Canonical and Intel have partnered to build a version of the Chromium browser that enables hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding. This should result in improved performance and extend the battery life for Kaby Lake (7th Gen) and newer platforms, when using VP8, VP9, and H.264 codecs [1].
To try this version, you will need to switch Chromium to the hwacc branch.
To install hardware accelerated Chromium: snap install chromium --channel=latest/candidate/hwacc
To switch from a previous installation: snap refresh chromium --channel=latest/candidate/hwacc
To go back to the stable channel: snap refresh chromium --channel=latest/stable
Alternatively, you can have both versions installed and running in parallel.
Let us know if you notice the improvements, how you are testing, and if you find any problems.
For reporting any specific issues, you can also use the bug tracker.
Thank you!
Doesn’t this also work for AV1? That seems to be in the linked table and it seems to be working for me on my Alder Lake for a YouTube video that “Stats for Nerds” says is av01.
AV1 should also work on 11th generation Intel CPUs and later. Sometimes you just have to omit details from announcements to avoid being overly wordy or confusing people.
That said, I should also note that if “Stats for Nerds says is av01” that tells you what the software is doing, not whether the hardware is being used for it. To verify hardware acceleration, run sudo intel_gpu_top to see that the Video cores of your GPU are active.
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.
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
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.
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.
‘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?