1837764 - Immediately after starting Nightly, about:support shows VP8, VP9, AV1 as "Unsupported" in Software

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Audio/Video, defect)

Description

[Mayank Bansal]

Create fresh profile
Start Nightly
Open about:support

Check the "Codec Support Information"

AR:

Codec Name Software Decoding Hardware Decoding
H264 Supported Supported
VP8 Unsupported Supported
VP9 Unsupported Supported
AV1 Unsupported Supported

If you then open a youtube video, and then try about:support again, it shows somewhat more expected values.

Comment 1

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: about:suppprt immediately after startup

Comment 2

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: about:support after I play a youtube video

Comment 3

[Mayank Bansal]

After I play a youtube video :

Codec Support Information:
Codec Name: Software Decoding, Hardware Decoding
H264: Supported, Supported
VP8: Supported, Supported
VP9: Supported, Supported
AV1: Supported, Supported
Theora: Supported, Unsupported
AAC: Supported, Unsupported
FLAC: Supported, Unsupported
MP3: Supported, Unsupported
Opus: Supported, Unsupported
Vorbis: Supported, Unsupported
Wave: Supported, Unsupported

Comment 4

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

I think this is expected due to a delay we enforce for performance reasons. Maybe we could update the output here to 'unknown' in these cases? Ashley, thoughts?

Comment 5

[Mayank Bansal]

or something more descriptive that tells the steps the user would need to do to allow nightly to correctly identify the software decoding capabilities of the machine.

Comment 6

[az [:az] (back 7/20)]

On Windows codec support is determined and cached when a decoder is started, though we don't currently start any decoders automatically when opening about:support for performance reasons. This is why the support information updates after opening a YouTube video. I agree that adding an explanation for this behavior or some other indicator makes sense, I'll put a patch together soon.

Comment 7

[az [:az] (back 7/20)]

Attachment: Bug 1837764 - Add error message for codec support detection to about:support if no codecs found r=aosmond

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/14f6c2036ea4
Add error message for codec support detection to about:support if no codecs found r=fluent-reviewers,flod

Comment 9

[Noemi Erli[:noemi_erli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/14f6c2036ea4