H.264 Video with BBC iPlayer
This section applies to any video service that delivers H.264 video by default. BBC iPlayer and other services use this video codec.
We need to set some flags in Firefox. They are accessed by pointing Firefox to about:config. Firefox offers the warning “Proceed with Caution. Changing advanced configuration preferences can impact Firefox performance or security.”
Click the “Accept the Risk and Continue” box to proceed.
Set these flags
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true
media.ffvpx.enabled to false
media.rdd-vpx.enabled to false
media.navigator.mediadatadecoder_vpx_enabled to true
We need to start Firefox with an environment variable, MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1. The quickest way to test things are working is to include this environment variable at the command line. Start Firefox with the command:
$ MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox 1
Our system should now be configured to use hardware video acceleration in Firefox. We can verify the system and Firefox are correctly configured by monitoring the output of intel_gpu_top.
$ sudo intel_gpu_top
We’re watching an H.264 encoded video in Firefox. The important engine is Video/0. As Video/0 is greater than 0%, hardware video acceleration is working while we are watching the H.264 video.
1 We can start Firefox with the MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 environment variable automatically, but that’s left as an exercise for the reader.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Configuration
Page 2 – iPlayer
Page 3 – YouTube
Complete list of articles in this series:
| HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini Desktop PC | |
|---|---|
| Week 6 | Lightweight gaming on the HP EliteDesk |
| Week 5 | Multiple operating systems running on the HP EliteDesk |
| Week 4 | Hardware graphics acceleration when watching videos in Firefox |
| Week 3 | Multimedia on the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 USFF PC |
| Week 2 | Benchmarking the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 USFF PC with other machines |
| Week 1 | Introduction to the series including wiping Windows and installing Manjaro |
This blog is written on the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini Desktop PC.
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