When setting the videos to full screen playback my CPU usage jumped to 100%. That is insane on a PowerBook G4. Do I really need all of my 800MHz G4 to play a video file at full screen?

This seems way too high.

What CPU usages do you guys get?

Thanks,


t

[Mike S.]

If it's playing at full screen what else has the CPU got to do?

Just because it's getting 100% doesn't mean that's what's needed, it's just what the OS is giving it.

How did you monitor the CPU usage if it's full screen anyways?

[t_hah]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
If it's playing at full screen what else has the CPU got to do?

Just because it's getting 100% doesn't mean that's what's needed, it's just what the OS is giving it.

How did you monitor the CPU usage if it's full screen anyways?

Do you have a laptop? If you did you would understand for sure.

If you have a laptop and the CPU is maxed out, the PowerBooks surface will get extremely hot. This will cause the fans to kick into high gear, which is also not a very pleasant sound.
I usually do not have anything in the background running (when watching full screen videos) other than my trusty CPU monitoring app, X Resource App (if you are intereted find it on Versiontracker).

There are tons of apps out there that will graph your CPU usage over time. On a laptop I think it is important to monitor that.
If your CPU is maxed out you are also draining more battery. Sometime some app gets into some infinite loop and that can also drive up the CPU usage. I usually check it in the Terminal and kill the process quickly to keep my laptop cool, and the battery life longer.

Anyhow...
what CPU percentages are you people getting with QT playing an MPEG file (320 x 240) at full screen resolution?
100% from a G4 just seems way too needy.

Thanks,

t

[proton]

It's definitely a QuickTime thing. There is no way it's actually using that much CPU for playing the movie, particularly as (according to X Resource Graph) it uses 100% CPU on my 1.8 GHz G5.

If you're really worried about it, maybe you could try using a different application to play the movie. Try VLC or MPlayerOSX.

For anyone who wants some 320x240 MPEG videos to test with, the ones I used were from the Metal Storm website.

- proton

[arekkusu]

Quicktime blows. It's been like that for years.

I strongly encourage you to send feedback about this to Apple.

In the meantime, use VLC. Yeah, the quality is a little more grainy, but the same movie will play using 30% of the CPU. No fans.

[arekkusu]

Also, PTHCPUMonitor is real handy. CPU History graph mode, in the menu bar. Fits right next to Net Monitor.

No laptop owner should be without it.

[t_hah]

Thanks guys for the reply. I will send feedback to Apple.


t