Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by Groxx on Sunday June 07, 2026 @08:03PM
(#48439923)
Oh sweet, now I can look forward to "compiling shaders..." on every website I visit!
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More seriously, I'm definitely curious to try this out on some of my weird computers. Sometimes vulkan support is noticeably more capable than other modes.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by soganess on Sunday June 07, 2026 @08:59PM
(#48440248)
There are fairly mainstream devices with decent Vulkan support but poor hardware decode coverage for the codecs people actually get on the web. Polaris era Radeons have H.264 and HEVC decode, but VP9 support is absent (or not exposed in many common Linux paths) so YouTube is sloppy. The Raspberry Pi 5 is another example: it has hardware HEVC decode, but YouTube 4K is generally VP9 or AV1 rather than HEVC, and Pi 5 does not advertise VP9 hardware decode.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by kcb on Sunday June 07, 2026 @10:35PM
(#48440762)
I think Vulkan Video is just another api to access those hardware decoders. It's not going to bring support for codecs to hardware without the support.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by TiredOfLife on Monday June 08, 2026 @01:52PM
(#48448651)
On pi5 they even removed the hw accelerated h264 encoder. The soc used in raspberry pi is basically what scraps Broadcom allow them to have. For example it took to pi5 to add accelerated aes.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by joe_mamba on Monday June 08, 2026 @07:46AM
(#48444124)
>but VP9 support is absent (or not exposed in many common Linux paths) so YouTube is sloppy [...] but YouTube 4K is generally VP9 or AV1 rather than HEVC
I installed linux yesterday. Youtube doesn't let you backtrack to VP9 in the user profile setting. It serves AV1 by default now for all resolutions. Bummer if you're on older and/or low end hardware.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by pezezin on Sunday June 07, 2026 @09:27PM
(#48440384)
Vulkan Video is about exposing the GPU's hardware encoding/decoding functionality through the standard Vulkan API, not about implementing the codecs through shaders.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by QuaternionsBhop on Sunday June 07, 2026 @09:47PM
(#48440499)
This is great news for nvidia users on Linux. It means that they don't need to install a VAAPI compatibility tool like nvidia-vaapi-driver. I also hope to see Vulkan Video supported in the open source userspace nvidia driver NVK soon too.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by TingPing on Sunday June 07, 2026 @10:27PM
(#48440724)
It doesn’t mean anything for desktop users, it’s just a new standard that could have wider support than VAAPI since it’s part of Vulkan. Mostly embedded devices lacking VAAPI support today, though nvidia requires a third party implementation so this might improve that situation.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by pjmlp on Monday June 08, 2026 @02:38AM
(#48441980)
Lets see if this works better than VA-API, I could never manage to make it work with Chrome or Firefox, on my now dead netbook.
Since the Flash plugin was gone, watching YT on that device was always software rendering, regardless of the magic incantations between VA-API and browser configuration flags.
Re:Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding
by Groxx on Monday June 08, 2026 @03:29AM
(#48442296)
Yea, both netbook-flavored machines I've got have been a struggle with VAAPI (and mostly giving up too). Definitely hoping for some success here, they actually do have vulkan drivers...
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More seriously, I'm definitely curious to try this out on some of my weird computers. Sometimes vulkan support is noticeably more capable than other modes.
because it does not have it
Maybe it was silently presented in silco but lacked the software bits. It's a pretty big omission considering the Pi5's release date.
I installed linux yesterday. Youtube doesn't let you backtrack to VP9 in the user profile setting. It serves AV1 by default now for all resolutions. Bummer if you're on older and/or low end hardware.
Maybe some browser extensions can force VP9?
To h264 yes, but not to VP9, no?
What you really do is disallow everything save vp9...
https://whattrainisitnow.com/release/?version=esr
Since the Flash plugin was gone, watching YT on that device was always software rendering, regardless of the magic incantations between VA-API and browser configuration flags.