Chrome Hardware Decode

[tazmo]

GRUMPY POST TIME!

I am on Kubuntu 22.04.1 LTS with Chrome 107 using NVidia proprietary drivers (current as of this post).

I've been putzing around trying to get hardware video decode working in Chrome (off and on) for years and I've had it! This has NEVER worked for me.

Is this even possible or are all the "guides" out there all just BS? None of them seem to work or are so old as to be not applicable.

chrome://gpu shows:

• Video Decode: Hardware accelerated

That has to be a LIE (please correct me if I'm wrong).

NVENC (the decode) does work for me (RTX 2070 Super) for both vlc and mpv because nvtop and nvidia-smi dmi shows the dec% column as busy when using these.

But NOT in Chrome. dec% is always 0. Firefox also does not work. I am not using the Firefox snap, but one from the PPA.

I also realize what is happening with Fedora right now. But for me, this has never worked for me with ANY hardware video decode for ANY browser.

Can anyone point to a guide somewhere (anywhere) that actually works with Chrome PLEASE?

Thanks,
Bob

[tazmo]

So this page seems to have the best coverage on the topic.

In summary (which I have not seen a good one yet), browsers use VA-API, NVidia uses VDPAU.

It appears Intel and AMD GPUs with the mesa drivers use VA-API.

There have been attempts to use VDPAU as a "backend" to VA-API with various "intermediate" libraries, but none seem to have survived the progressive delivery of LInux and none (that I know of) now work. Hence there are a lot of "how-tos" on the internet that no longer apply.

Looks like there's a new Radeon R3 based card in my future....