These scenarios:
Testing with Big Buck Bunny 1080p24 H.264 loaded in vlc looped 3X:
With va-api hw accel, 31 mins used 7% battery avg 7.45W draw.
Without hw accel, 31 mins used 7.5% batt at 7.98W avg draw.
Config for testing: ppd balanced, epp balance_power, usb autosuspend, Xfce screen scaling at 0.8, sound muted, brightness at first bar, a few terminals open, browser closed, wifi on & connected, bt off, camera & mic off via hw switches.
I’ve been encouraging observation over 10% or more battery usage for the sake of comparative data. In this case, it looks like the video would need to loop 4-5X.
In my experience, looking at ‘instantaneous’ readings are often misleading (ie: they don’t often/necessarily correlate to actual run times).
Note: after installing mpv, it exhibited some artifacts and stuttering, so I uninstalled it and used vlc, the player I’d previously tested on the FW13.
Conclusions:
- the differential between hw accel being on/off via Netflix on FF and a local vid are similar
mpvmay have issues (at least on Ubuntu 22.04.3)- as @Michael_Wu notes in his thread linked above to the video file, the Fedora freeworld drivers may have higher power drain
To clarify, my observations are ~1W differential with hw accel on (more efficient) or off (less efficient). Not vs idle usage.