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The missing phrase in the post is "hardware acceleration", which is is completely broken for VP8/9(In Firefox & Chrome, IE&Safari doesn't support either). I'm

The missing phrase in the post is "hardware acceleration", which is is completely broken for VP8/9(In Firefox & Chrome, IE&Safari doesn't support either). I'm using an extension[0] to force youtube to serve me with h264 in order to be able to watch 4K videos & maintain reasonable battery life. [0] https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify

nothrabannosir 12y ago
I'm having this problem, sometimes also outside the browser, and I would like to know: how do you figure out if a playback is using hardware acceleration at all? It's not an easy thing to debug. I'm on Windows, btw.
- SoapSeller 12y ago
  First, for youtube, right-click -> Stats for nerds. Watch the "Dropped frames" counter, with hw acceleration it usually stays close to zero("-"). For youtube&everything-else, you got two major tools: 1. CPU usage, just watch it, if you don't see spikes while playing video, you're good(on quad core 4th gen Intel core I get around 7% increase in load for HW-accelerated youtube 1080p video). 2. Even better: Tools like GPU-Z[0] have "Video Engine Load" meters for some GPUs(e.g. Nvidia GTX), where you can see if the GPU dedicated accelerator is working(and how much). For other GPU-Z(e.g. Intel HD) you can monitor the general "GPU Load", you will see an increase there as instead. [0] http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ P.S. In addition to the above, in some browsers(in chrome, via chrome://flags) & media players you can disable the hardware acceleration support and observe the results using the tools I've mentioned.
- dbcooper 12y ago
  In MPC-HC, hardware acceleration status is shown in its status bar.
motbob 12y ago
Yeah. In general, this is a big problem, not only for VP8/9, but also for h265 (also known as HVEC). My computer struggles to render 1080p HVEC video lag-free. Early adopters should recognize that there are advantages to using h264 that have nothing to do with the quality of the codec itself.
- zokier 12y ago
  Is HVEC really used anywhere/by anybody yet?
  - Sevzinn 12y ago
    My Vizio p series handles it fine (4K netflix).
    - skrowl 12y ago
      Came here to say "A little company called netflix uses it" but you beat me to it, good sir
  - motbob 12y ago
    Anime groups are playing with it. Anime fansub groups, in general, are hungry for the absolute best in codec technology. Hardware and media player compatibility be damned. An example: their use of 10-bit color. There are some groups in the anime scene whose sole purpose is to take releases from other groups and convert them into standard h.264 video that can play on basically any device.
    - ancientworldnow 12y ago
      I'm a colorist. I spend all day looking at color intensely with very expensive monitors. It makes me really excited to see people who actually care about color reproduction over things like resolution. With that said, I have to ask why these groups are interested in 10-bit when I'm essentially certain they cannot view in 10-bit. Only workstation GPU's (Quadro and FirePro) output 10-bit (consumer GPU's are intentionally crippled to 8-bit) and I can't really think of any monitors that have 10-bit panels under about $1000 (though there are many with 10-bit processing which is nice but doesn't get you to 10-bit monitoring). There are some output boxes intended for video production that can get around the GPU problem, but by the time you've got a full 10-bit environment, you're at $1500 bare minimum which seems excessive for most consumer consumption. So I guess what I'm asking, are these groups interested in having 10-bit because it's better and more desirable (and a placebo quality effect) or are they actively watching these in full 10-bit environments?
vegardx 12y ago
This is amazing! Finally I'm able to watch YouTube without my Macbook initiating a take off sequence when something is available in resolutions over 1080p. On OSX there is a noticeable difference in performance of video playback in Safari and Chrome, and I'm pretty sure it's all down to hardware accelerated decoding.
- jaxbot 12y ago
  Yep, see this: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start=0&num=100&q=&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified&groupby=&sort=&id=399960 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start... They've got hardware accelerated CSS3 working right in the latest versions, but VP8/VP9 won't work. The explanation is that Safari doesn't support VP8/VP9, so a fallback to h264 happens and the hardware accelerates that properly.
  - vegardx 12y ago
    I've noticed hardware accelerated CSS3, much to my despair, as it triggers the discrete gpu. It makes everything freeze for a split second, draw the page, then switch back to the integrated gpu, again with a slight freeze. And if I'm really lucky, the whole process of switching gpus will just crash resulting in a forced reboot. But I can't really blame Chrome for something that is out of their control. I recommend checking out gfx.io, that way you know what gpu is active. You can also lock it to internal only if you don't use external displays or anything that really requires the discrete gpu.
    - simoncion 12y ago
      These crashes are happening on a Linux machine, rather than a Mac or one running Windows, right?
      - vegardx 12y ago
        I'm running a Mac, but I have a hunch that it might be related to a hardware bug which prompted Apple to extend the warranty of my laptop.
belorn 12y ago
Is it a firefox/chrome problem, or a hardware/driver issue? To my knowledge, webm hardware acceleration designs has only been available to hardware manufacturers since around 2011. I also could not find a open mozilla bug ticket regarding hardware acceleration.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Hardware/DSP/driver issue. Nokia was on the complaining side when others tried to get VP8 assigned as the video tag default codec, because they had multiple products in circulation that only supported H264 decoding in hardware.
- derf_ 12y ago
  Because they're already done. Windows: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=922314 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=922314 Android: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=986381 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=986381 Linux supports HW decoding via gstreamer, if you have gstreamer set up to use your hardware (this can take some work).
nfriedly 12y ago
Yea, but the flip side of that is that hardware acceleration is a chicken-and-egg problem: Google's work here makes it more likely that we'll get hardware acceleration working in the future because there will now be a good reason to do it. (They do mention "More than 20 device partners across the industry are launching products in 2015 and beyond using VP9.", so perhaps some of those will feature working hardware acceleration.)
- aroch 12y ago
  Both Intel (integrated GPUs) and nVidia (discrete GPUs) have announced VP9 hw acceleration for their GPUs. However, I believe these are probably the only two "household name" ODMs that are supporting it. The rest of the partners are cheap SOC manufacturers like Rockchip and Mediatek
  - vernie 12y ago
    Well that explains the Rockchip SoC in the Chromebit
  - pseudosavant 12y ago
    FWIW, everyone and their dog (nVidia, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, etc) announced support for VP8 when WebM launched in 2010 too (http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-web-media-project.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-we...). Yet, hardware accelerated decode is basically non-existant still, and accelerated encoding doesn't exist at all. Even though lots of companies did demos of hardware acceleration. Part of the problem is that within 3 years Google had already basically dropped VP8 and moved onto VP9. That kind of churn doesn't go over well in the hardware space typically. For a variety of practical reasons, codecs aren't the type of thing you usually replace every few years. It takes more than a few years for really good quality optimized encoders (e.g. x264, LAME, etc) to be built.
    - threeseed 12y ago
      This why everyone should be skeptical about Google's foray into mobile video codecs. They have no "skin in the game". This isn't their core business like companies such as Sony or Adobe. And we all know what happens to Google's non core business products.
unicornporn 12y ago
And yes, it's available for Firefox too. https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox
- acdha 12y ago
  Or just go into about:config and set media.webm.enabled to false. Set media.mediasource.enabled=true to enable MSE and everything on https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 will be enabled except for VP8/9.
  - ubercow13 12y ago
    Wouldn't that mean you cant use webm on other sites, though?
    - acdha 12y ago
      Correct. If your goal is the improved performance and battery-life, that's probably acceptable but it's definitely something to think about if you frequent sites which don't support H.264.
  - lbenes 12y ago
    This will only disable webm VP8 + VP9, forcing FF to fallback to H264. In order to enable MSE & WebM VP9 in Firefox nightly, you must leave: media.webm.enabled=true (default) media.mediasource.enabled=true (default) The only value you must change is: media.mediasource.webm.enabled=true (user-set)
    - acdha 12y ago
      > This will only disable webm VP8 + VP9, forcing FF to fallback to H264. I'm glad you edited your comment but I'm still not sure what you disagree about. SoapSeller was talking about hardware acceleration and in that context disabling WebM globally will provide better performance/battery-life. The only thing I was contributing to the discussion was the note that on Firefox this does not require an extension.
d0ugie 12y ago
> missing phrase in the post is "hardware acceleration" Well, yeah, but they focus first on the significance of this for the 240p to 480p crowd for which that is less relevant. Touting impressive-sounding and strongly-needed improvements of an activity many people engage in, evangelizing, Google is taking advantage of what may be a position to influence hardware to enable, for example, the 80% of Indian youtubers who can only watch 240p youtube clips to watch 480p now with this Google math. And those who can only watch 480p instead can enjoy silky smooth 720p, and those who just cannot get enough pixels and want 4k but don't have Google Fiber just yet can now enjoy VP9 WebM 4k video on their Nexus 6 without excessive battery drain, as others with 4K displays could do too if they had some HW acceleration, which, while not written in the article, is visible to someone like you and someone like a hardware engineer at Apple and some codec whiz of the Surface and Windows Phone guys at Microsoft. For all you enthusiasts, Google says? Here's your ffmpeg how-to link, right in this blog post. No need to worry about patents either y'all! And this VP9 vs H264 side-by-side is to write home about, ain't it. Note that VP9 users are not quite edge cases, as they claim 25 billion hours of youtube was watched in the trailing twelve months. Not sure how many unique visitor sessions that is but that's a big number. So the blog post, in addition to proclaiming this magical, newsworthy math most relevant to that list of countries I'm glad I don't live in, plus Google's running the youtube show, plus Google's web properties, plus Chrome and so forth, they can add some pressure to the hardware guys, the gods of official standards and of course the browser foot-draggers that make other browsers, to help Google help everyone else make the web faster. Kind of like with SPDY. :) https://plus.google.com/explore/makethewebfaster https://plus.google.com/explore/makethewebfaster edit, from the end of the post: > Where can I use VP9? > Thanks to our device partners, VP9 decoding support is available today in the Chrome web browser, in Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6, and in TVs and game consoles from Sony, LG, Sharp, and more. More than 20 device partners across the industry are launching products in 2015 and beyond using VP9. Here's a stack of 4K/60FPS youtube clips (don't hit play using your daddy's codec): http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/26/youtube-is-experimenting-with-ultra-high-def-ultra-smooth-video-playback-here-are-the-examples/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/26/youtube-is-experimenting-wi...
- aroch 12y ago
  The Nexus 6 doesn't support hw acceleration of VP9? So you likely can't watch 4K Vp9 without stuttering and if you can it probably isn't without excessive battery drain
mintplant 12y ago
Oh, oh. Is that why YouTube videos have been spinning up my CPU fan lately? I'll have to try h264ify and see if that helps things. (I'm running Firefox on Arch Linux x86_64.)
- 1_player 12y ago
  Which hardware do you have? I'm on a Sandybridge Intel and I haven't managed to get satisfactory hardware acceleration on Arch + Firefox. Chromium manages to run any kind of video, including 60FPS 1080p without any lag, while on Firefox I get either audio or video lag. No idea why this happens. I just tried h264ify and I don't notice any improvement on Firefox. Chrome CPU usage seems to be a little lower. This is my go-to video test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SRTEXSpcyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SRTEXSpcyI Chromium: I get around 140% CPU usage, spread on 3 processes, video smooth without dropped frames. Firefox with MSE+HTML5 video: Goes from 30% to 170% CPU, on single process, but the video gets stuck for 3 seconds every second of play time. Totally unwatchable, unless I drop down to 30 fps.
leeoniya 12y ago
is it possible to mimic hardware decoding by passing the stream through an intermediate software layer that uses OpenCL or CUDA for the hardware assist? like https://emericdev.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/a-vp8-hardware-decoding-stack/ https://emericdev.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/a-vp8-hardware-de...
- astrange 12y ago
  It is not. The hardware decode on a GPU uses specialized inaccessible hardware.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  You can accelerate parts of the decode with a GPU: http://www.ittiam.com/key-technologies/vp9/ http://www.ittiam.com/key-technologies/vp9/ Your link is just to a software layer that takes advantage of any hardware present on the system i.e. on an intel system with vp8 hardware decode it'll use that, if not then it'll use software. edit: on a second read I see your link intends to create a GPU accelerated VP8 decoder backend for those libraries, not just create the interface layer.
guelo 12y ago
It's a tradeoff between bandwidth and CPU. That's why the post emphasizes things like upgrading from 240 to 360p video where CPU is not the bottleneck.
TeaLeaves 12y ago
Where are hardware encoders and acquisition devices besides Red? Even Android phone are not recording to VP9. Truthfully I do not see the entertainment/broadcast industry moving to VP9. Most places are archiving in a high bitrate intraframe codec and using H.264 as a proxy. Satellite is moving towards HEVC to save bandwidth. I don't see production houses flipping the content again to VP9. The only way to get traction is to get more hardware vendors on board to acquire content natively in VP9. Once there is content more hardware decoding and software editing platform support will follow. Hopefully they will have some big announcements next week at NAB.

nothrabannosir 12y ago

I'm having this problem, sometimes also outside the browser, and I would like to know: how do you figure out if a playback is using hardware acceleration at all? It's not an easy thing to debug. I'm on Windows, btw.

SoapSeller 12y ago
First, for youtube, right-click -> Stats for nerds. Watch the "Dropped frames" counter, with hw acceleration it usually stays close to zero("-"). For youtube&everything-else, you got two major tools: 1. CPU usage, just watch it, if you don't see spikes while playing video, you're good(on quad core 4th gen Intel core I get around 7% increase in load for HW-accelerated youtube 1080p video). 2. Even better: Tools like GPU-Z[0] have "Video Engine Load" meters for some GPUs(e.g. Nvidia GTX), where you can see if the GPU dedicated accelerator is working(and how much). For other GPU-Z(e.g. Intel HD) you can monitor the general "GPU Load", you will see an increase there as instead. [0] http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ P.S. In addition to the above, in some browsers(in chrome, via chrome://flags) & media players you can disable the hardware acceleration support and observe the results using the tools I've mentioned.
dbcooper 12y ago
In MPC-HC, hardware acceleration status is shown in its status bar.

motbob 12y ago

Yeah. In general, this is a big problem, not only for VP8/9, but also for h265 (also known as HVEC). My computer struggles to render 1080p HVEC video lag-free. Early adopters should recognize that there are advantages to using h264 that have nothing to do with the quality of the codec itself.

zokier 12y ago
Is HVEC really used anywhere/by anybody yet?
- Sevzinn 12y ago
  My Vizio p series handles it fine (4K netflix).
  - skrowl 12y ago
    Came here to say "A little company called netflix uses it" but you beat me to it, good sir
- motbob 12y ago
  Anime groups are playing with it. Anime fansub groups, in general, are hungry for the absolute best in codec technology. Hardware and media player compatibility be damned. An example: their use of 10-bit color. There are some groups in the anime scene whose sole purpose is to take releases from other groups and convert them into standard h.264 video that can play on basically any device.
  - ancientworldnow 12y ago
    I'm a colorist. I spend all day looking at color intensely with very expensive monitors. It makes me really excited to see people who actually care about color reproduction over things like resolution. With that said, I have to ask why these groups are interested in 10-bit when I'm essentially certain they cannot view in 10-bit. Only workstation GPU's (Quadro and FirePro) output 10-bit (consumer GPU's are intentionally crippled to 8-bit) and I can't really think of any monitors that have 10-bit panels under about $1000 (though there are many with 10-bit processing which is nice but doesn't get you to 10-bit monitoring). There are some output boxes intended for video production that can get around the GPU problem, but by the time you've got a full 10-bit environment, you're at $1500 bare minimum which seems excessive for most consumer consumption. So I guess what I'm asking, are these groups interested in having 10-bit because it's better and more desirable (and a placebo quality effect) or are they actively watching these in full 10-bit environments?

vegardx 12y ago

This is amazing! Finally I'm able to watch YouTube without my Macbook initiating a take off sequence when something is available in resolutions over 1080p. On OSX there is a noticeable difference in performance of video playback in Safari and Chrome, and I'm pretty sure it's all down to hardware accelerated decoding.

jaxbot 12y ago
Yep, see this: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start=0&num=100&q=&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified&groupby=&sort=&id=399960 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start... They've got hardware accelerated CSS3 working right in the latest versions, but VP8/VP9 won't work. The explanation is that Safari doesn't support VP8/VP9, so a fallback to h264 happens and the hardware accelerates that properly.
- vegardx 12y ago
  I've noticed hardware accelerated CSS3, much to my despair, as it triggers the discrete gpu. It makes everything freeze for a split second, draw the page, then switch back to the integrated gpu, again with a slight freeze. And if I'm really lucky, the whole process of switching gpus will just crash resulting in a forced reboot. But I can't really blame Chrome for something that is out of their control. I recommend checking out gfx.io, that way you know what gpu is active. You can also lock it to internal only if you don't use external displays or anything that really requires the discrete gpu.
  - simoncion 12y ago
    These crashes are happening on a Linux machine, rather than a Mac or one running Windows, right?
    - vegardx 12y ago
      I'm running a Mac, but I have a hunch that it might be related to a hardware bug which prompted Apple to extend the warranty of my laptop.

belorn 12y ago

Is it a firefox/chrome problem, or a hardware/driver issue? To my knowledge, webm hardware acceleration designs has only been available to hardware manufacturers since around 2011. I also could not find a open mozilla bug ticket regarding hardware acceleration.

digi_owl 12y ago
Hardware/DSP/driver issue. Nokia was on the complaining side when others tried to get VP8 assigned as the video tag default codec, because they had multiple products in circulation that only supported H264 decoding in hardware.
derf_ 12y ago
Because they're already done. Windows: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=922314 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=922314 Android: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=986381 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=986381 Linux supports HW decoding via gstreamer, if you have gstreamer set up to use your hardware (this can take some work).

nfriedly 12y ago

Yea, but the flip side of that is that hardware acceleration is a chicken-and-egg problem: Google's work here makes it more likely that we'll get hardware acceleration working in the future because there will now be a good reason to do it. (They do mention "More than 20 device partners across the industry are launching products in 2015 and beyond using VP9.", so perhaps some of those will feature working hardware acceleration.)

aroch 12y ago
Both Intel (integrated GPUs) and nVidia (discrete GPUs) have announced VP9 hw acceleration for their GPUs. However, I believe these are probably the only two "household name" ODMs that are supporting it. The rest of the partners are cheap SOC manufacturers like Rockchip and Mediatek
- vernie 12y ago
  Well that explains the Rockchip SoC in the Chromebit
- pseudosavant 12y ago
  FWIW, everyone and their dog (nVidia, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, etc) announced support for VP8 when WebM launched in 2010 too (http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-web-media-project.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-we...). Yet, hardware accelerated decode is basically non-existant still, and accelerated encoding doesn't exist at all. Even though lots of companies did demos of hardware acceleration. Part of the problem is that within 3 years Google had already basically dropped VP8 and moved onto VP9. That kind of churn doesn't go over well in the hardware space typically. For a variety of practical reasons, codecs aren't the type of thing you usually replace every few years. It takes more than a few years for really good quality optimized encoders (e.g. x264, LAME, etc) to be built.
  - threeseed 12y ago
    This why everyone should be skeptical about Google's foray into mobile video codecs. They have no "skin in the game". This isn't their core business like companies such as Sony or Adobe. And we all know what happens to Google's non core business products.

unicornporn 12y ago

And yes, it's available for Firefox too. https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify-firefox

acdha 12y ago
Or just go into about:config and set media.webm.enabled to false. Set media.mediasource.enabled=true to enable MSE and everything on https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 will be enabled except for VP8/9.
- ubercow13 12y ago
  Wouldn't that mean you cant use webm on other sites, though?
  - acdha 12y ago
    Correct. If your goal is the improved performance and battery-life, that's probably acceptable but it's definitely something to think about if you frequent sites which don't support H.264.
- lbenes 12y ago
  This will only disable webm VP8 + VP9, forcing FF to fallback to H264. In order to enable MSE & WebM VP9 in Firefox nightly, you must leave: media.webm.enabled=true (default) media.mediasource.enabled=true (default) The only value you must change is: media.mediasource.webm.enabled=true (user-set)
  - acdha 12y ago
    > This will only disable webm VP8 + VP9, forcing FF to fallback to H264. I'm glad you edited your comment but I'm still not sure what you disagree about. SoapSeller was talking about hardware acceleration and in that context disabling WebM globally will provide better performance/battery-life. The only thing I was contributing to the discussion was the note that on Firefox this does not require an extension.

d0ugie 12y ago

> missing phrase in the post is "hardware acceleration" Well, yeah, but they focus first on the significance of this for the 240p to 480p crowd for which that is less relevant. Touting impressive-sounding and strongly-needed improvements of an activity many people engage in, evangelizing, Google is taking advantage of what may be a position to influence hardware to enable, for example, the 80% of Indian youtubers who can only watch 240p youtube clips to watch 480p now with this Google math. And those who can only watch 480p instead can enjoy silky smooth 720p, and those who just cannot get enough pixels and want 4k but don't have Google Fiber just yet can now enjoy VP9 WebM 4k video on their Nexus 6 without excessive battery drain, as others with 4K displays could do too if they had some HW acceleration, which, while not written in the article, is visible to someone like you and someone like a hardware engineer at Apple and some codec whiz of the Surface and Windows Phone guys at Microsoft. For all you enthusiasts, Google says? Here's your ffmpeg how-to link, right in this blog post. No need to worry about patents either y'all! And this VP9 vs H264 side-by-side is to write home about, ain't it. Note that VP9 users are not quite edge cases, as they claim 25 billion hours of youtube was watched in the trailing twelve months. Not sure how many unique visitor sessions that is but that's a big number. So the blog post, in addition to proclaiming this magical, newsworthy math most relevant to that list of countries I'm glad I don't live in, plus Google's running the youtube show, plus Google's web properties, plus Chrome and so forth, they can add some pressure to the hardware guys, the gods of official standards and of course the browser foot-draggers that make other browsers, to help Google help everyone else make the web faster. Kind of like with SPDY. :) https://plus.google.com/explore/makethewebfaster https://plus.google.com/explore/makethewebfaster edit, from the end of the post: > Where can I use VP9? > Thanks to our device partners, VP9 decoding support is available today in the Chrome web browser, in Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6, and in TVs and game consoles from Sony, LG, Sharp, and more. More than 20 device partners across the industry are launching products in 2015 and beyond using VP9. Here's a stack of 4K/60FPS youtube clips (don't hit play using your daddy's codec): http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/26/youtube-is-experimenting-with-ultra-high-def-ultra-smooth-video-playback-here-are-the-examples/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/26/youtube-is-experimenting-wi...

aroch 12y ago
The Nexus 6 doesn't support hw acceleration of VP9? So you likely can't watch 4K Vp9 without stuttering and if you can it probably isn't without excessive battery drain

mintplant 12y ago

Oh, oh. Is that why YouTube videos have been spinning up my CPU fan lately? I'll have to try h264ify and see if that helps things. (I'm running Firefox on Arch Linux x86_64.)

1_player 12y ago
Which hardware do you have? I'm on a Sandybridge Intel and I haven't managed to get satisfactory hardware acceleration on Arch + Firefox. Chromium manages to run any kind of video, including 60FPS 1080p without any lag, while on Firefox I get either audio or video lag. No idea why this happens. I just tried h264ify and I don't notice any improvement on Firefox. Chrome CPU usage seems to be a little lower. This is my go-to video test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SRTEXSpcyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SRTEXSpcyI Chromium: I get around 140% CPU usage, spread on 3 processes, video smooth without dropped frames. Firefox with MSE+HTML5 video: Goes from 30% to 170% CPU, on single process, but the video gets stuck for 3 seconds every second of play time. Totally unwatchable, unless I drop down to 30 fps.

leeoniya 12y ago

is it possible to mimic hardware decoding by passing the stream through an intermediate software layer that uses OpenCL or CUDA for the hardware assist? like https://emericdev.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/a-vp8-hardware-decoding-stack/ https://emericdev.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/a-vp8-hardware-de...

astrange 12y ago
It is not. The hardware decode on a GPU uses specialized inaccessible hardware.
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
You can accelerate parts of the decode with a GPU: http://www.ittiam.com/key-technologies/vp9/ http://www.ittiam.com/key-technologies/vp9/ Your link is just to a software layer that takes advantage of any hardware present on the system i.e. on an intel system with vp8 hardware decode it'll use that, if not then it'll use software. edit: on a second read I see your link intends to create a GPU accelerated VP8 decoder backend for those libraries, not just create the interface layer.

guelo 12y ago

It's a tradeoff between bandwidth and CPU. That's why the post emphasizes things like upgrading from 240 to 360p video where CPU is not the bottleneck.

TeaLeaves 12y ago

Where are hardware encoders and acquisition devices besides Red? Even Android phone are not recording to VP9. Truthfully I do not see the entertainment/broadcast industry moving to VP9. Most places are archiving in a high bitrate intraframe codec and using H.264 as a proxy. Satellite is moving towards HEVC to save bandwidth. I don't see production houses flipping the content again to VP9. The only way to get traction is to get more hardware vendors on board to acquire content natively in VP9. Once there is content more hardware decoding and software editing platform support will follow. Hopefully they will have some big announcements next week at NAB.