1505305 - Firefox 63.0.1 not using hardware acceleration while playing Youtube videos, before this version i was running 59.0.2 and it was fine, except i had to disable multi process feature to make gpu acceleration works, but with 63.0.1 , doing that doesn't help.

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[thagoodboy]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

I tried to watch an HD youtube video.


Actual results:

The video started to drop frames , i tried with another HD video , i got the same result.

i created a new firefox profile , but it didn't help.

I'm sure it's not a driver problem, because the gpu acceleration worked again when i downgraded to version 59.0.2.



Expected results:

The video should plays normally.

------------- 
OS : Windows 7 SP1 32bit

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6290

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please open about:support (or Menu->Help->Troubleshoot information), copy the text to clipboard and paste it into a test file.
Attach this file with the "Attach File" link in this bug report page.

Comment 2

[thagoodboy]

Attachment: Support.info.txt

Comment 3

[thagoodboy]

ok @Matti i uploaded the file

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>Direct2D: Blocked for your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues.

>Driver Version: 8.872.0.0
>Driver Date: 7-7-2011

Is there a newer driver available for your card ?

Comment 5

[thagoodboy]

Attachment: firefox.support_2.txt

Comment 6

[thagoodboy]

Thanks for your interest @Matti

i remember installing a new driver one year ago, but i could not notice a difference in performance, so i went back to the original driver.


now i just found in this link

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7b3rqt/cant_watch_videos_above_360p_video_playback_eats/

a suggestion to turn the option: "media.gpu-process-decoder" to "false"

after doing that , GPU acceleration for videos worked for me, and HD videos are not dropping frames, but now i have:

DIRECT2D:
Blocklisted; failure code BLOCKLIST_FEATURE_FAILURE_DL_BLACKLIST_g278 

by the way , i uploaded a new support file , showing all the infos.


So how come the GPU acceleration on firefox is working for me now while "Direct2D" is blocked by the browser?

How this can affect my browsing?

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The blocked graphic acceleration may make the performance on complex pages slower.
Many older drivers and also video cards itself have problems and Firefox will crash. That is the reason why many video cards and drivers are blocked.

I don't know why disabling the media.gpu-process-decoder feature fixes the problem but I will move your report to the Audio/Video component and hopefully a developer can answer that.

Comment 8

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

When the gpu process is running, we don't use a blacklist and instead we detect if the drivers are crashing and if so disable HW acceleration after that.
With the GPU process disabled, it relies on the blacklist.

If you see "Blocklisted; failure code BLOCKLIST_FEATURE_FAILURE_DL_BLACKLIST_g278 " then you don't have HW decoding enabled.

Comment 9

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

Is there an action we need to take here?

Comment 10

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

no, drivers last updated in 2011, with a GPU with known problem

Comment 11

[thagoodboy]

Attachment: Firefox 62.0.3(Latest.GPU.Drivers).txt

Comment 12

[thagoodboy]

Attachment: Firefox 63.0.1(Latest.GPU.Drivers).txt

Comment 13

[thagoodboy]

I uninstalled all AMD drivers , and installed the latest ones from their website, then i created a new firefox profile ( with Firefox 63.0.1) and tested it without tweaking. The result was disappointing, the GPU acceleration is not working.

Then i installed Firefox 62.0.3 , and i did the same with it, but here the GPU acceleration worked properly ALTHOUGH Direct2D is still blocklisted (as in Firefox 63.01) according to firefox support infos.

How i could tell that GPU acceleration is working?

Because my CPU can't play 1080p Youtube videos without making the video looks as a slideshow.

So i'm sure firefox developers did some change while upgrading from V 62 to V 63 which resulted in this problem for me.

I hope you can figure out what was that change, because me i can't.

Comment 14

[thagoodboy]

By the way i uploaded support infos for Fireofx 62.0.3 and 63.0.1 respectively after installing the latest drivers.

Comment 15

[Michael Froman [:mjf]]

Jean-Yves, it looks like the behavior changed between 62 and 63, which seems odd.  Did the block list change between versions?

Comment 16

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to Michael Froman [:mjf] from comment #15)
> Jean-Yves, it looks like the behavior changed between 62 and 63, which seems
> odd.  Did the block list change between versions?

we may, but unlikely, it would be a gfx issue.

What is certain here however, is that the drivers *are* crashing and the behaviour is exactly as it should be

Comment 17

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

you can set media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled, gfx.direct2d.force-enabled and layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true.

that should resolve your problem

Comment 18

[thagoodboy]

"we may, but unlikely"

It's SURE that Firefox 63 behavior is different compared to 62.



"What is certain here however, is that the drivers *are* crashing and the behavior is exactly as it should be"

I don't know how to tell if the drivers are crashing or not , but what i can confirm is that on Firefox 62.0.2 the GPU acceleration is working perfectly on Youtube, and it's not causing browser or tab crashs , all this while using default settings. So the behavior of Firefox 63 is just WRONG.



"you can set media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled, gfx.direct2d.force-enabled and layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true.

that should resolve your problem"

I updated to Firefox 63.0.3 and tried both default settings and those tweaks , but still having the same issue, the only solution i found is to stick for now with 62.0.2. Anyway thanks @Matthias @Jan-Ivar @Jean-yves @MichaelFroman.

Comment 19

[thagoodboy]

i mean 62.0.3

Comment 20

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Bas, do you know of anything that would have changed between 62 and 63 in the GPU process or in direct2d ?

Comment 21

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to Paul Adenot (:padenot) from comment #20)
> Bas, do you know of anything that would have changed between 62 and 63 in
> the GPU process or in direct2d ?

You should probably ask someone on the graphics team :-). Having said that perhaps something changed for WebRender in the GPU process. I certainly didn't touch the D2D code.

Comment 22

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Mark this one as P3 for now, feel free to change priority.

Comment 23

[michal1315_1992]

Attachment: FIrefox 65.0.1 Win10 Latest legacy driver

I have similar issue in Firefox 65.0.1 on Win10 but in my case default only doesn't work video hardware acceleration. My gpu is HD 6450 with legacy drivers installed automatically from windows update. Its look like this:

Firefox 48 everything its ok, video acceleration work correct

Firefox 50 video acceleration doesn't work, after set media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled on true, in about:support page is info hw h264 decoder "No; D3D11 blacklisted with DLL atidxx64.dll (8.17.10.625); D3D9 blacklisted with DLL atiumd64.dll (9.14.10.1128)", delete this dll version from blacklist makes its work

Firefox 65.0.1 no hw video decoder and about:support page lacks any info about it, media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled set on true makes it work without changes in dll blacklist

DLL which is blocked its part of latest legacy WHQL drivers (15.201.1151.1008) for AMD HD5000,HD6000 and non-GCN HD7000 gpu series, its make browser useless for ordinary user because even 480p video freezing on many sites.