NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.12 Brings Fixes, Chrome Compatibility Work

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.12 Brings Fixes, Chrome Compatibility Work

There's a new release of the open-source nvidia-vaapi-driver available, the third-party VA-API implementation that in turn targets NVIDIA's NVDEC interface to allow software like Mozilla Firefox that only targets VA-API for video acceleration to work on NVIDIA GPUs...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-VA-API-Driver-0.0.12

[carewolf]

Well the old version worked in chromium if you disabled sandboxing, but couldn't work with sandboxing due to some weird threading issue that conflicted with said sandbox

[JEBjames]

Michael

Typo

"today ans is the first" should be "and"

[RejectModernity]

Is this famous nvidia's linux support? They don't even provide VA-API that is long linux standard?
"But, muh VDPAU" Yeah, nobody uses that crap.

[MorrisS.]

Why this feature is not available for Linux OSes as default yet?

[M@GOid]

While I fully support any effort to provide video hardware acceleration, I must confess that, at least in some scenarios, it is not advantageous. For example, in my desktop with a Ryzen 5 5600 CPU and a Rx6600 GPU, it is more power efficient to run a video on the CPU, up to 4k30fps. That itself is a testimony of how efficient software video decode for VP9/AV1 had become, compared to the early days. Only in 4k/60fps and up, running the video in the GPU became more power efficient.

But on my laptop is another story, iGPU decode always wins, as it is expected.

In fact, this is a good idea for a benchmark for Michael to run on his systems. VIdeo decode power efficiency on Firefox and Chrome/Chromium.


BTW, dedicated video players like VLC are more power efficient than web browsers in video decoding.

[caligula]

That itself is a testimony of how efficient software video decode for VP9/AV1 had become, compared to the early days. Only in 4k/60fps and up, running the video in the GPU became more power efficient.

I wonder why. Don't those chips use dedicated ASIC for video decoding? it should be like 10-100x more power efficient than pure software based.

[dEnigma]

Why this feature is not available for Linux OSes as default yet?

Several reasons. For one thing it needs extensive setting changes for Firefox, some of which can affect security/stability. See https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-va...v-file#firefox

Then there is the fact that it isn't all that efficient when it comes to power consumption since it uses CUDA and thus forces the GPU into a higher power state. See https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-va...iver/issues/74

Finally it has also sometimes caused issues for other apps in the past, so it might not be a net positive and actually just annoy you in practice, depending on your use case. (e.g. there was a time when Discord and some other Electron apps wouldn't launch for people with nvidia-vaapi-driver installed)

[M@GOid]

I wonder why. Don't those chips use dedicated ASIC for video decoding? it should be like 10-100x more power efficient than pure software based.

They do. I imagine that there is some power required to "wake up" the card to use that function. You can have like four 4k60fps streams with very little power used to decode them.

I believe it is just a matter of very efficient software decoders that were polished to perfection, together with a very power efficient CPU architecture.

[MorrisS.]

Several reasons. For one thing it needs extensive setting changes for Firefox, some of which can affect security/stability. See https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-va...v-file#firefox

Then there is the fact that it isn't all that efficient when it comes to power consumption since it uses CUDA and thus forces the GPU into a higher power state. See https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-va...iver/issues/74

Finally it has also sometimes caused issues for other apps in the past, so it might not be a net positive and actually just annoy you in practice, depending on your use case. (e.g. there was a time when Discord and some other Electron apps wouldn't launch for people with nvidia-vaapi-driver installed)

So it isn't worth it at this stage at least.