On 06/11/2020 11:02, Chris Elvidge wrote:
> On 06/11/2020 10:11 am, Pancho wrote:
>> On 05/11/2020 21:46, Yes wrote:
>>> I'm thinking of buying the Pi 4 to use for web surfing and watching
>>> anime and YouTube videos.  I don't have any intentions to do video
>>> editing or other such productivity tasks.
>>>
>>
>> I'm a bit confused by the other responses. I tested Raspbian desktop
>> on my Pi4 4GB just over a year ago and it wasn't utilising hardware
>> graphics acceleration in the Chrome ("Chromium"?) browser. HD video,
>> fullscreen, youtube, was unwatchable in Chrome. None of the other
>> browsers seemed better, I think Firefox was "experimental".
>>
>> Sure, you could set it up to play video with something like KODI that
>> does use x264 hardware acceleration (maybe even x265), but the default
>> youtube browser experience was unwatchable.
>>
>> Maybe things have improved in the last year, but I would confirm that
>> is true before going ahead. The problems did seem to be
>> software/drivers rather than hardware.
>>
>> I now use my Pi 4 headless.
>>
>>
>
> According to this:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=268356
>
> Pi0-3 have hardware accelerated decode for H264, MPEG4, H263, and
> through optional codec licences for MPEG2 and VC1.
> Pi4 has the same hardware accelerated decode for H264, but not the other
> codecs. It also has a separate block for HEVC.
>

Yes I know it had hardware acceleration, KODI, was good for HD H264 full
screen. My point was that Chrome wasn't using it.

> The block for H264 etc can only be accessed via the VPU firmware, which
> means either MMAL or IL. That applies to all platforms.
>


> More info at the above URL and here:
>
https://lemariva.com/blog/2020/08/raspberry-pi-4-video-acceleration-decode-chro
mium
>

OK so this guy is say Chrome still doesn't use hardware GPU acceleration
by default, but if you are willing to follow his guide you can get it to
work.

I'm a little bit sceptical about how well it works. If it really worked
well wouldn't Raspbian do it by default. It is astonishing that such a
critical issue would not be addressed.

In the past when I have tried this type of stuff I have found
non-standard solutions to be fragile, particularly with HTPC.

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