This is not a good announcement. Why would they do this?
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Windows users have been asking for HEVC support for years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136
7 years ago, this was the answer:
Mozilla currently has no plans to support H.265. Our focus will be on AV1.
The reason we won't support H265 has nothing to do with the difficulty in finding a decoder, or that a decoder source code is released under GPL. Those are trivial matters.
We will not support h265 video while its patent encumbered.
BTW, even today vp9 provides better results than H265.
The conversation changed to, "Firefox could at least do hardware decode support without worrying about patents, right?"
My guess is they're doing this because Chrome added HEVC hardware decoding support last year.
So fuck users that do don't use Windows right? Firefox contributing to the fragmentation of the web and pushing users to surveillance software is the exact opposite of what it should be doing.
I'm on GNU/Linux myself, and personally, I don't use HEVC at all. I don't even decode video in my browser most of the time. I'm usually using mpv with yt-dlp. Streaming services like YouTube, Facebook and Netflix don't use HEVC to my knowledge (being AOM members and all), but I don't use services that require me to enable DRM in my browser. I don't know of a service that requires HEVC decoding support.
It's possible Mozilla will support HEVC decoding on other operating systems in the future. Windows is just the easiest one to start with. It's worth noting that Chrome's HEVC hardware decoding support does not support Widevine, the DRM Netflix and other streaming services use. So you won't see them adopting HEVC in browsers, at least.
The fact that this bug for macOS is a part of the hevc meta-bug indicates that Mozilla also wants to support HEVC decoding on macOS: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1839107
Chrome supports HEVC decoding on GNU/Linux, so I don't see any reason why Firefox wouldn't too, eventually.
Speak for yourself. I am Linux user as well and use HEVC for everything. Most of the videos on my Jellyfin server are encoded for HEVC (both 1080P and 4K).
I use HEVC because it has significantly better compression than older codecs, and many modern devices have hardware decoding support for HEVC. My server also has Intel QuickSync which can transcode HEVC if needed.
This was a use case I was introduced to directly before I discovered Firefox was introducing support for HEVC decoding.
I use HEVC because it has significantly better compression than older codecs, and many modern devices have hardware decoding support for HEVC.
If it weren't for iOS, VP9 could take its place, or so the Mozilla developers thought. HEVC and newer codecs like VP9, AV1, VVC, EVC, etc. offer better compression but often at the cost of compute. I imagine hardware decoding evens the scales a lot; I haven't done any benchmarking myself. I don't know how much impact the complexity of H.265 vs H.264 has on battery life, if any. Of course, hardware encoding on VP9 is not really a thing (AV1 is ahead of it, even), so HEVC has the edge there.
In a few years, AV1 hardware implementations will hopefully be ubiquitous; that would solve the efficiency and software patent problems at the same time. It'll probably coincide with the last of H.264's patents expiring. So on the one hand, I can understand why Mozilla is in no rush to support HEVC.
So I imagine you use a Chromium-based browser for Jellyfin?
So I imagine you use a Chromium-based browser for Jellyfin?
I use a variety of different Jellyfin clients.
- Jellyfin for Android
- Jellyfin for Android TV
- Jellyfin for WebOS
- Jellyfin Media Player (Windows)
- Jellyfin Media Player (Flathub, Linux)
The confusing thing is that although every device I use supports hardware decoding, I am not completely sure if it actually works for each Jellyfin client (I am even less sure after this thread). Regardless HEVC hardware transcoding works on my server (using Intel QuickSync), so my files can always play even if they aren't directly supported by the client.
As for AV1, I want to move to it in the future, but as of right now, most of my clients don't have hardware decoding for it. My server can't transcode AV1 either, I would need a newer GPU or iGPU. Even the NVIDIA SHIELD TV that I have (a powerful media device), does not have hardware decoding for AV1 (I am still looking forward to a SHIELD refresh).
Ah, okay. It sounds like you have a physical server, too...you would need to upgrade it yourself if you wanted to use AV1, right? Sounds expensive and annoying...
My understanding is the client needs to explicitly support hardware decoding with the relevant APIs, and Jellyfin probably accomplishes it with FFmpeg. There is no way Jellyfin would be implementing a software decoder for HEVC, but they should have no problem implementing hardware decoders for every platform.
iOS doesn't even have a software decoder for AV1 yet, but the iPhone 15 Pro hardware decoder is a start. Likewise, only expensive Android phones have hardware AV1 decoders right now. More desktop GPUs are implementing AV1 decoders. But this transition looks like it's going to take another 3 years (?) to hit every market segment (cheapest to most expensive)... sigh. I don't have an AV1 hardware decoder on any of my devices either. It's insane how long it takes for new hardware decoders to become mainstream. Many HEVC patents might be close to expiring by then, lol.