Beta on Mac still doing the loud fan noise

[TomyLo]

http://i48.tinypic.com/23tgufn.png

Guys, you need to refine the CPU usage for Boxee on Mac, I continue to hear the fans go nuts.... which is really annoying :( The above snapshot was 2 minutes ago the below is now and look at the CPU usage, it doubled... why?


http://i47.tinypic.com/2pt6s84.png

[marcel]

anyone having this issue?

[Cacafuego]

Not 100% sure what "this issue" is here. I'm assuming it's that the CPU usage increases for no obvious reason (maybe it's kicking off a rescan, or something?)

On my box I've let it sit idle for about 15 minutes, and it's been sitting at a pretty constant 29% CPU usage since startup (on 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo). No change.

On the other hand, it's been sitting at 29% CPU usage, even though it's not doing anything (not playing video/music/etc, anyway). And that's enough to kick power usage and CPU temp up a couple notches. And that doesn't seem right.

[Cacafuego]

A couple of things:

I've noticed that if I have it sitting on the "home" screen it chews up 29% of CPU. But if I go to, say, "settings", it drops to a consistent 12%.

I took a few CPU profiles of the app, and it's spending nearly 50% of its cycles doing various OpenGL update/refresh stuff, and over 50% doing "mach_msg_trap", which I guess is just communication with the kernel, and I'm assuming still is related to all the OpenGL stuff it's doing. Don't know what that means exactly, but seems like it sure is liking to draw stuff over and over =)

[Cacafuego]

Also just noticed that if you pause a vieo towards the end (last minute or so), Boxee CPU usage jumps to 100%. I guess I'll report that too =)

[TomyLo]

I gotta agree with all of the point outs in the above... CPU usage goes nuts on;

-Pause
-Home Screen (idle)
-Screen Saves
-Scanning
-Idle

During playback it stabilizes between 23% - 29%. I'll keep my eyes out for other stuff... Thanks fellas.

[Cacafuego]

Yeah, that's a funny thing. Most of the time when I'm watching a video (from local storage) CPU usage is about 13% (depending on video), and paused is about 10%. But once the menus are up, the CPU usage doubles or triples. Just sitting at a list of CPU episodes has CPU sitting around 29%.

[NomadDNA]

I've noticed that if I have it sitting on the "home" screen it chews up 29% of CPU. But if I go to, say, "settings", it drops to a consistent 12%.


Perhaps it's because the home screen is constantly seeking fresh feeds from the Boxee Team/Friends? I'm not confident that the home screen is truly an "idle" process....

[Cacafuego]

Perhaps it's because the home screen is constantly seeking fresh feeds from the Boxee Team/Friends? I'm not confident that the home screen is truly an "idle" process....

Don't think so. Like I said, it seems to primarily be spending CPU doing OpenGL things, and I get 30% CPU usage just on a screen with a list of TV episodes. I think it's just how they're constructing/drawing the menus.

Do Linux users see the same? Or is this a Mac thing only?

[wrx1]

I am running a torrent windows version and I get the same thing. 10-15% playing a movie and 30%+ at the home screen. That is with 4gb of ram and a 3ghz core 2 duo.

Russ

[lbustelo]

I'm on a Mini 1.83 Dual Core running Snow Leopard
Build 0.9.20.9816

The fan is going pretty much constantly.

[chrisost]

I have this same problem on Windows. I first tried Boxee with the alpha, and quickly gave it up because it used nearly all of my CPU. Since I heard so much praise for the app, I gave it another try with the Beta. Unfortunately, it still has the same problems.

As others have reported, the CPU usage seems to occur when menus are being displayed. Playing videos seems to work fine.

I've got an older system, but would expect that it should be able to handle Boxee without a problem, with the exception perhaps of 1080p H.264. It's an Athlon x2 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, running Server 2008 32-bit. My graphics card is a GeForce 6200 LE.

Is there any information that can be gathered to help troubleshoot this? I'd really like to get Boxee running. I like what I've seen, but the CPU usage makes it unworkable.

Edit: It seems that the CPU usage is dependent on the screen resolution. I normally run at 1800x1440. However, I tried dropping down to 1200x1024 and the CPU usage was much more reasonable.

Also, graphics drivers are updated to latest available from nvidia.