Excessive CPU usage
#1
Hi all,

I am encountering this problem on my XBOX and my Mac.

The CPU usage in XBMC under MediaStream is unreasonably high.

On the Xbox, while browsing the tv or movie library, the CPU rate hovers at around 90% sometime reaching 100%. You can also see this on the screenshots provided by Rocky5 here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=253272&postcount=1

This contrasts with 20-40% with other skins.

On my Mac, running Atlantis, XMBC is eating 50-60% of my Mac CPU when I browse the same menu.

Is this a bug? What is XBMC doing to be eating so much CPU?

Again, on the mac, changing skin reduces the CPU load quite bit.

Does everyone else get this?

If it is useful, I can post a debug log from both Mac and Xbox.
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#2
ashlartowers Wrote:Hi all,

I am encountering this problem on my XBOX and my Mac.

The CPU usage in XBMC under MediaStream is unreasonably high.

On the Xbox, while browsing the tv or movie library, the CPU rate hovers at around 90% sometime reaching 100%. You can also see this on the screenshots provided by Rocky5 here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=253272&postcount=1

This contrasts with 20-40% with other skins.

On my Mac, running Atlantis, XBMC is eating 50-60% of my Mac CPU when I browse the same menu.

Is this a bug? What is XBMC doing to be eating so much CPU?

Again, on the mac, changing skin reduces the CPU load quite bit.

Does everyone else get this?

If it is useful, I can post a debug log from both Mac and Xbox.

I would post a debug log as it should not use that much cpu power.
On my xbox using either mediastream V1.00 or Minimalko's Mod i get only 15% usage when idle and only 40% to 50% while playing videos over a network so it's not the skin at fault. you could check to see if your fans are clean and in good orderOo
XBMC Frodo 12 - Windows 7 - Asrock Ion 330HT - Aeon Nox
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#3
paul Wrote:I would post a debug log as it should not use that much cpu power.
On my xbox using either mediastream V1.00 or Minimalko's Mod i get only 15% usage when idle and only 40% to 50% while playing videos over a network so it's not the skin at fault. you could check to see if your fans are clean and in good orderOo

Thanks Paul,

I will do that. How many files do you have in your library? Perhaps mine (with>200 videos) is simply too big...
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#4
The CPU usage is probably due to the background loader loading thumbs, meta data, etc. Leave it sit for a bit and usage should drop. This shouldn't happen all that often though as dirs that take longer than ~1.5s to load are cached for future accesses.
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#5
ashlartowers Wrote:Thanks Paul,

I will do that. How many files do you have in your library? Perhaps mine (with>200 videos) is simply too big...

I have got around 400+ tv shows and about 50 films all are streamed to my xbox and my xbox is a v1.1 one of the oldest and it copes well considering it's age also my entire music collection is stored on the xbox itself.

so no your library is not too bigNod
XBMC Frodo 12 - Windows 7 - Asrock Ion 330HT - Aeon Nox
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#6
Hi all,

To test this, I did a clean install of XBMC (latest t3ch SVN build) with 1.00 Mediastream. Before I scanned in a library, I navigated around the interface. On the root menu I got around 30% CPU rising to 70% (while idling) on the Videos menu.

I then scanned in my library - during the scan the CPU stayed at around 70%, fluctuating occasionally to higher values, as one would expect.

Now when I am on the root menu CPU hovers around 30% and when I go into "TV shows" it rockets to around 90%.

All xbmc settings are default, except for the skin (mediastream 1.00 lite).




Here follows part of my debug log, after the system has been idling on the "TV shows" screen for a good 3-4 minutes....

However, I don't think it will pick up the problem as nothing seems to be written to the log file while it is idling!

http://pastebin.com/m7f01be2e

BTW Why would my fans affect the CPU speedHuh
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#7
althekiller Wrote:The CPU usage is probably due to the background loader loading thumbs, meta data, etc. Leave it sit for a bit and usage should drop. This shouldn't happen all that often though as dirs that take longer than ~1.5s to load are cached for future accesses.

The CPU usage never seems to drop. I will leave it running overnight (sorry planet) and tell you whether it has dropped by the morning.
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#8
Eh it wouldn't be more than a minute. WTH is going on in your log? Do you have excessive smb debug enabled in advancedsettings.xml? If you don't, or have no damn clue what I'm on about, please downgrade to the Atlantis final proper release and check CPU usage.
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#9
althekiller Wrote:Eh it wouldn't be more than a minute. WTH is going on in your log? Do you have excessive smb debug enabled in advancedsettings.xml? If you don't, or have no damn clue what I'm on about, please downgrade to the Atlantis final proper release and check CPU usage.

The CPU was still racing at 85% this morning.

Re: the log. I did enable the highest logging level in advancedsettings.xml. I thought that the additional information might help - if it isn't relevant I will disable it. Sorry - I should have mentioned that.

It is a good idea to see how the CPU usage is with the PROPER t3ch version though. I will try that tonight.

I am surprised that noone else here is noticing something similar, given that this testing was with a completely clean install. Unless there is something very odd with my library....
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#10
ashlartowers Wrote:The CPU was still racing at 85% this morning.

Re: the log. I did enable the highest logging level in advancedsettings.xml. I thought that the additional information might help - if it isn't relevant I will disable it. Sorry - I should have mentioned that.

It is a good idea to see how the CPU usage is with the PROPER t3ch version though. I will try that tonight.

I am surprised that noone else here is noticing something similar, given that this testing was with a completely clean install. Unless there is something very odd with my library....

It could also be that there is something wrong with your xbox?Oo
XBMC Frodo 12 - Windows 7 - Asrock Ion 330HT - Aeon Nox
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#11
paul Wrote:It could also be that there is something wrong with your xbox?Oo

That would be upsetting!!

But it runs Halo 2 absolutely perfectly. Sure that is the biggest hammering the CPU and GPU are going to get?!!

Edit: Also, Rocky5 has the same problem on his Xbox according to his screenshots
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#12
Aha!

I just installed Minimalko's Mod - Guess what? It fixed the CPU problem.

My CPU is steady in the reasonable 45-60% range on all library screens.

I think this means one of two things

a) This is a bug in mediastream which Minimalko fixed
b) This is a bug which has crept into Mediastream since 0.97

Can anyone point me to a link to Mediastream 0.97 so I can test this theory?
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#13
Update - I found 0.97 - it is the version supplied with T3ch's proper release.

And yes - 0.97 does seem to share the CPU problem.

So did Minimalko inadvertantly fix this?

Can any other Xbox users see if they can reproduce this problem?

Edit: I just realised that Minimalko's mod is based on 0.95, not 0.97 so now I am sifting thru t3chs archive to find version 0.95 to try...

Edit 2: Reading through some of the past threads here, it seems that Mediastream changed the fanart handling in 0.96. Perhaps it is this which is causing the CPU thrashing (although I get it even when fanart is turned off!)
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#14
Hi folks,

I have now tested the Mediastream version 0.91 which I found on an earlier T3ch release. It does not suffer from the CPU problem.

Now trying to dig out a release between 0.91 and 0.97 to try and pin down where the problem emerged....

Edit: I was able to find 0.94 in a t3ch release. 0.94 does not suffer from the CPU bug either.

This means it seems to have emerged between 0.94 and 0.97.

That's enough beta testing for one night. Over to you guys...
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