[ltp] Graphics acceleration for Firefox, does this exist anymore?

[Rubin Abdi]

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Sorry folks, was a little disgruntled yesterday after debugging this for
a while and really getting nowhere.

Paul Seelig wrote, On 2014-04-29 07:06:
> Which version of Firefox? The ESR variant? The Debian packaged one?=20
> Latest upstream version or some former upstream release version?

iceweasel              29.0~b7-1        amd64

This is from: http://mozilla.debian.net/

> How much RAM does your X220 have? Using an SSD or still a HDD?

16GB, Firefox and Debian are running off of an msata drive.

> Said that, upstream Firefox 28.0 works like a charm on my T61=20
> Frankenpad equipped with Intel graphics and 8GB RAM. Never bothered=20
> with graphics acceleration, though.

Are you viewing with HTML5? If you view a video on Youtube through
HTML5, how much CPU is Firefox using up and what's your system load?

Tamas Papp wrote, On 2014-04-29 08:06:
> I experience something similar on my T430s. Video lags sound, and=20
> drops frames. Uses almost 100% of one core. A workaround is to
> switch the video to full screen, then it has no problems. Debian
> testing, latest FF, latest flash plugin.

You're not the first person to say that, also pausing the video and
starting play again. Either of those tips don't seem to work for me.

Elimar Riesebieter wrote, On 2014-04-29 08:09:
> Please post the output of:
>=20
> # update-flashplugin-nonfree --status

I don't have Flash on this machine, all of the videos are displayed in
some form of HTML5 (or not at all because: reasons and feelings and
internet religion).

So I did some experiments, I scraped a 720p video off of YouTube and
saved it locally. Playing it through VLC I hardly see any performance
hit. Playing it in a Firefox tab my CPU spikes quite a bit and I see
frames drop.

Doing some more searching on the internet, the conclusion I've hit is
that at some point Firefox (and Chrome too, as stated in multiple news
postings around the net) has moved away from utilizing any graphics
acceleration for videos under Linux. The reason being that it is
apparently impossible for them to support newer features in HTML5 (like
CSS over video) while using XV for video decoding.

Which is sad. :(

--=20
Rubin
rubin@starset.net


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