running the stuff in the title, tried a buncha switches for chromium/electron stuff but still the load mesured with e.g. amdgpu_top doesn’t show “Media” usage. playing other stuff (VLC, Dragon, mpv) shows “Media” usage, which means those are using hardware acceleration.

edit: in the meantime tried the portable version as well, same results so it isn’t a flatpak issue.

edit 2: as @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml found, running portable and flatpak with --enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks under X11/Xwayland produces hardware accelerated video. that doesn’t seem to be the case with wayland, the media graph stays at 0% and there’s a buncha dropped frames with e.g. 4K video.

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    2·
    4 hours ago

    I think I found it. Didn’t bother to look this up until your post and can confirm by default the “Media” is not utilized. Looking into a bug report about exactly that from Feb, 2025 (a year ago from now) https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/issues/6786 the developer says a set of flags is needed to pass in and a user suggests following: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/issues/6786#issuecomment-2832299878

    flatpak run io.freetubeapp.FreeTube --enable-features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs

    I can confirm this will use some “Media” activity. But comparing (unscientifically) the GPU and GFX in fdinfo, the utilization doesn’t seem too different. So overall I am not sure if that is actually hardware acceleration. Also make sure FreeTube has permission for “GPU acceleration” under “Device” set with Flatseal.

    • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      3 hours ago

      works with portable, media percentage is non-zero (dependent on resolution) but only with X11/Xwayland. running it with wayland switches works but nets a 0% in media.

      doesn’t work at all with Appimage; won’t start with wayland switches. without them starts but media at 0%.

      works with flatpak, media is non-zero, under Xwayland. for some reason now won’t start under wayland at all, possibly something I fucked up experimenting. works under wayland but zero media use.

      • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 hours ago

        I don’t know why, but the shortcut in the “Start” menu of KDE does not longer start FreeTube… Its Command-line arguments is 'run --branch=stable' --arch=x86_64 --command=/app/bin/run.sh --file-forwarding io.freetubeapp.FreeTube @@u %u @@ . I have uninstalled FreeTube, deleted the shortcut so it is created from scratch and still does not start. It only starts from either commandline with regular flatpak command, or when I create a new shortcut with the arguments run io.freetubeapp.FreeTube --enable features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs

        • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          3 hours ago

          check if you have runaway processes: ps aux | grep -i freetube then kill them if they’re there. also flatpak settings, here are mine:

          • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
            1·
            3 hours ago

            For whatever reason the arguments got additional quotation marks 'run --branch=stable' which messed up the command… deleting the quotation marks runs fine now. Weird… probably a bug from KDE when I tried to add the other options. Well thanks, now it runs with the original shortcut again. Thanks for the screenshot, helped me seeing the issue instantly.

            • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
              1·
              3 hours ago

              cool beans. can you confirm your flatpak settings, are they for X or wayland? if you run freetube and run xlsclients in terminal, does it return empty? and if freetube runs in wayland, does it say 0% in media when you playback?

              • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
                1·
                2 hours ago

                I don’t know how to do a screenshot of the entire window that scrolls outside the view… i know skill issues. :D Well in Flatseal some relevant settings are X11 windowing system = ON, Wayland windowing system = OFF, Fallback to X11 windowing system = OFF. GPU acceleration = ON:

                • xlsclients returns “freetube”
                • With the enabled acceleration features using cmdline: “Media” activity is active (as soon as I play a video)
                • Without the extra features: “Media” activity is 0%

                Unfortunately if I enable Wayland (just reverse ON / OFF X11 and Wayland setting in Flatseal), the Media activity is unused. Following settings and results are…

                X11 windowing system = OFF, Wayland windowing system = ON, Fallback to X11 windowing system = OFF. GPU acceleration = ON:

                • xlsclients returns “” (empty)
                • With the enabled acceleration features using cmdline: “Media” activity is 0%
                • Without the extra features: “Media” activity is 0%
                • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
                  1·
                  2 hours ago

                  yeah, that jives with what I got here. wayland - no HW accel, xwayland - HW accel. so I guess that’s it, for the time being…

  • kipparikalle161@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    5 hours ago

    Can’t comment on the flatpak, but my portable binary works with HW acceleration with the flags --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland

    • glitching@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      4 hours ago

      flatpak runs fine under wayland, no switches needed, xlsclients comes back empty.

      anyhow, tried it just now, downloaded portable, ran it with those (and other flags), media graph is still at zero. how did you verify yours is HW accelerated?