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I hope it will not take too long until FF gets hardware acceleration for videos on Linux (VAAPI/VDPAU). A few days ago I installed Arch Linux on a Netbook and w

by JepZ 9y ago

I hope it will not take too long until FF gets hardware acceleration for videos on Linux (VAAPI/VDPAU). A few days ago I installed Arch Linux on a Netbook and was shocked to see that FF still doesn't have hardware acceleration for videos (VDPAU exists since 2008). Some might say this is not much of an issue as most modern CPUs can handle 1080p, but actually pre-Ryzen AMD CPUs are too slow and power saving Intel CPUs Laptops are too slow too. So the only excuse might be, that nobody uses that open source OS, but especially from Mozilla I would not expect such an attitude towards open source software.

kosinus 9y ago
I keep trying Firefox versions every now and then, including 57, but always run into obstacles. After installing 57, I went to Twitch and saw my cpu spike and MacBook drastically heat up. So it’s not just Linux. I hope more Quantum/Servo stuff will solve all these issues soon. I just want to ditch Google as much as I can. Now trying Safari for casual browsing, and using Chrome just for dev stuff.
- XzetaU8 9y ago
  High CPU on twitch TV stream https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403823 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403823 Poor battery life on OSX https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042
hsivonen 9y ago
VDPAU existing since 2008 isn't the main thing. The main problem is that in order to have a benefit from decoding in the GPU, the frame needs to be displayed on the GPU without reading it into CPU-addressable memory. The video frame needs to participate in the compositing of the whole Web page, which means the simpler approaches that video player-only apps can used aren't really available. Rather, it's necessary to be able to treat the video frame as some kind of OpenGL surface. However, the Linux graphics drivers situation being as messy as it is, Firefox doesn't yet enable OpenGL compositing by default on Linux. So getting Firefox to composite the Web page using OpenGL by default on Linux is the big prerequisite. I don't work on graphics, so I don't really know what I'm talking about in this sentence, but I'm hopeful that Wayland will eventually force Linux into the Mac-like situation where some baseline of OpenGL support can be assumed to be available and working just because the windowing system wouldn't work otherwise. Sadly, due to LTS distros, it will take a while for various legacy configurations to get upgraded out of the ecosystem.

by JepZ 9y ago

kosinus 9y ago

I keep trying Firefox versions every now and then, including 57, but always run into obstacles. After installing 57, I went to Twitch and saw my cpu spike and MacBook drastically heat up. So it’s not just Linux. I hope more Quantum/Servo stuff will solve all these issues soon. I just want to ditch Google as much as I can. Now trying Safari for casual browsing, and using Chrome just for dev stuff.

XzetaU8 9y ago
High CPU on twitch TV stream https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403823 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403823 Poor battery life on OSX https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

hsivonen 9y ago

VDPAU existing since 2008 isn't the main thing. The main problem is that in order to have a benefit from decoding in the GPU, the frame needs to be displayed on the GPU without reading it into CPU-addressable memory. The video frame needs to participate in the compositing of the whole Web page, which means the simpler approaches that video player-only apps can used aren't really available. Rather, it's necessary to be able to treat the video frame as some kind of OpenGL surface. However, the Linux graphics drivers situation being as messy as it is, Firefox doesn't yet enable OpenGL compositing by default on Linux. So getting Firefox to composite the Web page using OpenGL by default on Linux is the big prerequisite. I don't work on graphics, so I don't really know what I'm talking about in this sentence, but I'm hopeful that Wayland will eventually force Linux into the Mac-like situation where some baseline of OpenGL support can be assumed to be available and working just because the windowing system wouldn't work otherwise. Sadly, due to LTS distros, it will take a while for various legacy configurations to get upgraded out of the ecosystem.