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·
    3 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·
        2 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·
          2 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·
            2 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·
              2 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·
                  1 hour 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…