Why is video acceleration much better in Chromium than Firefox?

Hi all,

I use version 20.04 (beta 2 with latest updates) on the Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB), and I started off using Firefox, but the video acceleration on that is absolutely terrible for some reason (especially 1080p50) on sites like Youtube. I tried enabling various acceleration options in config too but didn't make it any better...

Later on, I installed the Chromium snap and enabled video and rasterizing acceleration in flags and the difference is like night and day! 1080p50 or 60 video in YouTube is completely smooth with no frame drop...

Does anyone know why Firefox video works so poorly and is there any way to improve it to work as well as Chromium?

TIA for any ideas!
MATE is a great distribution and happy to support it. :smiley:

Welcome to community Eisenheim,
See this explanation:
https://linuxreviews.org/Web_Browser_Benchmarks:_Chromium_85_Places_Firefox_Even_Further_Behind_Other_Web_Browsers

And this for webrender in frx:

Graphics control of cpu and gpu is the key, and vectorial image render process.
cheers

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Thanks for the welcome!
It's a pity to read on the links about how Mozilla has gone downhill during this year in particular... I guess Firefox is on the way out as a browser unless somehow it can get a lot more development backing?
Will give the WebRender thing a try... but I wonder if it makes hardware video decode work properly?

I gave the webrender thing a try. It's weird. I kinda worked but kinda didn't. The image in 1080p60 looked better but it was still dropping frames something silly. Then when I went to 'undo' it --

-- YouTube no longer offered me any videos over 720p. Even sites that always offer 1080p60.

Hmm.

UPDATE Yeah. Somehow this 'broke' something. That a refresh and reinstall can't fix.

Oh Linux... spend too much time fixing mysterious breaks.

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I tried webrender aswell, but didn't have any luck with it making Firefox video acceleration work. Didn't have the odd problem you are having though? Maybe delete the Firefox configuration folder in your home directory and reinstall? (because I don't think it deletes it if you uninstall Firefox package)...

Anyway, I think the best option for now is just to use Chromium, or something that uses the same browser engine since the hardware video/other accelerations actually work. Even though Firefox is supposed to be better privacy wise, it's just starting to lag way behind in the performance area.

Indeed. I gave up after 6 weeks of experimenting with two Linux distros and went back to Windows 10. Edge and Chrome and even Firefox can simply play 1080p60 just fine on the same Celeron hardware. I never really noticed that until I fussed with Linux.

I see Linux in the same condition as Firefox. You get better privacy features but at the cost of stability. I'm doing next to nothing with Mate and it breaks somehow after two weeks. When this issue arose with it came an issue that as I opened Firefox... momentarily... my desktop wallpaper would 'move' slightly... as if nudged.

I have spare time which allowed me to explore Linux. But it's simply not stable enough compared to Windows... and I know that's a left handed compliment, but true.

I'd suggest if someone needs to rescue an old laptop they instead consider buying a new cheap one. The prices have gotten low enough and the spec will be decent. If $400 is too much for someone the time they waste trying to make an old laptop run Linux will cost them the same.

There's a brand new 2Ghz Beelink GK55 Mini PC that will be $178 on 11/11 on AliXpress. Another $100 puts you in a monitor. $20 mouse and keyboard. That's $300 for a brand new PC with a 22 inch IPS. (And they're Linux friendly for those who insist, lol.)

Those machines don't look much Linux-friendly if you manage to break Ubuntu MATE (and other distros as well) while doing «next to nothing with it» and find Linux unstable.

You can grab the most Linux-friendly and maintainable refurbished laptops for ~200$. I5, 8gb ram or more, SSD. Still powerful enough to achieve most taks nowadays, especially on Linux. Machines that will still run (and be maintanable as well) when the new 400$ laptop with subpar Linux support will die.

As for your mini-PC. Processor is horrendous, ram is soldered (= good luck if memory fails) and you can grab refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre or Dell Optiplex machines way more powerful (and REALLY linux friendly) with an I5 processor, non-soldered ram and SSD that will cost half that price.

Blame the user? Or the hardware? Yeah... I don't think so.

Nice try.