Firefox Nightly Tries For VA-API Video Acceleration For Mesa Users

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox Nightly Tries For VA-API Video Acceleration For Mesa Users

Potentially for the Mozilla Firefox 103 release we could see VA-API video acceleration for Linux users finally enabled by default while as of today has been flipped back on again in Firefox Nightly builds...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-103-Nightly-VA-API

[guspitts]

Oh yes, please, make it happen. I am still on FF97 for that reason.

[Cory]

More than 10 years after Windows and Mac. It's strange how GNU/Linux usually supports the latest processors and graphics but it took so long to implement something so basic

[DanL]

I remember when AMD hired Christian König, and having high hopes that at least video decode could come together on the open source side. But no, AMD, Intel and nvidia all had to do their own thing and set progress back a decade. And here we are. I'm hoping Vulkan video accel will finally slap these companies upside the head and get them in line.

[holunder]

More than 10 years after Windows and Mac. It's strange how GNU/Linux usually supports the latest processors and graphics but it took so long to implement something so basic

It has been working for years but they are conservative with enabling it by default because there are a couple bugs on the VA-API side.

[DanL]

More than 10 years after Windows and Mac. It's strange how GNU/Linux usually supports the latest processors and graphics but it took so long to implement something so basic

NIH syndrome. Intel refused to touch VDPAU and nvidia wouldn't do VA-API. AMD was caught in the middle and tried XvBA, but that didn't fly either. At least AMD adapted decent video drivers for both VDPAU and VA-API.

See also: Gwenole Beauchesne and Intel buying him out.

[tildearrow]

More than 10 years after Windows and Mac. It's strange how GNU/Linux usually supports the latest processors and graphics but it took so long to implement something so basic

I think it's more like Mozilla not caring about Linux consumers because the userbase is small when compared to Windows.

[nist]

Maybe too late. Lost a lot of users because of this lack of funcionality, in Linux.

[user1]

I think it's more like Mozilla not caring about Linux consumers because the userbase is small when compared to Windows.

And do you think Chrome / Chromium based browsers are better than this? I think they're all much worse in supporting Linux. Their VAAPI support is much more abysmal, their startup time is much slower on Linux than on Windows (at least it seems like Mozilla optimized Firefox startup time on Linux within the last year, so now it's more or less comparable to Windows). And Wayland support is also more mature in Firefox.

[Ermine]

I think it's more like Mozilla not caring about Linux consumers because the userbase is small when compared to Windows.

Given that 1) FFMEG's VA-API support is partial (while NVENC/NVDEC support is complete) (https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HWAccelIntro), 2) OBS Studio hides VA-API encoding option in advanced options (and you can select NVENC right away) 3) some distros (checked Ubuntu and Arch) don't even enable FFMEG VA-API via --enable-vaapi configure flag, I'm inclined to think that VA-API is not that good.