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Trying Using GPU to decode video when watching Youtube

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High CPU use when watching youtube.
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Configuration of PC

  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • i5-6600K
  • 4*8Gb
  • GTX 1050 (2G)

When watching a 4K@60fps video. The CPU usage can be around 80% and GPU usage is roughly 15%. At this time, Youtube uses vp9 as the codec.
cpu usage
youtube codec

Solutions
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I have found two tutorials online. One is for Chrome as well as others. Another is forChromium. I am following the tutorial from the first one.

I enabled the following in Chrome:

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chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist
chrome://flags/#enable-accelerated-video-decode

I have installed the following packages. This step is to install the VA-API to be able to decode media.

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sudo apt install i965-va-driver-shaders libva-drm2 libva-x11-2
sudo dpkg -i libvdpau1_1.4-2_ubuntu20.04.1_amd64.deb
sddo dpkg -i vdpau-va-driver_0.7.4-7ubuntu1_ppa2_20.04.1_amd64.deb

The NVIDIA Driver Version is 460.39. Launch the browser using --use-gl=desktop to enable VA-API hardware acceleration.

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google-chrome-stable --use-gl=desktop

Problem
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After the previous steps. When playing the same video, I still have problems with high CPU usage. And the chrome://media-internals still shows that I am using FFmpegVideoDecoder. It should be MojoVideoDecoder which enables the GPU decoding.

Test using the extension h264ify
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The extension h264ify forces the youtube video to be played with h.264 videos. This solution worked, but the problem is that the 4k resolution is no long available. I can only play it with HD.

No h264ify extension and open chrome with --use-gl=desktop
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I uninstalled the h264ify extension and run chrome with --use-gl=desktop. Youtube videos cannot be played at all.
youtube play error
youtube play error

Discussion on this topic.
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The following links are for archive. I do not have a solution yet. The following links might be useful:

  • Nvidia Discussion forum. An answer is:

    Vdpau doesn’t decode VP9, therefore vaapi over vdpau also doesn’t decode VP9. You have never seen hardware-accelerated VP9 playback with chromium-vaapi and your old 1050Ti.

  • An experimental Vdpau driver that supports vp9. Link
  • Nvidia GPU support list. My GPU is GTX1050 (GP107)
  • Chromium beta PPA.