mplayer vs gnome-mplayer vs mpv vs VLC

[amethyst]

This could be useful for users not running the most powerful computers. Checked the average CPU usage whilst playing the same .mkv file in 480P resolution. Using
Stretch 7.5 (which by the way uses the least cpu overhead of any operating systems I've tried):
mplayer no GUI - Uses the least CPU power so let's take it as the base to work from.
gnome-mplayer (basically mplayer with GUI) - 20% more than mplayer
mpv - 50% more (I'm surprised at this).
VLC - about the same as gnome-player at about 20% more (I thought it would be more).

Interesting...

[williams2]

mpv - 50% more (I'm surprised at this).

Is mpv configured to use hardware acceleration?

If not, the cpu is doing all the work that the video card should be doing.For example:

mpv -vo xv video.mp4

What's in /root/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

my conf file has this line:
hwdec=vaapi-copy

[amethyst]

mpv - 50% more (I'm surprised at this).

Is mpv configured to use hardware acceleration?

If not, the cpu is doing all the work that the video card should be doing.For example:

mpv -vo xv video.mp4

What's in /root/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

my conf file has this line:
hwdec=vaapi-copy

The configurations are thy same for all players. The CPU usage is low overall. For example: 12% for mplayer but 18% for mpv. It's still a 50% increase though.

[norgo]

@williams2
I absolutely agree with you
The capability for hardware decoding is very important especially for older computer.
A user with intel gpu computer should never use mplayer
because mplayer doesn't support vaapi.

[amethyst]

I've found that this is the most efficient video setting for gnome-mplayer when available (lowest cpu usage, quite remarkable in most instances on my old machine, best of the available options for my machine): Video Output = vdpau, Video Hardware Support = Enabled. I have Intel Integrated graphics. On average: 480P video 10%, 720P 19%, 1080P 28% CPU usage. Quite good for my 2005 machine.