Enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-decoding Alternatives

enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-decoding reviews and mentions

• Raspberry Pi 5 drops codec hardware acceleration except for HEVC decode
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Oct 2023

  Most devices can indeed most likely handle software decode of more common resolutions, codecs and bitrates. But I'd really hope they'd pick the one that won't suck up all the battery, so H264. This line of thought is supported by the fact that YouTube still provides an H264 option with most if not all videos.

  With higher bitrate things, HEVC seems to grow in popularity but even software decode support is not everywhere. Netflix for example requires the installation of HEVC support on Windows to play 4K content.

  Actually hardware-accelerated video decode is even spottier and more unreliable across most platforms. The JS API for codec support (canPlayType) literally returns "maybe" and "probably". It's quite bad.

  So far the best compatibility I've seen has been Edge with flags on Windows (MPEG-2, H264, HEVC, AV1, VP8, VP9 with most also supporting accelerated encode). It still fails with some content (Dolby Vision P5 colors are incorrect, HEVC Rext doesn't play - more info about HEVC is available here https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-deco...). Chrome on macOS is a close second in terms of codec support.

  The worst in terms of HW acceleration being all the browsers on desktop Linux-s, few and fragile combinations that offer limited and janky support. But it's slowly improving. This combined with the not-the-latest hardware many use, means things like VP9 or AV1 tend to stutter.

  I'd love to see some more generic stats, but considering the APIs aren't sufficient to determine actual support, these might be difficult to gather.

• Chrome still hasn't changed its opinion about dropping JPEG XL support
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Jun 2023

  > The 'right' solution would be to just use system codecs for everything. Many apps need good implementations of image codecs. They just need to be implemented once by the OS vendor (or the toolkit on Linux).

  Windows has done this and is still doing this, but the decade-long track history so far is that this does not work well. It can work, in a very limited scope and if you have a lot of influence.

  Sure, it's really nice if an 8K@60Hz HDR HEVC video plays perfectly straight in your browser or desktop app, but more often than not, it just won't. You don't have the right browser, the extension installed (due to license agreements), good enough graphics drivers or someone has forgotten a flag yet again.

  And we haven't even gotten to the immense amount of variation each codec introduces or the potential attack surface.

  How shit the situation is with just HEVC (and thus also basically HEIC): https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-deco...

  > Just file a bug against your OS.

  In the end that "just" carries a lot of burden, it can't be the users reporting these issues.

  It's just way easier to leech off of ffmpeg and similar, and let it deal with all the formats. Instead of hoping that maybe you can leverage what the OS gives you, that it works and works correctly in all your edge-cases.

  Though not everything is that gloomy, there are Vulkan extensions that might (in the future) simplify cross-platform image and video decoding (and HW acceleration).

• Ubuntu 22.04 hevc video playback in chrome
  1 project | /r/Ubuntu | 12 May 2023
• Solution for ZoneMinder and Reolink Cams and High Efficiency Video Coding H.265
  1 project | /r/reolinkcam | 7 Feb 2023
• Google Quietly Added HEVC Support in Chrome
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Oct 2022
• What are your pet peeves about how people use your plex? This is one of my biggest
  2 projects | /r/PleX | 19 Sep 2022
• Proper way to watch HEVC on supported browser like Chromium
  1 project | /r/Ubuntu | 17 Sep 2022
• Chrome now has optional HEVC/h265 support
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Aug 2022
• Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 May 2022

  I think there are a few patches that can enable HEVC hardware decoding with chromium. Though I am a firefox user so I didn't test whether these patches works or not. https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-deco...

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