1746557 - (webcodecs) [meta] Implement the WebCodecs API

Thank you for actioning this. We're currently developing a commercial product which relies on WebCodecs support (specifically VideoDecoder), and I'm glad to see that there has been a formal announcement of the intent to implement this in FireFox:
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/3g0fnn6682A/m/Nb1qVaA4AAAJ
This will bring FireFox in line with the other major browsers out there, which have all added WebCodecs support over the last two years. I've pulled down the latest nightly build and seen the progress here, and it's encouraging.

I have one specific question I haven't seen a direct answer to yet though, which relates to HEVC/H.265 support. Over the last 12 months, every other major browser has added pass-through support for hardware H265 decoding, where the platform supports it:
https://caniuse.com/?search=h.265
In reality, this means basically every platform in the world, since all graphics vendors have implemented hardware decoding for PC hardware, and mobile devices had hardware decoding since early on. As I understand it, pass-through decoding like this does not require any patent licenses or the like, since it's the hardware vendor that is doing the actual decoding, and they've already paid the fee to license the codec.

Is the intention to also add pass-through HEVC/H.265 decoding in FireFox for the WebCodecs API, either during the initial effort or as a following step?

I'm well aware of the benefits of AV1, and look forward to using it in the future instead of H265 once hardware support is common enough, but for now we need to be able to support H265 as a baseline, with AV1 being an extension we can reach for where it's supported. Right now I can list every other significant browser as either "supported" (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet, etc) or "supported in TP" (Safari on iOS, Safari on MacOS), which will give us comprehensive browser support across all significant platforms within the next two months. Except Firefox currently. Are there any plans, intent, or notional support for implementing H265 passthrough hardware decoding in this effort or a subsequent effort?

Flags: needinfo?(padenot)

Stefan Fleiter (:sfleiter)

Comment 13

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23 days ago

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Edited

I see meta bug 1842838 and bug 1849392 for Windows.
For Mac or Linux I do not see respective tracking, let's see whether we get any answer on that. 😀

C.M.Chang[:chunmin]

Assignee

Comment 14

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10 days ago

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Edited

H254 isn't free for all. We are looking into it and see what we can do