01-07-2019, 06:18 PM
Chromium on Fedora finally gets VAAPI support!
<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.png" width="300" height="137" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p>Do you like playing videos in your web browser? Well, good news, the Chromium web browser available in Fedora gets a Video Acceleration API support. That makes video playback much smoother while using significantly less resources.</p>
<h2>A little bit of history</h2>
<p>Chromium with a VAAPI patch was already available on other distributions. But this was not the case with Fedora. I really want hardware acceleration. But my love for Fedora was holding me back. Then with sheer willpower, I joined Fedora and started maintaining a package in COPR.</p>
<p>I am not really a distro hopper but a DE hopper. I usually jump from Gnome to KDE and vice versa depending upon my mood. Then I started maintaining Chromium with vaapi patch on COPR. I was using the official patch which was submitted <a href="https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/532294">upstream</a> for code review. I had very little hope that it will get merge. The patch is outdated and and try jobs were failing at that time.</p>
<p>After six months, the Chromium upstream maintainers made a statement that they are <a href="https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=463440#c65">not interested to include this patch</a>. So after that I started working on my own patch with referenced from the official patch. My patch is about using the existing flags that other operating system uses instead of creating a new flag just for experimentation.</p>
<div id="attachment_23898" style="width: 584px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23898 " src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.png" alt="screenshot showing chromium uses video engine" width="574" height="262" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Chromium uses AMDGPU’s UVD engine while playing a video</p>
</div>
<div id="attachment_23896" style="width: 636px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23896" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support-1.png" alt="chromium's flag screenshot" width="626" height="213" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Chromium uses Existing flags on Fedora</p>
</div>
<h2>Effects of the VAAPI patch</h2>
<p>Chromium with this patch was extremely stable on both of my machines. They both have AMD GPU. The video playback is smooth. This improved overall power savings as well.</p>
<div id="attachment_23897" style="width: 597px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23897" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.jpg" alt="Comparision with/without vaapi" width="587" height="282" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Credits: Tobias Wolfshappen</p>
</div>
<p>As you can see, chromium with the vaapi patch takes up significantly less resources in comparison to chromium without the patch and Firefox. The CPU usage went down from 120% to 10%. The playback is smooth with no shuttering.</p>
<h2>VA-API patch in chromium for Fedora</h2>
<p>It was then Fedora’s Engineering Manager @ Red Hat and Chromium maintainer, <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Spot">Tom Callaway, </a>finally recognises the VAAPI patch and <a href="https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/chromium/c/278c62709d1dba5883c3b69047706837bb402bd7?branch=master">decides</a> to include in Fedora’s Chromium browser. Fedora becomes the second distribution to include the VAAPI patch in their official Chromium package.</p>
</div>
<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.png" width="300" height="137" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p>Do you like playing videos in your web browser? Well, good news, the Chromium web browser available in Fedora gets a Video Acceleration API support. That makes video playback much smoother while using significantly less resources.</p>
<h2>A little bit of history</h2>
<p>Chromium with a VAAPI patch was already available on other distributions. But this was not the case with Fedora. I really want hardware acceleration. But my love for Fedora was holding me back. Then with sheer willpower, I joined Fedora and started maintaining a package in COPR.</p>
<p>I am not really a distro hopper but a DE hopper. I usually jump from Gnome to KDE and vice versa depending upon my mood. Then I started maintaining Chromium with vaapi patch on COPR. I was using the official patch which was submitted <a href="https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/532294">upstream</a> for code review. I had very little hope that it will get merge. The patch is outdated and and try jobs were failing at that time.</p>
<p>After six months, the Chromium upstream maintainers made a statement that they are <a href="https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=463440#c65">not interested to include this patch</a>. So after that I started working on my own patch with referenced from the official patch. My patch is about using the existing flags that other operating system uses instead of creating a new flag just for experimentation.</p>
<div id="attachment_23898" style="width: 584px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23898 " src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.png" alt="screenshot showing chromium uses video engine" width="574" height="262" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Chromium uses AMDGPU’s UVD engine while playing a video</p>
</div>
<div id="attachment_23896" style="width: 636px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23896" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support-1.png" alt="chromium's flag screenshot" width="626" height="213" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Chromium uses Existing flags on Fedora</p>
</div>
<h2>Effects of the VAAPI patch</h2>
<p>Chromium with this patch was extremely stable on both of my machines. They both have AMD GPU. The video playback is smooth. This improved overall power savings as well.</p>
<div id="attachment_23897" style="width: 597px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-23897" src="http://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/chromium-on-fedora-finally-gets-vaapi-support.jpg" alt="Comparision with/without vaapi" width="587" height="282" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Credits: Tobias Wolfshappen</p>
</div>
<p>As you can see, chromium with the vaapi patch takes up significantly less resources in comparison to chromium without the patch and Firefox. The CPU usage went down from 120% to 10%. The playback is smooth with no shuttering.</p>
<h2>VA-API patch in chromium for Fedora</h2>
<p>It was then Fedora’s Engineering Manager @ Red Hat and Chromium maintainer, <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Spot">Tom Callaway, </a>finally recognises the VAAPI patch and <a href="https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/chromium/c/278c62709d1dba5883c3b69047706837bb402bd7?branch=master">decides</a> to include in Fedora’s Chromium browser. Fedora becomes the second distribution to include the VAAPI patch in their official Chromium package.</p>
</div>