High battery consumption during video playback

Support
1

I have a laptop running manjaro gnome and I’ve noticed that battery life while playing any sort of video tends to be abysmal. I’m talking about a drop of 20-30% in a little more than an hour in VLC and it tends to be even worse if I’m playing anything online from Youtube (I’ve enabled VA-API but the effects, if there are any, are negligible).

output of inxi:

System:
  Kernel: 5.10.26-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10-x86_64 
  root=UUID=d7737d6c-758c-4ace-933d-05aad7acbdcb rw quiet splash apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3 mem_sleep_default=deep 
  resume=UUID=d7737d6c-758c-4ace-933d-05aad7acbdcb resume_offset=15343616 
  Desktop: GNOME 3.38.4 tk: GTK 3.24.28 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM 3.38.2.1 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: XPS 13 9360 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Chassis: type: 9 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Dell model: 0N0TW9 v: A02 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 2.14.2 
  date: 07/13/2020 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 51.1 Wh (85.2%) condition: 60.0/60.0 Wh (100.0%) 
  volts: 8.1 min: 7.6 model: SMP DELL TP1GT61 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> 
  status: Discharging 
Memory:
  RAM: total: 7.66 GiB used: 2.51 GiB (32.7%) 
  RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required. 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-8250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 8E (142) stepping: A (10) 
  microcode: E0 cache: L2: 6 MiB bogomips: 28808 
  Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 900 2: 900 3: 900 
  4: 900 5: 901 6: 901 7: 900 8: 900 
  Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm acpi adx aes aperfmperf apic arat arch_perfmon art 
  avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bts clflush clflushopt cmov constant_tsc cpuid 
  cpuid_fault cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts epb ept ept_ad erms est 
  f16c flexpriority flush_l1d fma fpu fsgsbase fxsr ht hwp hwp_act_window 
  hwp_epp hwp_notify ibpb ibrs ida intel_pt invpcid invpcid_single lahf_lm lm 
  mca mce md_clear mmx monitor movbe mpx msr mtrr nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat 
  pbe pcid pclmulqdq pdcm pdpe1gb pebs pge pln pni popcnt pse pse36 pti pts 
  rdrand rdseed rdtscp rep_good sdbg sep smap smep ss ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 
  sse4_2 ssse3 stibp syscall tm tm2 tpr_shadow tsc tsc_adjust 
  tsc_deadline_timer vme vmx vnmi vpid x2apic xgetbv1 xsave xsavec xsaveopt 
  xsaves xtopology xtpr 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel 
  bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917 class-ID: 0300 
  Device-2: Microdia Integrated Webcam HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
  bus-ID: 1-5:3 chip-ID: 0c45:670c class-ID: 0e02 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 compositor: gnome-shell driver: 
  loaded: intel unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :1 
  screens: 1 
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") 
  s-diag: 582mm (22.9") 
  Monitor-1: eDP1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 168 size: 290x170mm (11.4x6.7") 
  diag: 336mm (13.2") 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.0.1 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:9d71 
  class-ID: 0403 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.26-1-MANJARO running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 0.125.0 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.24 running: yes 
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Rivet Networks driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: f040 
  bus-ID: 3a:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:003e class-ID: 0280 
  IF: wlp58s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global 
  broadcast: <filter> 
  IP v6: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global 
  IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link 
  WAN IP: <filter> 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4 Bluetooth 4.0 type: USB driver: btusb 
  v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-3:2 chip-ID: 0cf3:e300 class-ID: e001 
  Report: This feature requires one of these tools: hciconfig/bt-adapter 
Logical:
  Message: No LVM data was found. 
RAID:
  Message: No RAID data was found. 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 232.89 GiB used: 117.7 GiB (50.5%) 
  SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung 
  model: SSD 970 EVO Plus 250GB size: 232.89 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B 
  logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 rotation: SSD serial: <filter> 
  rev: 2B2QEXM7 temp: 38.9 C scheme: GPT 
  Message: No Optical or Floppy data was found. 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 232.59 GiB size: 227.94 GiB (98.00%) 
  used: 117.7 GiB (51.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2 
  label: N/A uuid: d7737d6c-758c-4ace-933d-05aad7acbdcb 
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 300 MiB size: 299.4 MiB (99.80%) 
  used: 312 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 maj-min: 259:1 label: N/A 
  uuid: A9BD-4512 
  ID-3: /run/timeshift/backup raw-size: 232.59 GiB size: <superuser required> 
  used: <superuser required> fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2 
  label: N/A uuid: d7737d6c-758c-4ace-933d-05aad7acbdcb 
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 16 GiB used: 535.8 MiB (3.3%) priority: -2 
  file: /swapfile 
Unmounted:
  Message: No Unmounted partitions found. 
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 12 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900 
  Device-1: 1-3:2 info: Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4 Bluetooth 4.0 type: Bluetooth 
  driver: btusb interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA 
  chip-ID: 0cf3:e300 class-ID: e001 
  Device-2: 1-5:3 info: Microdia Integrated Webcam HD type: Video 
  driver: uvcvideo interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s power: 500mA 
  chip-ID: 0c45:670c class-ID: 0e02 
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 6 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s 
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 43.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 
Info:
  Processes: 241 Uptime: 3d 20h 50m wakeups: 11 Init: systemd v: 247 
  tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 Packages: 1549 pacman: 1540 lib: 447 
  flatpak: 9 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.03

Any solutions?

2

Playing video is never going to be easy on your battery - no matter the system - it is only going to get worse if you stream it over wireless - that task is very power hungry.

3

Hi @federation,

Well, for video that actually doesn’t sound to bad, IMHO.

That said, I’ve read here that VLC is… not what it once was, so maybe give another player a go and see?

4

But I’ve noticed video playback battery consumption was a fair bit lower when this laptop ran windows…perhaps this has something to do with the kernel then?

5

How much lower exactly?

7

5-10%. Can’t remember the exact numbers

8

you will have to look closer into your power settings - tlp is a good place to start - but video playback will always consume more power - but I am fairly certain you are going to gain any significant change from.

And by the way - Linux is not Windows - and you cannot compare apples to oranges.

9

Try another player, as mpv or haruna (which uses mpv), or another one. Maybe it could help too

10

are there any tlp configurations you recommend? I have it enabled but I’m using the default config.

11

https://linrunner.de/tlp/

12

Nah - use tlpui - it makes more sense than staring at the config file - but as a said - I don’t think you will make more out of it.

Just keep your charge level between 20% and 80% to avoid killing your battery. Something incredibly simple is to lower your screen brightness - that alone can make a difference. But try doing the math

if you got 240min before then 10% is minus 24min - that can be screen brightness or simply wear and tear - there is really not one-size answer to you issue.

13