#661 High cpu utilization with smplayer-mpv and vaapi

[BasioMeusPuga]

Using SMPlayer / mplayer / vaapi, I'm getting something like 5-10% CPU utilization playing a 1080p video on a 3rd Gen Core i3 laptop.

With SMPlayer / mpv / vaapi, this goes up to ~60%. I checked the options SMPlayer passes to mpv and apparently it only does --vo=vaapi. mpv seems to require --hwdec=vaapi for the option to have its desired effect. (Works as intended if run directly from a terminal: CPU drops to ~13%)

OS: Arch Linux x86_64. Opensource Intel drivers.
SMPlayer version: svn 6576

Same thing. Clearly VAAPI isn't actually used and I'm suspecting the same thing as you, that the hwdec=vaapi isn't passed properly. When I set output driver to "User defined" and write hwdec=vaapi there, I end up with a black screen and audio only.

[Ricardo Villalba]

There's an option in preferences -> performance to set the hardware decoding to vaapi, did you enable it?

[BasioMeusPuga]

Hello,

I followed the instructions in the Arch Wiki and set Preferences > Advanced > Options for Mplayer/MPV > Options text to "--hwdec=auto".
I can confirm this has the same effect as changing the option in Preferences > Performance, except maybe it's a little dirtier.

Output driver is set to vaapi.
Arch Linux x86_64
svn 6889

P.s. While we're here, is there some reason why SMPlayer won't allow me to hide the menubar after shifting to qt5?

Clearly I had never looked at those settings properly... Now works correctly (CPU usage <5%), with vaapi selected in the performance settings. (I put --vo=opengl-hq in the advanced settings, this isn't necessary for vaapi though)