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Video playback lags in BORIS on Linux #987

Description

@rufeili

Hi there,
I recently started behavior labeling using Boris on a linux computer but the video playback seems to not work great.
During video playback in BORIS on Linux, playback lags noticeably, which makes accurate behavior labeling difficult (e.g. it takes a few seconds for the video to stop playing when pausing the video). The video playback is smooth when I directly loaded the video via mpv on the same Linux machine, or when it's opened via BORIS on a Windows machine. I noticed that CPU usage during playback is 80-90%, compared to only 5-8% for the identical file played with standalone mpv --hwdec=vaapi on the same machine. I've tried both auto and auto-safe for "MPV player hardware video decoding" in Preferences, with no difference.
I wonder if there's a way to fix this issue?

Thank you,
Rufei

Steps to reproduce the issue

  1. Load a 2448×2048 H.264 .avi file as a media observation.
  2. Go to Preferences, set "MPV player hardware video decoding" to auto (also tested auto-safe).
  3. Start playback, video playback seems lagging
  4. Open htop — CPU usage for the BORIS process sits at 80-90%

Expected behavior

CPU usage during playback should be comparable to standalone mpv --hwdec=vaapi (~5-8%) given the codec/resolution is confirmed within VAAPI hardware decode capability.

Information about your system

OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 @ 3.20GHz (4 cores), Intel HD Graphics 530 iGPU
Type of BORIS installation: AppImage, also reproduced when installed via uvx boris-behav-obs@latest

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