Hardware acceleration not working in browsers

[medwatt]

I have been “trying” Linux for the past 2 years and recently wanted to install it on a bigger ssd.

I installed the same distro I was using (Manjaro) and the same kernel version (5.15). I have a separate partition for / and /home. I copied all the config files from the old ~/.config and ~/.local into the new one. What I’m trying to say is that firefox settings are identical on both drives. The only difference between the old and new system is that I am using btrfs in the new one instead of ext4.

For some reason, hardware acceleration no longer works on the new build and causes the cpu of my laptop to go crazy. Hardware acceleration works fine on VLC or any other standard media player. I am able to verify this using intel_gpu_top, where the video column is stuck at 0 for firefox or any other browser. Any idea how to troubleshoot and get hardware acceleration back working in firefox?

[banjo]

So, I don’t use firefox but I do read the update-announcements .

• Firefox VAAPI doesn’t work

Can be fixed by removing the entire Firefox profile and settings
All Firefox settings will be reset to default!

~/.mozilla
~/.cache/mozilla
~/.pulse

…just at the bottom of “Older Issues”.

also:

[HowTo] Provide System Information

Welcome to Manjaro! To allow all of us helpful people on this forum TO HELP YOU, we need some basic information about your system. This probably means you described the symptoms of your problem, but now we need some more information to know where the origin of your issue is exactly. Someone else probably linked you to this tutorial, so if you’re reading this in response to a question, please click the link above this text to bring you to the full and unabridged text of the tutorial…

[medwatt]

I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. I already said that hardware acceleration is working on the other system (same laptop, same manjaro build, just different ssd).

[ishaan2479]

@medwatt

For some reason, hardware acceleration no longer works on the new build and causes the cpu of my laptop to go crazy. Hardware acceleration works fine on VLC or any other standard media player. I am able to verify this using intel_gpu_top, where the video column is stuck at 0 for firefox or any other browser. Any idea how to troubleshoot and get hardware acceleration back working in firefox?

I have this exactly same problem right now. I will get back if I can solve it.

[ishaan2479]

It works for me now on Intel Tigerlake. Steps:

Install intel-media-driver , libva-utils and add LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD in /etc/environment as root. Log out and log back in.Verify if runnning vainfo return some output or not. If it does then change these properties in about:config:

• gfx.webrender.all → true
• media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled → true
• media.av1.enabled → false

Relaunch firefox and open any 4k video and verify any percentage > 0 in “Video” section with sudo intel_gpu_top. See Hardware video acceleration - ArchWiki and Firefox - ArchWiki if it’s still not working.

Screenshot

Not really necessary but still

[cscs]

Huh. That av1 option seemed to change it up for me … odd.

Havent had time to test more properly, and dont have intel … but anyhoo heres an ok resource as a bonus:

Chalkboard HTML5 Benchmark

I wouldnt think the env var is required either … but apparently I lost all my intel HWAccel knowledge.