VLC stuttering on battery (Windows laptop)
While viewing x265 videos on battery in VLC, I get persistent stuttering / dropped frames every few seconds. The videos play fine in the built-in Windows 11 "Media Player" / "Films & TV" players, which I believe use the same D3D11 hardware decoding(?).
While the laptop is plugged in, I get no such stuttering. The laptop is a relatively new Dell XPS with i9-12900HK processor (Intel Xe graphics 31.0.101.4091). VLC 3.0.18 x64 on Windows 11 Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621.
After a VLC preferences reset, here are the logs while on battery and plugged in respectively after ~30 seconds of video: battery.txt pluggedin.txt
Workarounds:
- I can set hardware decoding of ffmpeg in VLC advanced preferences to use DXVA 2.0 or Disable rather than Automatic / DirectX 11.
- I can set video output in VLC preferences to OpenGL or Direct3D 9 rather than Automatic / DirectX 11.
- I can set hard accelerated decoding in Codecs preferences to DXVA 2.0 or Disable rather than Automatic / DirectX 11.
- I do something slightly intensive in the background, for example play a YouTube video in Chrome in the background while using VLC.
- Set Windows battery mode to high performance.
I feel all these workarounds are unnecessary or have a drawback (much higher battery usage) compared to the Windows built-in media players that require no special treatment.