Build Chrome/Chromium with hardware acceleration

1st Official Post

    Hello,

    I would like to build Chrome or Chromium with VAAPI hardware acceleration like this one user built Chromium in this thread: Chromium? I have no idea where to start so maybe someone can help me get started with doing this.

    My main motivation for this is that the Chrome that is installed in LibreELEC 9.0.2 or later does not have hardware acceleration any more for my Intel NUC. It was there before when I used one of these Chromes built by another user (for example, version 69 by user olehenrikj that I downloaded from his site). Now the hardware acceleration is not there any more (or at least it cannot be used for site Ziggogo.tv for which I need Chrome). Video playback if full of tearing and is really not enjoyable. Before September of this year with older version of Chrome, it was perfect, smooth, using hardware acceleration.

    Obviously users have managed to build Chrome/Chromium with VAAPI hardware acceleration for Intel NUC for LibreELEC but nobody has explained how and where to start. So if anyone can point me to a site with some explanation of how to do this or list a few points to get me started, I would appreciate it.

    Thank you in advance.

    • Official Post

    You can't build chrome, but you could build chromium - but thats getting pretty difficult.

    There is no official vaapi support at chromium so you need to patch your self. Maybe you can search for ready to use binaries that have vaapi already build in and just copy over to LE ?

    Quote from CvH

    Maybe you can search for ready to use binaries that have vaapi already build in and just copy over to LE

    Is that possible? That would be the easiest way. How do I then "integrate" the binary into Chromium for LE?

    Or do you mean find a binary of Chromium with built in vaapi? For which linux distribution? I found Chromium with VAAPI for Ubuntu (Ubuntu Testing Chromium) but I don't know how that would work with LE.

    Hi pajtaz : There are some issues with hardware acceleration in the Chrome browser.

    You need to force the video driver to enable 'TearFree', to enable hardware acceleration in Chrome, and fix the tearing.

    Read this post, it might help to solve your problem : Screen tearing issue with Nvidia GPU

    In some versions of Mesa and Chrome, the hardware acceleration was broken for older Intel IGPU's (HD3000 and older), but this is fixed in the latest version.

    Quote from pajtaz

    Now the hardware acceleration is not there any more (or at least it cannot be used for site Ziggogo.tv for which I need Chrome). Video playback if full of tearing and is really not enjoyable.

    I know exactly what you mean, as I'm a Ziggo customer as well.....

    Meganiekje thank you very much! This fixed my problem! Oh that is such a relief. I was already spending way too much time looking for a way to create Chromium with hardware acceleration for use in LibreELEC.

    I just tested it on Ziggo Go and it worked beautifully. I only use Chrome for Ziggo Go, for everything else I use LibreELEC. I specifically purchased NUC so I can have everything on one system, rather than always having to move my laptop towards the TV and then connecting it to the TV.

    Again, thank you, this seems to have fixed the problem with video tearing and acceleration on my NUC.