macOS 11 Big Sur Safari YouTube 4K HDR VP9 support

[jyavenard]

I am talking about 8K60FPS:

The hardware decoder will not be used for 8K60fps as it's not supported by the hardware.

It's only enabled for 4K up to 120Hz and 8K @ 30Hz

VP9UtilitiesCocoa.mm in webkit/trunk/Source/WebCore/platform/graphics/cocoa – WebKit

trac.webkit.org

Everything else will be software.

This isn't just Apple, the limitation are the same across all OS for the intel GPUs

 

[jyavenard]

Are you sure that Big Sur Safari isn't overriding your hardware acceleration settings? Cuz the RX580 has partial hardware VP9 decode acceleration support.

no it doesn't.
The RX580 has ZERO vp9 capabilities.
Only Navi and older do.

 

[iMacDragon]

The hardware decoder will not be used for 8K60fps as it's not supported by the hardware.

It's only enabled for 4K up to 120Hz and 8K @ 30Hz

VP9UtilitiesCocoa.mm in webkit/trunk/Source/WebCore/platform/graphics/cocoa – WebKit

trac.webkit.org

Everything else will be software.

This isn't just Apple, the limitation are the same across all OS for the intel GPUs

Curious, the chile8k video posted earlier plays back with HW decoding, and iina says it's 59.whateverNTCS fps

I can but presume that file is outdated since beta4, and changes not been pushed back yet?

 

[EugW]

no it doesn't.
The RX580 has ZERO vp9 capabilities.
Only Navi and older do.

Polaris has partial hardware decode support for VP9. Dunno about macOS specifically, but nonetheless hardware VP9 decode was present in the RX580 in Windows.

I believe it was eventually removed from AMD's drivers for whatever reason, but it did actually work, and worked pretty well.

 

[jyavenard]

Polaris has partial hardware decode support for VP9. Dunno about macOS specifically, but nonetheless hardware VP9 decode was present in the RX580 in Windows.

I believe it was eventually removed from AMD's drivers for whatever reason, but it did actually work, and worked pretty well.

no, again it doesn't have *any* VP9 specialised hardware, partial or not.

At one point in time AMD shipped a VP9 decoder that was OpenCL based, it would have worked with any graphic cards supporting OpenCL, it happened to only be enabled for vega. But only Firefox shipped with that it was never enabled in Chrome nor any other browser; it was only available via a private AMD API.
The performance sucked big time and it was ultra buggy and the power usage was enormous. Under most circumstances you go better performance via software decode.
The developer working on those drivers then left AMD to work for Adobe and there was no one left to maintain it.
AMD finally removed from all their drivers over 2 years ago.

macOS never had a VP9 decoder until very recently; first used in WebRTC (video conference) and now with Media Source Extension, and I know of only one site that use VP9 with MSE and that's YouTube.

I work daily with all those guys.

 

[jyavenard]

Curious, the chile8k video posted earlier plays back with HW decoding, and iina says it's 59.whateverNTCS fps
I can but presume that file is outdated since beta4, and changes not been pushed back yet?

What I linked to is the current source code of Safari, there's nothing newer than that.
What I believe is happening is that the code there is used for Media Capabilities, this is the bit where a site can ask the web browser what you can play and how do you play it? (is it smooth, is it power efficient etc). YouTube has disabled their code using their API as their site was buggy with it.
This is used by the "Auto" algorithm to determine which resolution you can switch it. So it won't ever automatically choose a resolution that isn't marked as being smooth.

 

[Superhai]

The hardware decoder will not be used for 8K60fps as it's not supported by the hardware.

But still on my 2014 MBP connected to my 4K TV, when playing back an 8k60 file with VP9 it does play. Not perfect, but it I clearly something more than just pure CPU instructions as with any other codec it is useless.

 

[Superhai]

Curious, the chile8k video posted earlier plays back with HW decoding, and iina says it's 59.whateverNTCS fps

If it is the links I posted so yes it is 8k and ~60 fps.
To elaborate more:

VP9 8K60 : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/chile8k.html
AV1 8K30 : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/patagonia.html
VP9 4k24 HDR : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/dolbytest.html
VP9 8K30 : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/savage.html
VP9 8K30 : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/supertrofeo.html
AV1 8K60 HDR : https://jackalworks.com/survp9/peru8k.html

But I will soon take them down as I don't have so much bandwidth available and for rights reasons as well.

 

[jyavenard]

But still on my 2014 MBP connected to my 4K TV, when playing back an 8k60 file with VP9 it does play. Not perfect, but it I clearly something more than just pure CPU instructions as with any other codec it is useless.

It would be software only, a 2014 MBP would be purely software. The first intel with VP9 acceleration are intel QuickSync version 6 (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, Comet Lake). The first nvidia are pascal (10xx (some 980Ti had it) and AMD navi (5xxx and later)

 

[Superhai]

It would be software only, a 2014 MBP would be purely software. The first intel with VP9 acceleration are 6th gen intel (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, Comet Lake). The first nvidia are pascal (10xx (some 980Ti had it) and AMD navi (5xxx and later)

Thats what the papers says, but this is a two core 2.6GHz low power laptop CPU. And I run it off from battery. Still it is responsive while playing the videos.

 

[EugW]

It would be software only, a 2014 MBP would be purely software. The first intel with VP9 acceleration are 6th gen intel (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, Comet Lake). The first nvidia are pascal (10xx (some 980Ti had it) and AMD navi (5xxx and later)

6th gen Intel is Skylake. Kaby Lake is 7th gen.

 

[EugW]

no, again it doesn't have *any* VP9 specialised hardware, partial or not.

At one point in time AMD shipped a VP9 decoder that was OpenCL based, it would have worked with any graphic cards supporting OpenCL, it happened to only be enabled for vega. But only Firefox shipped with that it was never enabled in Chrome nor any other browser; it was only available via a private AMD API.
The performance sucked big time and it was ultra buggy and the power usage was enormous. Under most circumstances you go better performance via software decode.

Ah yes, OpenCL based. I guess the better description would be GPU-assisted decoding.

However, end users could enable it for Polaris and it made a big difference in real world usage.

The developer working on those drivers then left AMD to work for Adobe and there was no one left to maintain it.
AMD finally removed from all their drivers over 2 years ago.

Ha. I didn’t realize there was just one developer working on it. Well, that explains why it just disappeared all of a sudden.

 

[jyavenard]

Ah yes, OpenCL based. I guess the better description would be GPU-assisted decoding.

However, end users could enable it for Polaris and it made a big difference in real world usage.

Not my experience.
Playing a 4K video with my Vega 64 was drawing 280W on the GPU alone !!

On a 580, would be lucky to have 5 minutes battery life with that.

 

[jyavenard]

6th gen Intel is Skylake. Kaby Lake is 7th gen.

my bad, I meant QuickSync version, not gen

 

[EugW]

Not my experience.
Playing a 4K video with my Vega 64 was drawing 280W on the GPU alone !!

On a 580, would be lucky to have 5 minutes battery life with that.

Yes that makes sense, and now I see where you are coming from.

I was not suggesting AMD's Polaris-assisted VP9 decode was energy efficient. I was saying it was effective in the sense that it made it possible to actually decode 4K VP9, which some desktop users couldn't do with CPU alone. Laptop users are a different kettle of fish with different concerns. Not only is power utilization very important, 4K is often less critical anyway on laptops because of the screen size.

 

[jyavenard]

Nice, it plays Youtube 4k just as well as Safari on my MBP as well. Although it goes to 40-60% CPU usage.

Edit: It does not accelerate my embedded videos though.

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/chile8k.html

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/patagonia.html

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/dolbytest.html

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/savage.html

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/supertrofeo.html

https://jackalworks.com/survp9/peru8k.html

The VP9 hardware decoding support landed in Firefox Nightly yesterday, so you can all test it. The power usage is now almost identical to using Safari (playing a 4K 60fps videos with Safari or Firefox uses about 8W of power on a mac book pro 2018).

I've checked all your videos, they all play with the hardware decoder but Patagonia and Peru8K ones

Those two videos are using the AV1 codec ; not VP9. So they wouldn't even play yet in Safari.

AV1 is extremely CPU intensive ; and Firefox current implementation is sub-optimal unfortunately for high-resolution ones. There's no way you'd play an 8K AV1 video on a laptop anyway.

 

[Superhai]

I've checked all your videos, they all play with the hardware decoder but Patagonia and Peru8K ones
Those two videos are using the AV1 codec ; not VP9. So they wouldn't even play yet in Safari.

Yes, I did not expect the AV1 to play.
However, when I run the latest Firefox nightly (81.0a1 (2020-08-13) (64-bit)), the other do play poorly (video image updates like every 3-5 seconds), but in Safari they are fluent.

 

[jyavenard]

Yes, I did not expect the AV1 to play.
However, when I run the latest Firefox nightly (81.0a1 (2020-08-13) (64-bit)), the other do play poorly (video image updates like every 3-5 seconds), but in Safari they are fluent.

Because Safari doesn't support AV1 yet, so it gets serve another codec. You're comparing apple and oranges.

 

[Superhai]

Because Safari doesn't support AV1 yet, so it gets serve another codec. You're comparing apple and oranges.

No, i am talking about the VP9 videos.

 

[jyavenard]

No, i am talking about the VP9 videos.

What mac do you have? didn't you say you had a 2014 one?

I'd be very surprised if Safari software decoder was any better than Firefox one.

 

[startergo]

The VP9 hardware decoding support landed in Firefox Nightly yesterday, so you can all test it. The power usage is now almost identical to using Safari (playing a 4K 60fps videos with Safari or Firefox uses about 8W of power on a mac book pro 2018).

I've checked all your videos, they all play with the hardware decoder but Patagonia and Peru8K ones

Those two videos are using the AV1 codec ; not VP9. So they wouldn't even play yet in Safari.

AV1 is extremely CPU intensive ; and Firefox current implementation is sub-optimal unfortunately for high-resolution ones. There's no way you'd play an 8K AV1 video on a laptop anyway.

Very funny but the same video decodes with VP9 in regular Firefox:

And in Av1 in Firefox nightly:

And of course it does not play well in Nightly. It drops frames like hell.

Edit: Nightly plays that video with Higher resolution as well.

 

[startergo]

Nightly:

Vs Regular

Not much of a difference.

 

[jyavenard]

Very funny but the same video decodes with VP9 in regular Firefox:

And in Av1 in Firefox nightly:

What content you get is entirely chosen by YouTube, they have decided to start serving AV1 unconditionally for Firefox 81 users wherever AV1 is available.

 

[jyavenard]

Nightly:
View attachment 944264
Vs Regular
View attachment 944266
Not much of a difference.

an i7-3770 is a 2012 CPU and doesn't have VP9 decoding capabilities, only 7th gen and later.
I'm actually amazed it could do 8K VP9 with 0 frame drop, certainly unexpected. I would have rated this type of video as unplayable on such hardware

 

[EugW]

Nightly:
View attachment 944264
Vs Regular
View attachment 944266
Not much of a difference.

Core i7-3770?!???!?!?? Is this a hackintosh, and if so, which GPU?

an i7-3770 is a 2012 CPU and doesn't have VP9 decoding capabilities, only 7th gen and later.
I'm actually amazed it could do 8K VP9 with 0 frame drop, certainly unexpected. I would have rated this type of video as unplayable on such hardware

I am very confused now. I don't understand how this is even possible, unless somehow his GPU is being leveraged.