High CPU Since Chromium 50

[MB Rich 4]

I've recently encountered an odd issue with Theater where the CPU is clearly spiking on the actual interface itself.

 

Playback is fine and I don't hear the PC ramp the fans up at any point (Intel NUC / Broadwell) and that's with madvr enabled on 1080p content.

 

Once playback is finished and it drops back to the main interface, the fans ramp up within seconds.

 

As it's a TV installation with no permanent mouse or keyboard it's been difficult to find out what's going on as, by the time I've jumped off the sofa, grabbed a mouse and brought up the task manager it often drops back down again.  I have noticed a number of 'Electron' processes that seem to be taking anything up to 30% of the CPU but by that time Theater no longer has focus.

 

There's literally nothing else installed on the PC and it's a vanilla Win10 install.

 

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, it was never doing this so has something changed?

[Luke 37022]

I'm not sure, nothing has really changed. The smooth UI doesn't come free though. The animations do require some work.

[MB Rich 4]

Odd then as it's doing it when the interface is entirely static, and sometimes when the screensaver is running.  From my perspective though nothing's changed either as it's been running the smooth UI and screensaver for a good few months(?) now without any issues.

[MB Rich 4]

I've just tried reinstalling Theater and I've still got the same problem.

 

On task manager I get three Electron processes all taking up ~10% of CPU when Theater is just sat doing nothing.  I know it's not anything else as closing Theater instantly drops teh CPU back down and the fans all slow down at that point.

 

Is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot as having my NUC sat with fans roaring all day isn't really tenable

[Luke 37022]

The theater process only handles audio/video playback and nothing else. Electron is what holds the UI and it bundles a version of Chromium. Just like the Chrome browser splits itself into multiple processes, so does Chromium under Electron. I am not sure what we can do other than toning down our use of hardware accelerated animations, but of course then the UI won't be as smooth as you've come to expect.

[MB Rich 4]

I haven't had a problem until the last week or two though, it's been plenty smooth without ramping up the fans before...

[Luke 37022]

I don't really know, sorry. Maybe something else is running on the machine and the combination of the two is now causing the fans to kick in. Or maybe the upgrade to chromium 50 has caused a slight increase in cpu usage. 

[MB Rich 4]

No worries Luke, thanks for your time anyway.

 

I had a proper look last night and think I may be able to tweak fan settings in the BIOS to overcome this as it's still well within thresholds.

[MB Rich 4]

Just in case anyone else has this problem, I think I've finally solved it!

 

Not sure how it happened as I've been using Emby / MB for ages on this PC but the Theater app was in the startup folder twice.

 

Only one instance ever appeared on screen, but I cleared out the startup folder, re-enabled auto-start in the app and since then the CPU usage has been significantly lower when in the main UI.

[Luke 37022]

Well done. Thanks fore reporting back.

[Spaceboy 2493]

Hi,

 

to follow on from this http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/35000-high-cpu-in-theater-not-during-playback/ i am getting high cpu usage from electron processes all the time while theatre is open. Three processes take 30-35% between them taking cpu usage for just having theatre open to 45%. with theatre closed cpu usage is 0%.

 

as the other user said this wasnt the case before, i understand electron has been introduced for other benefits but this can't be correct surely? this is a virgin i5 nuc with win10 64bit installed. i have only installed ET and the prerequisite.

 

please could this be looked into? ET logs?