No HW acceleration in video playback

[dumol]

Thanks! There is some progress, all sites I’ve tried now play both video and audio (youtube.com, bbc.com, v.reddit.com, piped.video, yewtu.be, etc).

However, there is no longer hardware acceleration for video decoding, as far as I can tell. With 4.4.x, I was able to play YouTube 1080p with no dropped frames on my XA2. With 4.5.x, even 480p videos on YouTube are dropping frames. Please see the attached images for comparing the nerd info on the same YouTube video before and after the updated to 4.5.x.

(You might think it’s the change of video codec for the served video, but I’ve tried forcing VP9 on piped.video and it didn’t play 1080p as before anyway.)

[poetaster]

Sigh. I’d be happy if the browser STARTED normally. Youtube tests have shown what you’re seeing also on the Volla22/GS5. However, invidious shows 1080x720 videos at full rate with no dropped frames. Not sure.

[dumol]

I’ve also tried Invidious, both the default streaming and the DASH-based one. It was smooth for me only at 360p with SFOS 4.5. On SFOS 4.4, I’m using Invidious daily at 720p, very nice experience even without JavaScript, but it was dropping lots of frames on my XA2 with SFOS 4.5 no matter what combinations of Invidious settings I’ve tried. Maybe your hardware has a more powerful CPU and copes better with this change?

[poetaster]

Correction, 1280 x 720. The GS5 has a more powerful processor. On the other hand, on opengl is broken on this port :0 Still, the browser has a number of issues. Given what @nephros has discovered on the sony devices (blue tint doing web-rtc video like jitsi) which I do NOT see, I think there is a compositor bug on the sony phones. But there is something else broken, too.

[dumol]

Because of this problem, I’ve downgraded on my XA2 to Sailfish OS 4.4 to enjoy hardware acceleration for video playing in the native web browser, shortly after reporting this.

However, as another user has reported that the situation has improved with latest 4.5, I’ve upgraded from 4.4 again, some two months ago. I’ve tested 720p YouTube before and after this upgrade, I’m attaching a couple of screenshot to show that the issue still exists, but the situation is a bit changed…

Not sure if this change is client-side or server-side, I’m inclined to believe the latter, as VP9 is now used on SFOS 4.5 as well. This improves the situation somewhat, so there are fewer dropped frames with YouTube. 720p is kind of watchable for most videos with my XA2. 480p is now fluid, even with sport videos.

Still, the issue remains, there doesn’t seem to be any hardware acceleration when playing videos in the native browser, which also has a dramatic impact on battery life and the temperature of the device. At some point, I’ve been watching a live stream at 720p for about an hour, and Battery Buddy has alerted me the temperature of the battery was much too high. The device was indeed very hot to touch, so I’ve stopped the stream and removed the phone case. This never happened with 4.4 when watching live streams on that site, in the same position at home, using the same phone case.

Thank you for following this!

[dumol]

It looks like this has been silently fixed in 4.6! Both AVC1 and VP9 videos on YouTube seem to be played with accelerated decoding on my XA2 with SFOS 4.6.0.13 (Sauna). 1080p YT videos are again silky smooth on my device and 780p@60 videos are played with very few dropped frames, just like on SFOS 4.4. Thank you!

I’m enclosing screenshots for the above two videos to compare. AVC decoding seems to be marginally better, but I had to disable VP9 support altogether in about:config for that, something that’s probably not worth the gain…