Using VLC Player or K-lite codec pack to further reduce host CPU consumption on local video playback
When a single host computer is shared by multiple users running Enson ZC1080 zero clients, how to make the most use of the host resources and support more users is the administrator’s top concern. Which media player you choose and how you use it for playing local videos has great impact on the CPU consumption of the host. GOM Player, KM Player, Potplayer, SMPlayer and Media Player Classic are some of the popular media players that customers are most likely to use. These media player have the most codecs included for supporting a large number of media formats. However, as some of these media players do not support hardware acceleration, you may experience heavy CPU consumption when playing local videos with them.
Recommendation -
VLC player supporting client-rendering with hardware acceleration
To help customers offload host-side cpu consumption on video playing and support more video users per host especially for cases where simultaneous video play is often required, beginning from EnsonServerSuite 2.0 version, we introduced a new feature of client-rendering support. This feature allows local videos played on the zero client with VLC player to be rendered locally by the client processor instead of the host cpu, therefore, host CPU consumption is only taken by the running the VLC player itself to as low as less than 1% of an i7 processor per video. This feature is supported by VLC player of 2.1.5 or newer versions and works automatically after the installation of EnsonServerSuite 2.x. You just make sure you are using the correct versions of EnsonServerSuite and VLC player and VLC player is selected to play the video, then you are ready to “save”.
Note: As the media content is not rendered at the host side, there is a drawback of using this feature: media content within the VLC player cannot be viewed by the administrator through monitoring at the host side.
Alternative -
Use K-lite codec pack with Media Player Classic supporting host-rendering with hardware acceleration
When using MPC (media player classic) for playing videos on the zero clients, although the rendering job still is done by the host CPU and the consumption is higher than using VLC player, as MPC supports hardware decoding, the host CPU consumption is greatly reduced, to as low as 1/2 of using other players without hardware acceleration.
Below is the download link and configuration steps :
1. download K-lite standard codec pack at http://www.codecguide.com. The Media Player Classic is bundled.
2. install the K-lite pack on the host. The Media Player Classic is integrated so you don’t have to install it separately.
3. Open “Codec Tweak Tool” at “Start” menu > ”K-Lite Codec Pack” or “Tools” at the installation file.
4. Click on “DirectShow (x86)” if you are Windows system is 32 bits, or “DirectShow" (x64) if 64 bits.
5. On the next popup window, select “Video: LAV Video Decoder”, and apply.
After it is applied, “LAV Video Decoder” goes to “DISABLED FILTERS” as below :
6. Open the Media Player Classic, go to “View” > ”Options” > ”Playback” > ”Output”, select the “DirectShow Video” option. And all configurations complete.
