1746849 - 96 beta 7 (early beta - bug 1744037 - has ended) - Tab crashes with [@ @0x0 | MmdDevice::CreateFactory ]: Intel Xe requires intel-media-driver, but doesn't work in the content process. Solution: Enable media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled in Firefox 96.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1743647

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

Description

[Jim]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:96.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/96.0

Steps to reproduce:

In 96 beta 7 (issue was not occurring in earlier betas) on Linux, I opened different sites or clicked on different links/buttons within sites.

Actual results:

Tab crashed. Crash report shows as [@ @0x0 | MmdDevice::CreateFactory ].

Expected results:

Open site or link without crashing.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Jim]

Looks like this is due to VA-API. More specifically, somewhere along the way the RDD ffmpeg got disabled? I re-enabled it and the crashes have stopped.

Maybe a more graceful fallback or notification rather than a tab crash if RDD is not enabled?

Comment 3

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Was ffmpeg disabled via pref and you flipped those to re-enable?

Comment 4

[Jim]

ffmpeg was enabled but rdd-ffmpeg was disabled. I re-enabled rdd-ffmpeg.

Comment 5

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Via the media.rdd-ffvpx.enabled pref?

Comment 6

[Jim]

No, media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled.

Comment 7

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

(In reply to Jim from comment #6)

No, media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled.

Thanks! Do you know if the issue started due to something other than the pref? E.g. Firefox update, other changes.

As in comment 2, while I believe the expectation is we want RDD enabled for VA API, it would be good to gracefully handle failures.

Comment 8

[Darkspirit]

Intel Xe is only supported by the newer VAAPI driver (intel-media-driver) and did crash in the content process.
Before 96, Intel Xe did not have any other workaround than disabling either the RDD or content process sandbox.

With bug 1698778 (96), VAAPI can be used in the RDD process (media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled).
In 96, VAAPI/RDD can still crash in some edge cases. It has been fixed in 97 by bug 1743926.

bug 1744037 enabled media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled for EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER.

96 beta 7 was the first non-EARLY_BETA.
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/ef7b4eb2c0f1d5479d8f4260047cda3053a18b58

In in 96 beta 7, media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled must be enabled manually now.

Comment 9

[Jim]

It crashes happened after installing and running 96 beta 7. Prior to that it worked without issue. Did the update flip the value of that option?

Comment 10

[Darkspirit]

Yes, 96 beta 7 has switched the default of media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled back to false which causes the VAAPI crash.
It is still enabled by default in Nightly.

To fix the VAAPI crash, you need to manually enable media.rdd-ffmpeg.enabled in late Beta and Stable.

Comment 11

[Jim]

Ok, guess this really isn't a bug then. Just didn't know it got flipped or if something else caused it. Thanks.

Comment 12

[Darkspirit]

96 should be the last version that can crash this way.
97 disallowed VAAPI in the content process. Closing this content process VAAPI crash as duplicate of bug 1743647.