Processor Usage & QuickTime

[Steven W. Riggins]

>
>Every time I load a file into a QuickTime player, my processor usage 
>jumps to 100%. This doesn't effect the performance of my computer at 
>all, except it just will never idle. This in effect heats my 
>Powerbook up to a very toasty temperature, and I would imagine would 
>drain my batteries fairly quickly if I wasn't plugged in to a power 
>outlet.


Christian,

This is really easy for Carbon based applications writing using 
WaitNextEvent to fall into.  In porting an application to Mac OS X, I 
have run into this very same issue.

It can be corrected, it just takes work.  For example, they need to 
switch from using idle time to play movies to using carbon timers.

Unfortunately, while a movie is instantiated, an application has to 
give QuickTime a fair amount of time, even if the movie is not 
"playing" because some movies, such as QTVR movies, do things like 
change the cursor, etc as you pass over them.

So if they can track the playing state of a movie, they can 
start/pause their timer, such that CPU usage will only be higher 
while the movie is playing.

Of course I don't know if they are doing this for 2.0, but switching 
to the Carbon Event Manager seems like a good thing to do for most 
Mac applications being made to run smoothly on OS X.

Sincerely,

Steve