Android Hardware Video decoding in Browser

olafbobinski

hi id like to know wheter hardware acceleration (in particular video decoding) is functional in browsers in android out of box ? how about other aspects of hardware acceleration ? canvas, rasterization etc. ?
will it also work if i install another browser, say brave ?
thanks

sunbeam

For chrome based browsers like Brave, we can type:

chrome://gpu

into the URL to see if it is using hardware acceleration. The screenshot below is from Brave browser 1.0.77 on Android 8.1.0 on ROC-RK3399-PC

olafbobinski

wow thanks. that looks pretty good everything relevant seems to be hardware accelerated. am i right in assuming then that chrome/chromium performance in android is better than in linux ? (where i assume no/less hardware acc. will be available in particular video decode)
does it smoothly playback 1080p60fps twitch/youtube ? (avc)
how is general performance on this board in android VS linux ?

thanks again!

sunbeam

I have not got a chance to try this board out on linux yet... waiting for official images from Libre with support for mainline kernel before trying it out. When I do, I'll be sure to post a screenshot here for comparison.

olafbobinski

thanks. i wonder: is it possible to make a general statement on the performance of android vs linux on these arm-based SBCs ?

loverpi

@sunbeam This board already has mainline kernels since 2017.

sunbeam

@olafbobinski said:
thanks. i wonder: is it possible to make a general statement on the performance of android vs linux on these arm-based SBCs ?

Have you try running a cross platform benchmark tool like geekbench on both OSes? Would love to see the result of this too.

sunbeam

@loverpi said:
@sunbeam This board already has mainline kernels since 2017.

By this board, do you mean S905x-CC? The board I have is RK3399-PC. I'm waiting for official images for that.

loverpi

@sunbeam This is the AML-S905X-CC forum. Post under the relevant category so people know what you're talking about.

sunbeam

@loverpi just helping out a fellow member to figure out what hardware acceleration is supported in android. Doesn't seem to be limited to just S905x-CC. I apologize for the confusion.

olafbobinski

thanks for your answers so far. my original question regarding in-browser-hardware-acceleration on aml-s905x-cc still hasnt been answered though.

another completely different question: could you play Hearthstone on this board on android ?

thanks.

sunbeam

I thought you have the board already humm... Don't have the s905x board myself so someone else will have to confirm it.

olafbobinski

no i dont have it need to know wheter theres hardware acceleration in browser available in particular hardware video decoding before buying it otherwise itd be a waste of money i wanna use it as a desktop. thanks though

edit: i read on some forums that the chrome://gpu page is unreliable anyways... it might show hardware acc. as enabled by mistake and it might show it as disabled by mistake
can you maybe confirm via cpu-monitoring / checking for dropped frames that hardware video decoding is really working on your sbc ?

thanks

sunbeam

I'll be glad to perform those tests for you if you can show me how.

loverpi

Linux browser acceleration is pretty much does not exist on x86 and ARM. If you google about this topic, you will see that the Chromium guys flat out rejected spending time on this. Android everything should be accelerated.