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On Linux Firefox suffers from lack of hardware decoding and encoding (it doesn't plug into vaapi), which makes performance quite bad on laptops. I suspect somet

by shmerl 7y ago

On Linux Firefox suffers from lack of hardware decoding and encoding (it doesn't plug into vaapi), which makes performance quite bad on laptops. I suspect something like WebEx, for example, works horribly in result. Or may be it's just Cisco not doing a good job. Conferencing experience with their WebRTC client in Firefox on Linux is horrendous.

kvark 7y ago
We were just talking about VA on Linux. There is a chance for it to be enabled soon.
- shmerl 7y ago
  Oh, that's great to hear! I thought this might come into focus, once WebRender is officially released. By the way, how is the progress for WebRender over Vulkan?
  - kvark 7y ago
    Current state of Vulkan port is that the correctness is on par with GL, minus a few driver bugs. We still need to re-architect WebRender a bit in order to get the performance advantage over GL.
- AngryPenguin 7y ago
  So VAAPI support can soon land in Firefox for Linux? Cool. This is great news for me. Can you give us some details? When? Can I somehow help in testing, for example in Firefox nightly? What hardware can be supported? What formats, h264 or/and vp9?
  - kvark 7y ago
    We can't promise anything yet, sorry, but we are looking into it.
- mackal 7y ago
  I just switched to Firefox again after some shortsighted changes on Chrome. Neither give me GPU decode on Linux, but FF is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than Chrome on CPU decode. I can do a build in the background using all 12 threads and have no issues with video play back on Chrome (well, maybe not 4k60) but FF it's unwatchable, even at 900p60. (i7 8700k if you're wondering hardware wise, not OC'd because horrible chip and not worth it)
Naac 7y ago
The bug report is 4 years old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726 It's such a disappointment that this hasn't been fixed yet.
- shmerl 7y ago
  Seems to be limited to playback. Encoding is probably more critical for this.
- AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
  Sadly Linux has been a 3rd class citizen for years as far as Mozilla is concerned.
  - Jonnax 7y ago
    Or maybe it's a complex engineering challenge? The Firefox Devs aren't just sitting there not clicking a button called "enable hardware acceleration"
    - techntoke 7y ago
      Well at least Chromium has support for this. I don't know why it is taking Mozilla so long honestly, but I'm guessing most of their developers don't use Linux and the org just loves to virtual-signal and not practice what they preach.
      - bwat49 7y ago
        google refuses to support this on desktop linux though, it requires a patched chromium build. The only reason vaapi support is there at all is because their chromeOS uses it.
        techntoke 7y ago
        I used Chromium and it is very easy to use on Arch. Not sure why you act like it isn't supported. A lot more than what is available for Firefox.
afranchuk 7y ago
FWIW I've never had an issue with WebEx on Linux Firefox (besides general WebEx UI/UX things).
- shmerl 7y ago
  Does it work for conferencing too? I often get "low bandwidth / low CPU" warning and no video feed, despite having quite good hardware. The more people are in the room - the worse (it's as if instead of multiplexing on the backend, it tries to multiplex on the client side). Very annoying.
  - Boulth 7y ago
    For me appear.in worked perfectly in conferences and AFAIK it uses plain WebRTC.
enz 7y ago
It's weird, my Firefox seems to use the vaapi (but my iGPU is only able to hw-decode h264 and VP8 and VP9.Too old for AV1.) I have a not so powerful laptop so I think the HW decoding capability of the iGPU is actually used, otherwise I couldn't play 1080p videos at 60 FPS (h264 and VP9). I use the static Firefox from Mozilla. Not distro repo's one.
- Boulth 7y ago
  > It's weird, my Firefox seems to use the vaapi Out of curiosity how do you check that? I'm asking because I'd like to check it on my end.
  - enz 7y ago
    I am checking that with the "about:support" page. My iGPU and the Intel drivers are correctly recognized so I was assuming that HW decoding was enabled. But I can certainly be wrong, good platform detection does not necessarily mean that I use HW decoding. I just assumed it was the case.
- i-rinat 7y ago
  Nope. It's just software decoders from FFmpeg project that are heavily optimized. Also Firefox disables VP9 on slower machines, so websites serve H.264 instead.
  - enz 7y ago
    At least on YouTube, I use VP9 (we can check that with the "advanced stats" showed when right-clicking on the video). My laptop is usually noisy when the CPU is in demand. I am a bit surprised because playing HD videos on YT does not make the fan too noisy (comparing to loading a website with a ton of JS,for example). So, I concluded that some HW decoding was in use, somehow. I can, of course, be wrong. There is no way that ffmpeg uses a HW decoding decoder under the hood? It may explain why it's so smooth. Besides, when I run VP9 video with MPV, it tells me that it is explicitly using HW decoding via vaapi. And MPV is based on ffmpeg libs for the playback, if I am not mistaken. Thanks for your light!

by shmerl 7y ago

kvark 7y ago

We were just talking about VA on Linux. There is a chance for it to be enabled soon.

shmerl 7y ago
Oh, that's great to hear! I thought this might come into focus, once WebRender is officially released. By the way, how is the progress for WebRender over Vulkan?
- kvark 7y ago
  Current state of Vulkan port is that the correctness is on par with GL, minus a few driver bugs. We still need to re-architect WebRender a bit in order to get the performance advantage over GL.
AngryPenguin 7y ago
So VAAPI support can soon land in Firefox for Linux? Cool. This is great news for me. Can you give us some details? When? Can I somehow help in testing, for example in Firefox nightly? What hardware can be supported? What formats, h264 or/and vp9?
- kvark 7y ago
  We can't promise anything yet, sorry, but we are looking into it.
mackal 7y ago
I just switched to Firefox again after some shortsighted changes on Chrome. Neither give me GPU decode on Linux, but FF is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than Chrome on CPU decode. I can do a build in the background using all 12 threads and have no issues with video play back on Chrome (well, maybe not 4k60) but FF it's unwatchable, even at 900p60. (i7 8700k if you're wondering hardware wise, not OC'd because horrible chip and not worth it)

Naac 7y ago

The bug report is 4 years old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726 It's such a disappointment that this hasn't been fixed yet.

shmerl 7y ago
Seems to be limited to playback. Encoding is probably more critical for this.
AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
Sadly Linux has been a 3rd class citizen for years as far as Mozilla is concerned.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  Or maybe it's a complex engineering challenge? The Firefox Devs aren't just sitting there not clicking a button called "enable hardware acceleration"
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Well at least Chromium has support for this. I don't know why it is taking Mozilla so long honestly, but I'm guessing most of their developers don't use Linux and the org just loves to virtual-signal and not practice what they preach.
    - bwat49 7y ago
      google refuses to support this on desktop linux though, it requires a patched chromium build. The only reason vaapi support is there at all is because their chromeOS uses it.
      - techntoke 7y ago
        I used Chromium and it is very easy to use on Arch. Not sure why you act like it isn't supported. A lot more than what is available for Firefox.

afranchuk 7y ago

FWIW I've never had an issue with WebEx on Linux Firefox (besides general WebEx UI/UX things).

shmerl 7y ago
Does it work for conferencing too? I often get "low bandwidth / low CPU" warning and no video feed, despite having quite good hardware. The more people are in the room - the worse (it's as if instead of multiplexing on the backend, it tries to multiplex on the client side). Very annoying.
- Boulth 7y ago
  For me appear.in worked perfectly in conferences and AFAIK it uses plain WebRTC.

enz 7y ago

It's weird, my Firefox seems to use the vaapi (but my iGPU is only able to hw-decode h264 and VP8 and VP9.Too old for AV1.) I have a not so powerful laptop so I think the HW decoding capability of the iGPU is actually used, otherwise I couldn't play 1080p videos at 60 FPS (h264 and VP9). I use the static Firefox from Mozilla. Not distro repo's one.

Boulth 7y ago
> It's weird, my Firefox seems to use the vaapi Out of curiosity how do you check that? I'm asking because I'd like to check it on my end.
- enz 7y ago
  I am checking that with the "about:support" page. My iGPU and the Intel drivers are correctly recognized so I was assuming that HW decoding was enabled. But I can certainly be wrong, good platform detection does not necessarily mean that I use HW decoding. I just assumed it was the case.
i-rinat 7y ago
Nope. It's just software decoders from FFmpeg project that are heavily optimized. Also Firefox disables VP9 on slower machines, so websites serve H.264 instead.
- enz 7y ago
  At least on YouTube, I use VP9 (we can check that with the "advanced stats" showed when right-clicking on the video). My laptop is usually noisy when the CPU is in demand. I am a bit surprised because playing HD videos on YT does not make the fan too noisy (comparing to loading a website with a ton of JS,for example). So, I concluded that some HW decoding was in use, somehow. I can, of course, be wrong. There is no way that ffmpeg uses a HW decoding decoder under the hood? It may explain why it's so smooth. Besides, when I run VP9 video with MPV, it tells me that it is explicitly using HW decoding via vaapi. And MPV is based on ffmpeg libs for the playback, if I am not mistaken. Thanks for your light!