Hardware acceleration in Mint 20 with Radeon HD6850 breaks video playback

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Hardware acceleration in Mint 20 with Radeon HD6850 breaks video playback

Post by openletter »

I have Mint 20 installed to a desktop computer with i7-2600k, 16GB RAM, and AMD Radeon HD 6850. Hardware acceleration in Firefox and VLC has been enabled for the year or so that Mint has been installed to this computer and previously there were no playback issues.

Playback on certain videos is now extremely choppy, playing for only a few seconds, then freezing for several seconds while audio continues uninterrupted, then video plays again for a few seconds, ad infinitum.

When I disable hardware acceleration, video plays back perfectly. However, Firefox uses approximately double or more CPU than previously. For comparison, Brave browser with hardware acceleration enabled uses around half of the CPU that Firefox uses.

Oddly, while VLC is now broken with hardware acceleration set to Automatic (which is how it was set for the whole time), setting it to Disable results in not even 10% of the CPU usage of even Brave (it's hardly anything - as if hardware acceleration is working).

I have not changed any other settings, and this does not occur with all videos.

Here is a video I found that this happens on:

https://odysee.com/@libertyweekly:3/residentevil7:fc

Odysee allows me to download the video so I can confirm this one also doesn't play in VLC with hardware acceleration set to Automatic.

Since this is a new thing happening simultaneously on more than one package, I first wonder if there was something that changed at the OS level, though I did discover a Mozilla post about changing something in FF 94.0 with regards to Linux graphics here.

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Fxxxrz
System:    Kernel: 5.4.0-90-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 5.0.7 
           wm: muffin 5.0.2 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: SABERTOOTH P67 v: Rev 1.xx serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: 3602 date: 11/01/2012 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-2600K bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Sandy Bridge rev: 7 
           L2 cache: 8192 KiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 56043 
           Speed: 1648 MHz min/max: 1600/5900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1648 2: 1648 3: 1648 4: 1648 5: 1648 
           6: 1648 7: 1648 8: 1648 
Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Barts PRO [Radeon HD 6850] vendor: ASUSTeK EAH6850 
           driver: radeon v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:6739 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 2560x1600~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD BARTS (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.4.0-90-generic LLVM 12.0.0) v: 3.3 Mesa 21.0.3 
           compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes 
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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