Hardware-accelerated encode doesn’t seem to work right now. But hardware-accelerated decode in Google Meet for example does work already. I don’t know a timeline for encoding support.
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We have updated the snap build to 2475.
Along with the chromium version update, a couple of issues were fixed.
Let us know your feedback!
Hello.
Sorry to chime in this late. Is chromium-ffmpeg a necessary snap as well?
Thank you for your time.
That snap is only needed for third-party browser snaps. Everything I’ve seen only references Opera using it.
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Hey, nothing to apologize for.
Elcste is right. The chromium-ffmpeg snap (whose reason of existence is described here) is irrelevant to this.
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Thank you for participating in this beta testing.
The results have been positive and provided the team with additional confidence in the work done.
We will keep you informed on the next steps.
Edit:
In the meantime, hardware accelerated Chromium made it to the official latest/edge and latest/beta channels with candidate and stable following later.
To switch a previous installation:
snap refresh chromium --beta
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Cool! Confirmed working with my 8th gen and 12th gen laptops.
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Hello, dear developers! This is amazing! I have a low-spec laptop with an Intel Pentium Silver N5000 processor and UHD 605 graphics. I used Firefox before installing the Chromium browser, and my CPU temperature would easily reach 70℃, and sometimes even jump to 75-80℃.
Now, with the Chromium browser installed, my CPU temperatures stay around 58-60℃ during video playback and about 50-55℃ for lightweight browsing without video playback. Previously, I only used the Google Chrome official deb-package, but now I’ll stick with this Chromium browser.
Here are a few screenshots:
I have one question: for some videos, intel_gpu_top shows that only the Render/3D process is under load. However, for other videos, Video and VideoEnhance processes are almost under the same load as the Render/3D process. Is this expected behavior, and does it work like that?
P.S. I’m sorry, I’m not a native English speaker. I apologize if there are any grammatical errors.
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The second screenshot I will send in a separate message because I’m a new user, and I can’t upload multiple images within one message.
‘Render/3D’ will always be busy because Chromium/Chrome is always GPU rendered.
If you find ‘Video 0.00%’ then likely it’s just a codec that your CPU doesn’t support natively. Yours is Gemini Lake in this table. When you right click on the video and select ‘Stats for nerds’ then what is listed next to ‘Codecs’?
I found a video where both Video and VideoEnhance processes stay at 0% load.
Codecs: av01.0.08M.08 (399) / opus (251)
I have also uploaded a full screenshot with the statistics.
It’s strange then. Why are Video/VideoEnhance under load for some of the Youtube videos, while some YouTube videos don’t have supported codecs for my CPU? Can I fix that? Or my CPU just doesn’t support codecs above?
“Codecs av01” means AV1 which is only supported in Intel 11th generation and later. But you can work around it if you can get the browser to request the same video in a different codec.
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Thank you a lot for the additional help! I installed the Chrome extension, and play the same video - as a result, both the Video and VideoEnhance processes are now under load.
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Please, can you help me? Now I faced a strange problem. Looks like Ubuntu (I’m using 23.04 version) by default updated the Chromium browser from the latest/candidate/hwacc channel to stable one or other version.
I didn’t catch the notification, but I clear remember, that there was notification like: Close the Chromium browser, update is available, 13 days left or something like that.
I uploaded a screenshot from the About Chromium page. Version 115.0.5790.98 (Official Build) snap (64-bit) - it’s the same version?
Now, when playing any YouTube videos, both Video and VideoEnhance show 0% load. Overall, I’ve noticed that the CPU load and temperature have increased, similar to when I’m using Firefox before.
I also tried using the command:: snap refresh chromium --channel=latest/candidate/hwacc that gives me no result, it says: snap "chromium" has no updates available
Uff, I apologize. Your diagnose is accurate.
Those branches have an expiration time of 30 days (no way around that) and I forgot to bump this one to keep it alive.
This is fixed now.
That said, just as additional information, in the snap world you can always use snap revert {snap-name} when you detect that a refresh caused problems and you want to go back to the previously installed revision.
And also edge/hwacc is where development happens so it is “naturally” bumped from time to time so that problem doesn’t happen there.
Thank you, I understand. Although, I’m not a very technical user)
I installed back the browser using command: snap refresh chromium --channel=latest/candidate/hwacc, now everything works as it was previously.
I think this version of Chrome should be pushed to the stable branch as soon as possible. Many Intel users with low spec laptops will benefit a lot from this update, and I can confirm that!
Great, and thanks for the report!
Today I merged this version of Chromium into the edge channel, so the next edge version (i.e. > 116.0.5845.42) will have it enabled if all goes right.
Then it will be beta and only then stable.
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If there is va-api support there must be very little work to just not blacklist AMD hardware…?
What do you mean with blacklist AMD hardware?
The official latest/edge channel has now x64 is in 117 and with hwacc merged.
If you saw my previous comment announcing this, it is now deleted as I had to revert it because of LP:2028653.
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