1210727 - Add VA-API hardware decoding support on Linux

Status: NEW

Description

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

This would do decoding only ; not rendering (yet)

Comment 1

[russianneuromancer]

Hardware decoding on Intel Ironlake should be used only for 720p and lower. 
Hardware 1080p decoding on Intel Ironlake is slower than software decoding on CPU: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47858

GPU model from about:support
Intel Open Source Technology Center -- Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile 

I need to fill separate issue about VA-API on Ironlake or drop this info here is fine?

Comment 2

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to russianneuromancer from comment #1)
> Hardware decoding on Intel Ironlake should be used only for 720p and lower. 
> Hardware 1080p decoding on Intel Ironlake is slower than software decoding
> on CPU: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47858
> 
> GPU model from about:support
> Intel Open Source Technology Center -- Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile 
> 
> I need to fill separate issue about VA-API on Ironlake or drop this info
> here is fine?

We have a generic preference to disable hardware acceleration, I'll hook it up to vaapi, but I have no intention at this stage to make specific cases for particular chipset.

Would have to be in a separate bug.

Comment 3

[Anthony Jones (:kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

Mass change P2 -> P3

Comment 4

[sheepdestroyer]

Is there a reason the priority would go from P2 to P3?

Lack of hardware acceleration is the worse offender on Linux right now. Some youtube videos can not even play at a decent framerate because of that, especially the 4K / 360 ones. And that's without speaking of the heat generated by those poor CPUs...

I do not get why it would not even go the other way, right to P1 ?

Comment 5

[Anthony Jones (:kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

See bug 1210726.

Comment 6

[albertogomezmarin]

linux had have the firefox browser by default in all distros I think much users of firefox are from linux and the only thing we get from mozilla a long waiting for a feature that is very needed.. between google with chromium and the denied featured requests and firefox not to working on features for firefox, linux in browser category is very late and the battery for laptops is damaged with linux and video viewing with browsers, I feel really annoying

Comment 7

[Melroy]

I fully agree, video acceleration is a must have feature now a days. Please solve it! Don't force me to move to Chrome....

Comment 8

[jeremy9856]

I still have hope too to see full VDPAU/VAAVI support in order to have hardware video acceleration.

Comment 9

[Emma Humphries, Bugmaster ☕️ (she/her) [:emceeaich] (UTC-8) needinfo? me]

Gentle reminder:

* Our guidelines ask you don't argue about priority setting on bugs. Triage leads and Mozillians working on the bug set the priority. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
* "Me too" or "Fix this or I'm moving to Chrome/Lynx/Gopher/Edge/Webkit" comments are off topic and just add noise.

Comment 10

[Laurent Bonnaud]

Hi,

in firefox release/51 and beta/52 in about:support one can see "Hardware H264 Decoding" status.

However in firefox aurora/53 and nigthly/54, this line is no longer visible.

Was this done on purpose or is this an omission?

BTW, how about adding a line about "Hardware VP9 Decoding" since recent Intel GPU do support hardware VP9 decoding?

Comment 11

[Paul Menzel]

(In reply to Laurent Bonnaud from comment #10)
> in firefox release/51 and beta/52 in about:support one can see "Hardware
> H264 Decoding" status.
> 
> However in firefox aurora/53 and nigthly/54, this line is no longer visible.
> 
> Was this done on purpose or is this an omission?
> 
> BTW, how about adding a line about "Hardware VP9 Decoding" since recent
> Intel GPU do support hardware VP9 decoding?

Laurent, if this is still reproducible – I only have 45.9.0 here –, could you please create a separate report for this issue? That’d be great.

Comment 12

[Paul Menzel]

@ehumphries, if I interpret the bug comments correctly, you flagged this report with *NEEDINFO*. Could you please tell us, what information is needed to get the feature implemented?

Comment 13

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

"needinfo" is intended to call the attention of a specific person to the bug - I need information from X, to answer question Y.

It's not intended as a nonspecific "we need more information to figure this out" thing, but it's true the term is a bit opaque.

Comment 14

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Paul Menzel from comment #11)
> Laurent, if this is still reproducible – I only have 45.9.0 here –, could
> you please create a separate report for this issue? That’d be great.

Is there already a separate report for this issue? There are also some other useful informations gone (i can't remember exactly, but e.g. regarding OpenGL acceleration).

Comment 15

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

Yes, we also need accelerated layers to be able to render the frames. And right now, this has taken a set back and the feature has been disabled for now.

Comment 16

[ApB]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #15)
> Yes, we also need accelerated layers to be able to render the frames. And
> right now, this has taken a set back and the feature has been disabled for
> now.

Have you started doing work on this and you wait for accelerated layers to land in order to merge it or you will start after the layers?

Comment 17

[ojab]

Just FYI: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/532294 this will be [chrome-parity] soon

Comment 18

[Jan Andre Ikenmeyer [:darkspirit]]

"The Quantum Flow (QF) initiative is a cross-component effort to improve user perceived responsiveness and performance."
Could you please triage this if it would meet your demands for 57 or 58?

Video hardware decoding is very desirable for Linux devices that:
* do not have a powerful CPU
* should be energy-efficient (laptops)
* want to fluently play 4K videos on YouTube while using the CPU for compiling Nightly. ;-)

There is new code from Chromium in comment 17 providing VAAPI hardware video decoding that could and should be shared, or not?
If Mozilla and Google both would fix bugs it would result in far better stability for all users. Would it be possible?
At least we have example code now.

Comment 19

[Jan Andre Ikenmeyer [:darkspirit]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #15)
> Yes, we also need accelerated layers to be able to render the frames.

Could we say we have a dependency to WebRender (instead of the current painting code) here, to prevent double work?

Comment 20

[Erdem U. Altinyurt]

Personally, I do NOT care about accelerated layers for rendering frames. Who cares?
I just want to use "accelerated video decoding via HW" because solving the video codec exhaust many CPUs, not rendering frames after. Yes rendering via OGL will probably give much better results but who cares? We need accelerated youtube videos ASAP.

Also, read the first reply of :jya at the topic,
"for just decoding, not rendering (yet)."

I believe, after 2 years, devs need to complete first step using current painting stack. Because this gonna hurt firefox project much more than other bugs. Since linux users cannot watch simple videos with FF, they gonna switch to Chrome soon.

Comment 21

[sam tygier]

There is a bounty for this issue at https://www.bountysource.com/issues/55506502-add-va-api-hardware-decoding-support-on-linux