VTDecoderXPCService Mac vs Hack

[ryespurs]

Interesting query I have here - looking for some help and info if anyone knows.

Using my Hackintosh while scrubbing through video in Quicktime or screen recording, I notice there's a service called VTDecoderXPCService running (I use Activity Monitor to see this) which takes up quite a large % of CPU and actually leads to overall worse performance than my iMac. (screen cap videos FPS will dip as low as 20, where as on iMac they remain at 60)

Using my iMac (27" 5K Late 2015 3.3ghz M395 2TB) I see no such service running in Activity Monitor when I scrub through videos in Quicktime or when I screen record. This leads to far better performance and better recording quality. So what's different about this?

Hackintosh specs:
MSI Z170 Gaming M5
i5 3.2Ghz 6500 Skylake
GTX 970
16GB Ripjaws
1TB SSD

I have already done a little digging into this particular service and found that others have experienced the same even on Macs, although they have been older Macs. My guess would be that this only happens on older Macs with less capable GPUs and on Hackintosh's for which Apple/OSX doesn't fully support or isn't compatible with.

The fact that this service appears suggests that my GTX 970 is not being fully utilised and so I wonder if there's anything else I need to do or if others have found the same problem on here? Everything else is working as you'd expect - the computer boots into the Nvidia drivers without a problem and is clearly using the GPU to give me the lovely 4K scaled display on my Samsung monitor at 60hz. Games also run without an issue on OSX and are clearly using the GPU's power to perform this well.

Any ideas? Thanks for anyones help!

 

[ryespurs]

Anyone have any ideas on this?

Also even if no-one knows of any possible causes or fixes, if anyone with successful hackintosh builds on here could test this on their system by simply running Activity Monitor and then scrubbing through a video timeline continually in Quicktime for 5-10 seconds to see if you also get the "VTDecoderXPCService" appear at the top of the CPU list, it would be good to know! Thanks.

Running 10.11.5.

 

[Ben8472]

i have the same problem with 10.12.2 and a gtx 970. The Problem seems to be that due to system definition 14.2 (imac late 2013) quicktime doesn't use the GPU for video decoding (which sucks of course) - did you manage to fix it?

 

[ryespurs]

i have the same problem with 10.12.2 and a gtx 970. The Problem seems to be that due to system definition 14.2 (imac late 2013) quicktime doesn't use the GPU for video decoding (which sucks of course) - did you manage to fix it?

Sadly not! That's amazing you posted in here today though as I was thinking about this exact issue today after upgrading my CPU.

I changed my i5 6500 to an i7 6700K, mainly for a performance in a few games and video editing but a part of me did wonder if it would fix this issue as well, seeing as Apple have used the 6700 in their iMacs. (not sure if they've used the 6500)

Unfortunately it didn't change anything with this issue however. I also think that it might have something to do with the system definition.. I did try changing it to 17,1 (iMac Late 2015) but I then had the monitor screen bug where it turns off when booting and couldn't find a working fix for that either.

I have also used a 21.5" Late 2015 iMac which doesn't even have a dedicated GPU in it but it still performs better in video scrubbing and screen recording. There is no "VTDecoderXPCService" in Activity Monitor. So it seems like Apple coded something better in their Macs within the last few years to deal with this area more efficiently.

 

[Ben8472]

i have a intel nuc with iris 540 (6i5syh) and quicktime decoding isn't working through the igpu there either. My Laptop (intel hd 4000) goes through 4k content like a hot knife through butter (igpu doing 95% of the job) - kind of silly that our gtx is useless here.