![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/firefox-icon250.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This tutorial shows how to enable hardware video acceleration (VA-API) for Firefox, so it uses the video card to decode\/encode video to save power.<\/b><\/p>\n
Hardware video acceleration is a computer technology to make the graphics card to encode and decode video, thus offloading the CPU to save power. And compared to CPU, GPU are normally more efficient at the job.<\/p>\n
UPDATE 2024: VA-API SHOULD BE ENABLED BY DEFAULT (if available) IN RECENT FIREFOX RELESES! SO, JUST GO TO BOTTOM TO VERIFY.<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n
There are a few ways to achieve this on Ubuntu Linux, including:<\/p>\n
The VA-API supports Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA (via open-source Nouveau drivers) GPUs. And it is widely supported by software, such as MPV uses va-api hardware acceleration for video playback by default if available.<\/p>\n
The VDPAU API supports both AMD and NVIDIA, but has no support in Firefox or Chromium. And while NVENC\/NVDEC is used for NVIDIA GPU only, we usually use VA-API for hardware video acceleration.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/firefox-vaapi.jpg\")
<\/a>Firefox pop-up video encoding\/decoding via Intel GPU<\/p><\/div>\n
NOTE<\/b>: VA-API does not work on NVIDIA via proprietary drivers as mentioned above. If you installed NVIDIA proprietary driver via ‘Additional Drivers’ utility, this will only work when you choose ‘Intel (Power Saving)’ mode in NVIDIA Prime settings.<\/i><\/p>\n
The VA-API may work out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. You can firstly open terminal from start menu (click ‘Activities’ and search terminal).<\/p>\n
Next install And run it to check VA-API info:<\/p>\n It outputs the driver as well as supported profile. If the command outputs an error, you can try to install drivers via command:<\/p>\n And for old Intel hardware, install By setting the environment variable, you can choose which driver to use. For example, set “export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965” to use i965 driver. The value can also set to “nouveau” for NVIDIA, or “radeonsi” for AMDGPU.<\/p>\n Firefox added VA-API support since version 80, though it’s not enabled by default. You can enabled it manually by doing following steps one by one.<\/p>\n Firstly, open Firefox and go to about:config<\/b> in url bar. Click on “Accept the Risk and Continue”. Then search for following keys, enable or disable them one by one:<\/p>\n Secondly, set environment variable (for current user only). Open terminal and run command to edit profile file:<\/p>\n When file opens, add following lines to the end:<\/p>\n You can SKIP<\/b> this if Finally, log out and back in. Open Firefox and play a video and see result!<\/p>\n During video playback, you can use top command to see CPU usage before and after enable VA-API. For Intel GPU, there’s Open terminal and run command to install the tool first:<\/p>\n Next, run command:<\/p>\n Start playing video in Firefox and you’ll see the video bar is busy (above 0%) if VA-API starts working.<\/p>\n For AMD GPU, there’s another command line tool “radeontop” available to monitor GPU activity.<\/p>\n NOTE<\/b> for YouTube videos, the video codec may sometimes not supported by your hardware. To workaround, try h264ify<\/a> or enhanced-h264ify<\/a> extension to make YouTube stream H.264 videos instead of VP8\/VP9.<\/p>\n That’s all. Enjoy!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This tutorial shows how to enable hardware video acceleration (VA-API) for Firefox, so it uses the video card to decode\/encode video to save power. Hardware video acceleration is a computer technology to make the graphics card to encode and decode video, thus offloading the CPU to save power. And compared to CPU, GPU are normally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1194],"class_list":["post-34388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-howtos","tag-firefox"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nvainfo<\/code> package via command:<\/p>\nsudo apt install vainfo<\/pre>\n
vainfo<\/pre>\n
VAEntrypointVLD<\/code> means decoding support for this format, VAEntrypointEncSlice<\/code> means encoding support.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
sudo apt install mesa-va-drivers<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver<\/pre>\n
i965-va-driver<\/code> instead via apt install command.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/a><\/p>\nEnable VA-API in Firefox:<\/h3>\n
\n
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled<\/code> set to true<\/code><\/li>\nmedia.ffvpx.enabled<\/code> set to false<\/code>.<\/li>\nmedia.rdd-vpx.enabled<\/code> set to false<\/code>.<\/li>\nmedia.navigator.mediadatadecoder_vpx_enabled<\/code> set to true<\/code>.<\/li>\nsecurity.sandbox.content.level<\/code> to 0<\/code>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/a><\/p>\ngedit ~\/.profile<\/pre>\n
\n
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD<\/pre>\n
vainfo<\/code> outputs without error!<\/li>\nexport MOZ_DISABLE_RDD_SANDBOX=1<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
export MOZ_X11_EGL=1<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nCheck if Hardware Video Acceleration working:<\/h3>\n
intel_gpu_top<\/code> command that monitor it continuously.<\/p>\nsudo apt install intel-gpu-tools<\/pre>\n
sudo intel_gpu_top<\/pre>\n
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