Arch Linux User Repository

For NVIDIA or X.Org session, use --use-gl=desktop. For Intel/AMD and Wayland session, use --use-gl=egl.

Wayland session with EGL backend requires patched mesa that supports ANGLE_sync_control_rate.

Precompiled unsigned binary package available at openSUSE Build Service repositories. Use at your own risk.

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/kjliew/Arch/x86_64/

If you are having issues with NVidia, you need to build a patched libva-vdpau-driver-chromium, see here for details.

@liewkj "decoder underflow" makes sense when I am playing a video on Youtube and my internet isn't fast enough, but I also have "decoder underflow" when playing a local video (the exact same video I linked, downloaded in VP9, 4K60). By "issue cannot be verified" I meant that I cannot view "stats for nerds" on local files that show dropped frames. I don't have a 4K screen either but a 4K video is a good way to test whether GPU is really used since GPU can play any resolution and my CPU cannot play 4K. I am on Plasma X.org session, Wayland is not usable for me yet. Stats for nerds: https://imgur.com/a/pOSFwRw

for some reason --use-gl=desktop is the only one that works for me as --use-gl=egl causes stuttering and vsync issues, this is on intel i7-10750h

@Mthw Your chrome://media-internals looked absolutely normal. It was normal for decoder underflow when the buffer was consumed when you were streaming from YouTube. I got the same messages but zero dropped frames. The same messages showed up on Intel GPU, too. The Ryzen 2500U laptop only has 1080p panel, YouTube would not supply 4K60 video unless I downloaded the video locally with youtube-dl. I typically do not consume 4K video for ISP bandwidth conservation.

You made conflicting statements. At one point you said you had the same issue playing video locally and then later said the issue cannot be verified on local file but verifiable on YouTube.

Can you show Stats for nerds from YouTube? Are you on X11 or Wayland session?

@liewkj Have you tried playing the video at 4K60? Could you? This issue is not present with lower resolutions even 2K. We have very similar (I have a 3550H) hardware so I it should behave the same way.

I played the video localy and I had the same issues as before: 1. the video freezes every 3 seconds 2. I cannot verify this on a local file, but it looks like I am loosing a lot of frames (This is veryfiable on Youtube)

This is how my chrome://media-internals looks like: https://imgur.com/a/uqphy2I

@Mthw: If you had MojoVideoDecoder but video playback remained stuttering and dropping frames, then it might be issues with network quality or background processes hogging the system. The YouTube video link that you provided (VP9@60FPS) played fine on Ryzen 2500U APU laptop from chromium-vaapi. You could download the video and playback locally with file:///path/to/video from chromium to rule out issues with network quality.

So I went back to the official chromium package, I've checked chrome://media-internals and it says MojoVideoDecoder is used and also my GPU reports that it's used ("sudo cat '/sys/kernel/debug/dri/1/amdgpu_pm_info' | grep VCN" returns "Enabled"). But the video playback is terible. It stops exactly every 3 seconds and shows the spinning animation even though the video is already loaded. And the built-in stats show that around 1/3 of the video frames are lost.

Well chromium and firefox are the only browsers that support GPU decode on Linux, so none of the rest will work.

But both require you to actually take action, they don't work OOTB. Again, you need to do the things I told you to do to have some idea what's going on.

@Mthw you do not need this package for AMD GPUs. The regular Arch chromium package enables gpu acceleration on AMD GPUs.

You might want to confirm you aren't already using GPU acceleration by opening chrome://media-internals while the video is playing, and then going to the "Kplay" entry and click on it, and look for the video decoder section. See if it says "MojoVideoDecoder," "VpxVideoDecoder," or something else. If it says "MojoVideoDecoder," you're using hardware acceleration. The thing is, you shouldn't have a YT video playing at 3 fps with software decoding anyway.

But you don't need this specific package. Unfortunately there is nothing like GreenWithEnvy for AMD GPUs on Linux that can show Decoder and Encoder usage, but you can check by doing what I said. If it says "VpxVideoDecoder" (and you have to check while it's actually playing in another tab), you're using software decoding. Go to chrome://gpu and see what it says.

I also tried the same flags with chromium, chrome-dev, brave and ms-edge but with no difference. I also tried without use-gl=desktop.