Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding(www.phoronix.com)
99 pointsby Bender8 hours ago7 comments
  • pjmlp7 minutes ago
    Lets see if this works better than VA-API, I could never manage to make it work with Chrome or Firefox, on my now dead netbook.

    Since the Flash plugin was gone, watching YT on that device was always software rendering, regardless of the magic incantations between VA-API and browser configuration flags.

  • Groxx7 hours ago
    Oh sweet, now I can look forward to "compiling shaders..." on every website I visit!

    ---

    More seriously, I'm definitely curious to try this out on some of my weird computers. Sometimes vulkan support is noticeably more capable than other modes.

    • pezezin5 hours ago
      Vulkan Video is about exposing the GPU's hardware encoding/decoding functionality through the standard Vulkan API, not about implementing the codecs through shaders.
    • soganess6 hours ago
      There are fairly mainstream devices with decent Vulkan support but poor hardware decode coverage for the codecs people actually get on the web. Polaris era Radeons have H.264 and HEVC decode, but VP9 support is absent (or not exposed in many common Linux paths) so YouTube is sloppy. The Raspberry Pi 5 is another example: it has hardware HEVC decode, but YouTube 4K is generally VP9 or AV1 rather than HEVC, and Pi 5 does not advertise VP9 hardware decode.
      • kcb4 hours ago
        I think Vulkan Video is just another api to access those hardware decoders. It's not going to bring support for codecs to hardware without the support.
        • soganess3 hours ago
          You are 100% right! My mistake. It is too late for me to edit my previous comment. But I appreciate the correction.
      • Groxx5 hours ago
        Yea, I'm most-hopeful for some of my lowest-end devices. Those as-cheap-as-possible CPUs tend to have a very strange set of accelerators for codecs.
      • TiredOfLife3 hours ago
        > Pi 5 does not advertise VP9 hardware decode

        because it does not have it

  • QuaternionsBhop5 hours ago
    This is great news for nvidia users on Linux. It means that they don't need to install a VAAPI compatibility tool like nvidia-vaapi-driver. I also hope to see Vulkan Video supported in the open source userspace nvidia driver NVK soon too.
  • HDBaseT4 hours ago
    Question, what does this mean for Firefox users? Does this help YouTube Video playback? DRM'd content on Netflix?
    • TingPing4 hours ago
      It doesn’t mean anything for desktop users, it’s just a new standard that could have wider support than VAAPI since it’s part of Vulkan. Mostly embedded devices lacking VAAPI support today, though nvidia requires a third party implementation so this might improve that situation.
  • WhyNotHugo5 hours ago
    Why does Firefox do first-class video decoding instead of offloading to, for example, ffmpeg?
    • hparadiz4 hours ago
      Look at the post. It's already using ffmpeg. This just enables it in the build.
  • lousken7 hours ago
    Hopefully, it will be in the next ESR
  • xx__yy3 hours ago
    Is it just me or were they a bit behind? Chromium already has it