Hardware accelerated decoding on chrome on Windows?

[tonyportersec]

It seems chrome/edge not using hardware acceleration to decode the video on webrtc, what is the cause of it? Thanks

Tested on 2 x windows 7 PC, decoderImplementation is FFmpeg, it is software decoding?

chrome://webrtc-internals/

decoderImplementation FFmpeg
firCount 0
pliCount 9
nackCount 0
codecId RTCCodec_0_Inbound_127
[codec] H264 (127, level-asymmetry-allowed=1;packetization-mode=1;profile-level-id=42001f)
frameWidth 704
frameHeight 576
framesPerSecond 11
qpSum 11738
[qpSum/framesDecoded] 30

 

[Max]

Good day.

Tested on 2 x windows 7 PC, decoderImplementation is FFmpeg, it is software decoding?

Probably, yes.
Please check if hardware acceleration is enabled in browser settings. If yes, and software decoding still used, it means either Chrome on Windows 7 does not support hardware acceleration any more or it is not supported for hardware configuration you're using in tests.

 

[tonyportersec]

hardware acceleration is enabled in browser, if using web cam as source and stream to browser, it is using hardware decode. but don't know why if the source is from the rtsp, it is using software decode.

 

[Max]

hardware acceleration is enabled in browser, if using web cam as source and stream to browser, it is using hardware decode.

When you publish a stream from browser, the stream frames are encoded by browser before sending them. So hardware encoding seems to be working.

but don't know why if the source is from the rtsp, it is using software decode.

You can try to check if hardware accelerated decoding is enabled and enbale it if not:
1. Open chrome://flags/
2. Type Hardware-accelerated video decode in search string

3. Choose Enabled if not. Browser must be restarted
Please also check the page chrome://gpu/. It shows graphic features status:

There are many discussions how to enable hardware decoding on Linux, for example https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/how-to-enable-hardware-accelerated.html, but there are no Windows recommendations, so it may be supported out-of-the-box or unsupported at all on Windows 7 (as you mentioned above)

 

[tonyportersec]

Hi Max,
All my setting is same as you, hardware-accelerated video decode is enabled already, all Grahics feature status same as you.

 

[Max]

Seems like this is Chrome on Windows 7 issue. Note that Windows 7 is not supported any more, so it probably will not be fixed.
If you need hardware decoding to work in your case, consider Windows upgrade to 10 or 11 if supported.