high gpu load when playing movies

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high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

Hello,

I am having high gpu load while playing movies. I have tried the same movie (1080p x264) with VLC and I do not have such a high GPU load. I have also tested this on various configurations (win 10 - intel j4125 - kodi 19.2; win 10 - intel n5000 - kodi 19.4; linux mint 20.3 - intel i5-10310U - kodi 18.6), and it is always the same conclusion: kodi uses much more gpu. The only common point between these configurations is the hardware decoder which is an intel one, always capable of decoding the video.
Here are some results on the linux mint 20.3, intel i5-10310U, kodi 18.6 platform (gpu load is get from intel_gpu_top) :
VLC:
Render/3D/0   35.91%
Blitter/0    0.00%
Video/0    7.50%
VideoEnhance/0    0.00%
Kodi:
Render/3D/0   70.25%
Blitter/0    0.00%
Video/0    7.75%
VideoEnhance/0    0.00%
Pressing 'o' while playing the movie on kodi shows that the video decoder is ff-h264-vaapi (HW).

I have played with every settings I found but I could not lower the gpu load. Interestingly, using software decoder (ff-h264 SW) gives the following result:
Render/3D/0   78.05%
Blitter/0    0.00%
Video/0    0.00%
VideoEnhance/0    0.00%
So render is higher, while Video/0 is lower.

On the windows platforms, GPU load is better on VLC (like 5%) and more and less the same on kodi (60%). I can give you stats of these platforms if needed.

Has anybody encountered such problems? Is there some post processing done on kodi that I can disable?

Let me know if you need more information, and thanks for your help.
Regards.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

Here is a log using HW decoder:
https://paste.kodi.tv/cuwurociwu.kodi

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - Klojum - 2022-04-02

Code:
2022-04-02 13:56:35.783 T:139928105407360  NOTICE: Starting Kodi from Debian (18.6 Debian package version: 2:18.6+dfsg1-2ubuntu1). Platform: Linux x86 64-bit

2022-04-02 13:56:35.783 T:139928105407360  NOTICE: Using Release Kodi from Debian x64 build

2022-04-02 13:56:35.783 T:139928105407360  NOTICE: Kodi from Debian compiled 2020-04-03 by GCC 9.3.0 for Linux x86 64-bit version 5.4.27 (328731)

Please use Kodi's PPA when installing Kodi on Ubuntu distros as per our Wiki instructions.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

Hi,
Ok no problem, I will try it.
But as I said, I have the same problem on kodi 18.6, 19.2 and 19.4

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - Klojum - 2022-04-02

(2022-04-02, 13:54)m121 Wrote: (win 10 - intel j4125 - kodi 19.2; win 10 - intel n5000 - kodi 19.4; linux mint 20.3 - intel i5-10310U - kodi 18.6),

I'm using a J5005 / UHD605 box here, and Ubuntu 21.10 for now. Kodi 19.4 (via ppa) does fine here.
Linux Mint is known to have its tempers every now and then.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

So I have tried kodi 19.4 from ppa (by the way, instructions on the wiki lack an apt update Wink

), on my linux mint.
The behavior is exactly the same or even worst:
Render/3D/0   80.32%
Blitter/0    0.00%
Video/0    7.85%
VideoEnhance/0    0.00%

New log is here:
https://paste.kodi.tv/unuzetisud.kodi

I can try on a live ubuntu if it makes differences. But how do you explain the high gpu load on windows too?

You say that it in your case it is fine, what is the result of intel_gpu_top while playing a movie? On my side, gpu load is high but I can watch the movie fine too.

Thanks!

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - Klojum - 2022-04-02

Perhaps you can also try a bootable USB stick running LibreELEC, just as a compare.
BTW, a video resolution of 1916x796 is not giving me a warm fuzzy feeling. Such ripped & (re)muxed videos sometimes have built-in hiccups.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

You are right, the resolution is not conventional; I did not noticed it. But it is not a problem for VLC.

Testing on a more conventional video (1920x800) gives similar results:
Render/3D/0   71.92%
Blitter/0    0.00%
Video/0    6.31%
VideoEnhance/0    0.00%

https://paste.kodi.tv/bedexetuce.kodi

I will try librelec and ubuntu 21.10 on live usb.

Sorry to ask again, but what are your results of intel_gpu_top? As I said, video plays smoothly but gpu load is unexpectedly high, with respect to VLC for example.
Thanks!

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - Klojum - 2022-04-02

(2022-04-02, 17:59)m121 Wrote: what are your results of intel_gpu_top?

I get:

- 20-25% of on the CPU cores when doing a 4K HEVC 10 bit video on the J5005 in Kodi's player process info
- Render/3d + Video percentages from 50-65% in intel_gpu_top

while also having some other stuff apps going on in the background like Zoom (Kodi's devcon in particular).

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-02

Thanks for your tests. Could you compare with another player like VLC? My guess is that you will get lower gpu usage, like me.

I just tried on an ubuntu 21.10 live usb. Here are the results:
on kodi:
Render/3D   44.24%
Blitter    0.00%
Video    8.53%
VideoEnhance    0.00%
logs:
https://paste.kodi.tv/ujivexazep.kodi

on VLC:
Render/3D   24.93%
Blitter    0.00%
Video    4.66%
VideoEnhance    0.00%

So gpu usage is lower than on linux mint, which is a good point! But kodi is still using higher gpu than VLC. I also noticed that gpu is doing frequency scaling, and frequency is a little bit higher using kodi. More and less, VLC is 2x more efficient.

I will give a try to librelec, but I will not be possible to compare with VLC, I think.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - Klojum - 2022-04-02

Kodi is a bigger program than VLC, and your percentages are lower than mine because your PC is more powerful: a Core i3 10th gen VS a Pentium Silver 8th gen (i think).

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-04-03

Yes, the point is not to compare processing power of our cpu/gpu, but to compare programs on the same platform.

I know that kodi has much more functionalities than VLC, and this is why I like it and use it. But when kodi is playing a video, it is a video player, just like VLC. Both can have a lot of advanced filters for audio/video processing, and both are using the hardware capabilities for decoding videos.
Every tests I have done on different platforms shows that VLC is more efficient. The only thing I could not change is the gpu brand (intel), as I only have intel cpu...

As I pointed out on my first post, I am guessing that kodi is doing some extra (post?) processing that VLC don't. But I still have not find which one, and how to disable it.

In both cases (VLC and kodi), I am satisfied with the video quality, and video plays smoothly. But on a specific platform (acepc gk3v, intel j4125), the extra gpu load of kodi will quickly starts the fan, which sounds very loud and is disturbing while watching a movie. Using VLC on the same platform let me watch a movie without hearing the fan.
I know that a workaround could be to use an external video player (like VLC) on kodi; but I would like to understand firstly why there is an extra gpu load and check if there is a way to reduce it.

Thanks for your understanding!

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - HeresJohnny - 2022-12-16

Can I just put a few thoughts out there?

I have this problem in Windows. Computer is an i7 laptop with integrated Intel UHD graphics running the latest DCH driver. Basically, there are two ways for Kodi to present a video, a) in a fullscreen window or b) in real fullscreen. VLC paints directly to desktop, that is why task manager shows only the Desktop Window Manager using GPU. Kodi fullscreen should be comparable to that but it isn't. In that scenario both Kodi and DWM are shown to use the GPU, in my case at a ratio of approximately 35+10 = around 45%.That seems to suggest to me that Kodi doesn't use direct calls to the GPU but goes through some software intermediary.

Maybe a direct desktop video is something that can be achieved in the future for weaker computers, probably at the sacrifice of not getting back to other Kodi dialogues unless the video is stopped, I don't know. Definitely a tough task, seeing that Kodi tries to work on as many platforms as possible.

Also - and that for me as a non-programmer is the most surprising, GPU usage doesn't drop when the video is paused in Kodi. The information video suggests that even in this state rendering of frames takes place at the set refresh rate - even though there don't seem to be new frames.

Anyway, I'm probably trying to reinvent the wheel here and state things that smarter people like me have already understood, tried and discarded.

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - m121 - 2022-12-18

Hi,
Thanks for your message.
Good to know I am not the only one affected by this behavior.
I hope kodi team will solved this problem.

I ended by buying a more powerful computer. It is a shame because the old one was working very well using VLC...

RE: high gpu load when playing movies - sarbes - 2022-12-18

You can't compare VLC with Kodi. For instance, Kodi does frame blending on the GPU, which will result in higher utilization. This is not the case for VLC AFAIK. And there also other differences how the rendering is done.

For Kodi on Linux, most of our focus lies on not using the GPU at all for displaying video. LibreElec is highly recommended if you want such a behaviour, as it needs a somewhat special setup. I'm not sure about Windows, but I think DXVA can do something similar if the driver supports it.