One thing to keep in mind for good video is hardware acceleration which is through either VDPAU or VA. I haven’t had a chance to look into this on ClearLinux much but try this
vainfo
If the Hardware Video Acceleration library (libva) is installed then programs like VLC, mplayer, etc., will probably use it. Firefox does not. Chrome and Chromium do. For nVidia you’ll need VDPAU instead (export VDPAU_DRIVER=nvidia) and libva can then piggyback off of it.
ArchLinux has a good page on this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration
If you’re using the Intel i965 driver for X then ClearLinux sets up libva for you. I doubt for nVidia and I suspect no way for an Optimus based laptop.