5 ms·

Hangouts over taxes just about any machine, it's ridiculous. FCP exporting a 4k video uses less CPU than Hangouts does to show a choppy video feed.

ianlevesque 11y ago
I use hangouts daily and unless I'm on a high end PC I switch to audio only to avoid the jet turbine effect. They really need to optimize.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  Video encoding is expensive. You get to pick between more CPU usage or worse video quality.
  - ianlevesque 11y ago
    But with Hangouts you get both.
  - Klinky 11y ago
    It's probably similar to the fullscreen problems Adobe Flash had in the past, where the CPU was being used to resize tiny video to fullscreen resolution. This lead to low definition video becoming choppy while pegging your CPU at 100%. Playing the same video fullscreen in something like Media Player Classic would result in negligible CPU usage since it wasn't going through Flash's 2D engine + software scaler, and instead your video card would handle the scaling with ease. Hardware scaling using overlays is very old technology, so it was kind of sad that from mid to late 2000s, internet video was being hampered by poor software scaling.
    - jsjohnst 11y ago
      You'd think they could include hardware acceleration hooks for the video processing, at least in Chrome, but alas, doesn't seem so based on CPU usage
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    And yet it shouldn't be, with GPU acceleration and all. Video encoding and video calling should be a solved problem.
raverbashing 11y ago
> FCP exporting a 4k video uses less CPU than Hangouts I'd probably say it's busy waiting for IO for more time, hence not using the CPU as much Either that or Hangouts has some lack of optimization that's going ignored (like busy waits, etc)
- Glide 11y ago
  Hangouts causes my recent rMBP to kick on the fans with video chat. Skype doesn't cause as much of a heat up as Hangouts does. Just more anecdata.
- vitd 11y ago
  Final Cut Pro X renders mostly on the GPU, so yes, it uses a lot less CPU than Hangouts, which apparently uses a software codec. Even if there's no hardware acceleration for VP9, you'd think they could use OpenCL, CUDA, or something else to take load off the CPU.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    Yeah, but I guess the MacBooks or even MBPs with Intel graphics can't offload much of the work
wereHamster 11y ago
Are you using Chrome? Apparently under Safari Hangout uses much less CPU.
- ollien 11y ago
  While I don't think you're wrong, that's just .. dumb. They're both Google's products. You would think they would put some thought into that.
  - justizin 11y ago
    This is part of why I stopped using Chrome, it encourages a closed ecosystem where technology is only advancing if you use Google Everything.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  This seems highly doubtful. They are both Google's code - one is just packaged as a plugin rather than built into Chrome.
  - anon1385 11y ago
    It's possible that they are using different video codecs. On Safari H264 and on Chrome VP9 but with only H264 being hardware accelerated. This is just a total guess of course (and I'd have thought it would depend on what the other end of the chat supports as well), but I bring it up since people have recently been complaining about YouTube in Chrome using far more CPU than YouTube in Safari, because YouTube uses VP9 in Chrome. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330357 On the other hand it's possible that it's just the general suckiness of Chrome video performance, even when using H264 it seems to use over twice as much power as Safari: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806976
    - TD-Linux 11y ago
      Well, Hangouts on Safari is a Google plugin. I believe it generally uses VP8. Hardware doesn't matter, as what's needed is an encoder - and hardware encoders usually aren't good enough to use for real time chat. Encoding video for any format well is going to be costly, hence the original article mentions complains about Skype as well.
TD-Linux 11y ago
Maybe FCP isn't as good as using all of the cores?

ianlevesque 11y ago

I use hangouts daily and unless I'm on a high end PC I switch to audio only to avoid the jet turbine effect. They really need to optimize.

TD-Linux 11y ago
Video encoding is expensive. You get to pick between more CPU usage or worse video quality.
- ianlevesque 11y ago
  But with Hangouts you get both.
- Klinky 11y ago
  It's probably similar to the fullscreen problems Adobe Flash had in the past, where the CPU was being used to resize tiny video to fullscreen resolution. This lead to low definition video becoming choppy while pegging your CPU at 100%. Playing the same video fullscreen in something like Media Player Classic would result in negligible CPU usage since it wasn't going through Flash's 2D engine + software scaler, and instead your video card would handle the scaling with ease. Hardware scaling using overlays is very old technology, so it was kind of sad that from mid to late 2000s, internet video was being hampered by poor software scaling.
  - jsjohnst 11y ago
    You'd think they could include hardware acceleration hooks for the video processing, at least in Chrome, but alas, doesn't seem so based on CPU usage
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  And yet it shouldn't be, with GPU acceleration and all. Video encoding and video calling should be a solved problem.

raverbashing 11y ago

> FCP exporting a 4k video uses less CPU than Hangouts I'd probably say it's busy waiting for IO for more time, hence not using the CPU as much Either that or Hangouts has some lack of optimization that's going ignored (like busy waits, etc)

Glide 11y ago
Hangouts causes my recent rMBP to kick on the fans with video chat. Skype doesn't cause as much of a heat up as Hangouts does. Just more anecdata.
vitd 11y ago
Final Cut Pro X renders mostly on the GPU, so yes, it uses a lot less CPU than Hangouts, which apparently uses a software codec. Even if there's no hardware acceleration for VP9, you'd think they could use OpenCL, CUDA, or something else to take load off the CPU.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Yeah, but I guess the MacBooks or even MBPs with Intel graphics can't offload much of the work

wereHamster 11y ago

Are you using Chrome? Apparently under Safari Hangout uses much less CPU.

ollien 11y ago
While I don't think you're wrong, that's just .. dumb. They're both Google's products. You would think they would put some thought into that.
- justizin 11y ago
  This is part of why I stopped using Chrome, it encourages a closed ecosystem where technology is only advancing if you use Google Everything.
TD-Linux 11y ago
This seems highly doubtful. They are both Google's code - one is just packaged as a plugin rather than built into Chrome.
- anon1385 11y ago
  It's possible that they are using different video codecs. On Safari H264 and on Chrome VP9 but with only H264 being hardware accelerated. This is just a total guess of course (and I'd have thought it would depend on what the other end of the chat supports as well), but I bring it up since people have recently been complaining about YouTube in Chrome using far more CPU than YouTube in Safari, because YouTube uses VP9 in Chrome. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330357 On the other hand it's possible that it's just the general suckiness of Chrome video performance, even when using H264 it seems to use over twice as much power as Safari: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806976
  - TD-Linux 11y ago
    Well, Hangouts on Safari is a Google plugin. I believe it generally uses VP8. Hardware doesn't matter, as what's needed is an encoder - and hardware encoders usually aren't good enough to use for real time chat. Encoding video for any format well is going to be costly, hence the original article mentions complains about Skype as well.

TD-Linux 11y ago

Maybe FCP isn't as good as using all of the cores?