I have tested some XAML I have made in vMix 13 and 14 and have noticed extremely high CPU usage. The XAML features some zoom animations, gradient wipes and fades. On my Core i5 2500k it uses 35% of the CPU in Task Manager (more than one core), which is really not acceptable. It reaches the point where the animation won't run at the proper frame rate. I noticed that even if the animation runs smooth, I get a choppy video if I use that in the XAML in both MP4 and WMV formats.

I thought it might be something I had done wrong so I tried a stock XAML animation. AnimatedHD takes 10% of the CPU which is more than it takes to decode a video without hardware acceleration by a long shot. Just to make sure it wasn't my PC, I tried on another PC and also a fresh Windows 7 VM. Same issue. Even if the specific part of the animation has no element currently animating, the CPU usage is high.

Is there a reason for this? Is there anything I can do to make this animation run smoothly?