Flash video causing 105% CPU usage spikes

Just tried another test - this HD Sigur Ros video - CPU hit 102% quickly ->

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720Heima_H264500K.html

Grant P wrote:
Just tried another test - this HD Sigur Ros video - CPU hit 102% quickly ->

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720Heima_H264500K.html

Look, maybe we are speaking about a non-existing a problem.

I tries to watch the video on the link above (the test suggested by Grant P) on two Macs:

1) On a MacBook 2006
2) On an Intel Mac Mini early 2009

The result was the same: 118-120% CPU usage during video playback! But the playback was running smoothly, without any problem. SO, I wonder: is this really a problem? I know that in many other circumstances the Mac OS allows the CPU to be used a

Grant P wrote:
Just tried another test - this HD Sigur Ros video - CPU hit 102% quickly ->

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720Heima_H264500K.html

Look, maybe we are speaking about a non-existing a problem.

I tried to watch the video on the link above (the test suggested by Grant P) on two Macs:

1) On a MacBook 2006
2) On an Intel Mac Mini early 2009

The result was the same: 118-120% CPU usage during video playback! But the playback was running smoothly, without any problem. So, I wonder: is this really a problem? I know that in many other circumstances the Mac OS allows the CPU to be used at more than 100%, in order to have the task done promptly. I think that the real meaning of this phenomenon is just that the Flash plugin is a horrible piece of software, which requires very high CPU usage. The Mac just adapts to this demand, and allows the CPU to run at this high percentage.

I've tried everything suggested in these forums; re-installing Flash, resetting my PRAM, using Firefox, plugging directly into my router instead of using AirPort, installing 10.6.2... and the problem still exists.

I agree that it wouldn't be a problem if everything ran smoothly. But I tried watching an episode of Fringe on Hulu and it's extremely choppy, unless I watch it in the tiny default window. I'd like to use all 27 inches of this glorious monitor!

Is your Internet connections sufficiently fast? Maybe using the full screen option automatically increases the necessary data transfer/second, so the movie is interrupted when the system is waiting for data download (buffering). To test if this is the cause, just click the stop button (two thick vertical lines at the bottom of the video) and wait for the system to load the movie. After, say, 5 minutes, you click the "start" arrow, and see if the movie is played smoothly.

Note please that I have a very fast cable internet connection (theoretically 100 M, in fact 30 M!), so maybe I don't see the problems you mention just because my system loads the data very fast.

In any case, I think that the high percentage of CPU usage is not a problem! It appears on any Mac, at least on the Mac Mini 2009 and MacBook 2006 I have; and they run most Flash videos perfectly.

You might also try to clean the cache with SnowLeopardCacheCleaner.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/snowleopardcachecleaner.html

I had to do this this after a (probably corrupted) Flash movie crashed my browser. Afterwards, the browse began to crash when opening any page with Flash content. No other maintenance method removed the problem, but the cleaning the cache with SnowLeopardCacheCleaner.

Grant P wrote:
Just tried another test - this HD Sigur Ros video - CPU hit 102% quickly ->

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720Heima_H264500K.html

As has been said, reaching 100%+ CPU on a Mac is not a problem in itself.

That video is HD quality and causes around 100% CPU usage on my MacBook. It plays perfectly smoothly for me though. If it plays smoothly for you then you have no problem either, if it doesn't then you obviously do, but it's not necessarily related to your reported CPU usage. (Nice Sigur Ros video by-the-way!)

I think there may be some confusion in thinking that 100%+ CPU usage means all the system resources are being used. From what I gather, if you have more than one core then OS X reports total CPU usage over both cores (i.e. the 100% is out of a possible 200% for a dual-core system). This can be confirmed if you view core usage in Activity Monitor (my MacBook shows about half of each core being used - two lots of 50%=100%).

Hey folks,

whether there's a problem or not - here are my facts: just updated both of my Macs to "10.6.2" (a 2008 1.83 GHz / 2 GB RAM Mac Mini and my MBP, 2.2 GHz / 4 GB RAM). Tried the same Youtube HD-video I tried a few days ago and wrote about my experiences before. No significant changes on both machines. Still up to 135% CPU load. No hangs or something, but intense usage.

Still running my MBP via Airport in my flat. The Mac Mini is connected via Ethernet-Cable. Airport is disabled. BTW: I still cannot deactivate my Airport connection on my MBP after upgrading the OS X to Snow Leopard. Any ideas?

Rgds,
Guido

320d wrote:
No hangs or something, but intense usage.

I don't understand, if it all runs fine then what's the problem?

You'd expect high CPU usage on a low-powered Mac mini without dedicated video card trying to run HD video.

The high CPU usage has always been the case with flash on OS X (I have exactly these CPU spikes on a G5 iMac). Until Adobe write a half-decent plug-in then this will always be the case.

maybe the hyperthreading ?
not on i5 but the i7

i think its possible

4x2,8ghz HT to 8x2,8ghz

and mac cant "read" 8x

just my opinion

Um... the quad core i5 and i7 just started shipping - all of the reports of problems are with the Duo Core models -- I haven't read any reports from people who have quad cores

I was just at the local Apple Store and took the two 27" iMacs there through the paces on YouTube and Hulu. Those iMacs on display at the store played back high-quality clips smoothly, but Activity Monitor showed almost maxed-out CPU usage. I didn't look at the numbers for the individual processes, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were spikes into the >100% range frequently. Playback was smooth, even at full-screen, on both machines. The back sides of those 27" iMacs got plenty warm, BTW. These were Core 2 Duo machines, I wonder how the i7 iMacs will fare.

Interesting, but no surprise... last video test in the store was on Apple's movie trailer website. I loaded up the largest (1080p) HD version of the AVATAR trailer. The window that opened up was enormous, and the playback was stunning and ultra-smooth. CPU usage? Around 20-25% percent of both cores.

Having YouTube video glitch problems. Hit the power switch to sleep, then wake fixes the problem temporarily. Very annoying for a brand new machine 21.5" Brand new out of box--no migration or other apps installed.


Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac10,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM101.00CC.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.52f9
Serial Number (system): W8944MP85PC
Hardware UUID: AD3AF969-83F1-535C-AAD6-D8621B930DDF

I believe that the new updates to Snow Leopard (10.6.2) and Safari (4.0.4) have generally solved this problem.

I did an experiment on both my Macs to confirm. I used the Sigur Ross video posted by Grant P as the standard. http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720Heima_H264500K.html

Following the Snow Leopard installation, the performance issues with my 27" iMac were resolved, but the problems with the CPU spikes persisted. So, I played the video on both my 15" Macbook and 27" iMac in Safari, noted the CPU usage and then installed the Safari update. Here's what I found:

27" iMac - 90-102% before; 58-82% after
15" MacBook - 110-140% before; 82-104% after

If others are upgrading, it might help folks on this forum if you repeated my experiment and posted the results. CPU usage is still to high, but it doesn't seem to be hurting anything, so I'm thinking this is solved.

A couple of side notes. Firefox is still unreformed. I saw CPU spikes as high as 105% still on my iMac and 135% on my MacBook. Hulu videos, played in the browser window performed admirably (30-40%), but when playing the videos in large size, I noted spikes as high as 123%. However, no performance issues whatsoever.

This is a well-known issue with the Flash/Shockwave browser plugins and is not unique to OSX (occurs on Windows as well). It will cause problems even when there is no Flash on the page. It's most likely an implementation problem with Adobe. Uninstalling Flash+Shockwave player fixes the issue.

Firefox thread documenting behavior:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/415618?forumId=1&commentsthreshold=0&comments_parentId=415618&comments_offset=80&comments_per_page=20&thr ead_style=commentStyleplain

Hello again,

latest status:

installing OS X 10.6.2 and the latest Safari update resulted in a significant improve. Watching the HD video (see link above) I tried before, the CPU load found it's peak in max. 110% and at some points even dropped below 100%. After installing SnowLeopard, prior to the recent updates, the CPU usage peaked at 140% and even above.

Conclusion: whatever Apple improved with the recent updates, it really seemed to help my MBP (late 2007, 2.2 GHz, full 4 GB RAM, running on Airport) to solve this task easier than before.

Thanks to Apple!

Nevertheless, I still cannot deactivate my Airport connection, like I could do before i.o. to improve battery life. And still my MBP does not import pictures from my old digicam, a HP 507, like it did before without any problems. Eventually, iPhoto pops up, but it simply does not import my pictures. 😟

Though, we are not fully done with this matter. At least, SnowLeopard's performance comes close to the prior "old" Leopard - I must admit, I expect it to do better. But I am confident that I did not spent the money in vain. I'll keep my fingers crossed my SL.

Rgds,
Guido