Odd problem, video player eats CPU when pluged into USB charger

Hrethgir · October 21st, 2012, 06:30 PM

OK, so I get this every night when I plug my phone in (Verizon Galaxy S3, rooted, stock ROM), Watchdog pops up after a few minutes and alerts me that Video Player is using ~45% of the CPU. And I keep getting the alert unless I click on the alert and kill the video player. The odd thing is that it will do this regardless of when the video player was even used last. I've rebooted the phone, used it for the day without watching any video, and plug it in and up pops the alert. One night, it did not pop up, but when I woke up, the phone was warm and had only gotten to 86% charge. So I plugged it in in the car, and then the alert popped up, I killed it, phone immediately cooled down, and battery wasn't an issue at all. I've searched around, and haven't seen anything else like this mentioned, just trying to see if anyone else has this issue and maybe a possible fix for it. Oh, and I had this usse before I rooted also.

Hrethgir · October 31st, 2012, 04:55 PM

Well, recently had a bunch of apps come up with updates, and haven't had this problem for about a week now, must have been some weird little bug in one of my apps. Anyways, problem seems to be solved, although I don't know how, lol!

Barles · November 28th, 2012, 04:50 AM

Hi,

I encounter the same problem with my Galaxy S3.
When Watchdog warn me, I stop the video player app, so I don't know if the phone would have heated up.

All my apps are up to date.

How do I know which app launches the video player and why only during charging ?

Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300)
Android 4.1.1
rooted

rdomloge · December 2nd, 2012, 09:52 AM

I get exactly the same issue. Watchdog alerts me of 86% CPU usage and 'Usage Timelines' confirms it.

After investigation, I discovered that it was something to do with the media on my phone. I had guessed the problem was with some background indexing service so I deleted all (video) media files and the problem immediately went away.

I have noticed a correlation between my taking a video and this problem surfacing soon after. If I go into media and delete the most recent video, the problem stops. So it's not just dodgy media that I have downloaded onto the phone, it's also media *created* by the phone itself.

ToneTune · January 18th, 2013, 07:05 AM

Same here. I'm constantly getting alerts from the Watchdog Lite app that the Video Player on my Galaxy S3 is demanding a lot of CPU resources in the background (often over 90%). Considering that I never even use that bloatware, it is driving me crazy.

There are so many things that I now hate about this initially-loved phone, that I'd like to beat the exec's at Samsung about the head with it. (I'd name all the issues here, but this is in danger of becoming a rant!)

As to the cause & cure for the problem, I had hoped that by switching from Thumbnail view (which displays the videos "live" in each thumbnail) over to the static List view, then the problem might go away. But unfortunately not.

I can also confirm that the problem only seems to arise when the phone is charging, but I'm not yet 100% sure on that, because I hadn't been paying attention in the early days of experiencing this problem.

I'm hoping that some intelligent person here can explain what the Video Player is getting up to in the background (indexing seems a possible answer, but aren't we just speculating?) & how best to implement a fix.

ToneTune · January 27th, 2013, 06:22 PM

As a follow-up to my last post, I just found this info posted by someone on another site;

" Here is what I found. While charging only, the video player transcoding process will open and run every video you have on your sd card. I have 6- 1GB movies, so this is why mine was using so much ram and getting warm. Transcoding is part of a feature. If you open video player, you'll notice all your videos are already playing (like a preview). There's more, but I thought I'd post this for anyone looking at a similar issue".

So, background transcoding seems to be the most likely explanation. However, I wish there was a way to prevent it from happening. I don't need or want the live preview feature. In fact, I don't even want the video player software at all. Samsung bloatware at its finest.