Hey all,
I have a Framework 13 AMD version. So far it’s great - got it set up using the guide and it’s working nicely. Using Ubuntu 22.04 with Wayland
One thing I can’t figure out – I don’t seem to be able to get hardware video decoding in Firefox (or Chrome) working.
I’ve enabled all the things, and verified that ‘va-api’ is installed. But it seems like the GPU is blacklisted by Firefox?
Has anyone else figured this out?
Probably a problem with sandbox’ed snap install of firefox. If vainfo returns a list of supported endpoints, then you have everything you need.
Try installing the system version of firefox rather than the default snap
You could try setting media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled to true in about:config. I found that in this post/thread on the Arch forms about AMD and hardware decoding.
Running firefox with the MOZ_LOG="FFmpegVideo:5" environment variable shows that va-api decoding is working with that setting enabled for me with the Ryzen 5.
Edit: I just did some more testing and it seems that changing media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled wasn’t what did it. It was setting media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true that actually fixed it.
No, I’m not. jwp is probably right that it could be a problem with the snap version.
I’ve also had a fair bit of trouble with video playback in Firefox on my FW 13 AMD 7840U. I’m running fedora 39 with the rpm package (seen it for a while, but currently on v121).
After changing the suggested config flag this is what I get:
Interesting to see that while HARDWARE_VIDEO_DECODING now shows as enabled due to it being forced on, other related items like H264_HW_DECODE and VP8_HW_DECODE still show as blocklisted.
Update: I reset the media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled config option to its default and ran through the instructions here: Howto/Multimedia - RPM Fusion. Both HARDWARE_VIDEO_DECODING and H264_HW_DECODEnow show as available, though VP8_HW_DECODE still shows as blocklisted. At least one site I had some trouble with appears to be working better now, although it’ll take some more time and testing before I’m confident this isn’t just a fluke.
Pretty sure VP8 decode is not supposed to be supported in hardware.
Here is the CPU spec page: https://www.amd.com/en/product/13186
And here is their max decode list:
1080p60 8bpc MPEG2
1080p60 8bpc VC1
1080p786 8/10bpc VP9
2160p196 8/10bpc VP9
4320p49 8/10bpc VP9
1080p1200 8bpc H.264
2160p300 8bpc H.264
4320p75 8bpc H.264
1080p786 8/10bpc H.265
2160p196 8/10bpc H.265
4320p49 8/10bpc H.265
1080p960 8/10bpc AV1
2160p240 8/10bpc AV1
4320p60 8/10bpc AV1
So H264, H265 (HEVC), VP9 and AV1 is all I’d expect to see, with the exception that Firefox doesn’t support HEVC at all, software or hardware, I think for patient reasons.
I got it working by moving to the DEB version and force enabling hardware vaapi in the Firefox config.
Yeah VP8 doesn’t work, but VP9 does!