I have beat my head against the wall on the Raspberry pi forums for hours on this, but I am shocked to find nothing that makes sense.

I KNOW that in Stretch the Raspberry Pi 3B+ is COMPLETELY capable of playing 1080p mp4 with ZERO issues on VLC, because I used it as my media machine for YEARS. No desktop slowdown, no UI issues - just plays the video like I was opening it on a modern multi-core machine. The microSD card that was still in there when I pulled it out still DOES function that way, although it’s obviously now an unupdatable security nightmare…

But it seems that every new Raspbian OS update after that… bullseye, trixie… all play video like they’re broken lemons. Playing through VLC is still PASSABLE with massive frame drops and awful UI lag, but playing video in a browser just displays solid pink colors, despite hardware acceleration being enabled.

What changed? Is it just the Wayland switch? Is it just impossible to use these things to their full potential anymore? I hate to throw out perfectly good old hardware that clearly CAN perform my use case, because the OS broke compatibility with it.

Can anybody explain what happened, or if it’s fixable?

  • Peffse@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days ago

    I didn’t dive too deep into this when I encountered it, and instead just avoided decoding on the device itself, so my apologies if I am incorrect here.

    I’m fairly certain you are being affected by the removal of OpenMax. Since OpenMAX hardware decoding was not actively in development, it didn’t make the transition to 64-bit and was removed in bullseye, replaced by v4l2. Unfortunately it seems like v4l2 wasn’t a 1:1 replacement and people (like me) just gave up. You can try using that post to see if your h264_v4l2m2m package can be installed, and that might fix it… but if it doesn’t I’m not sure what you can do.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 days ago

      I tend to think you’re on the right track with hardware decoding issue. The hardware accelerated video in-browser is the giveaway for me - it’s not FAILING, it’s just giving incorrect output. chrome://gpu SAYS hardware acceleration is enabled, but all videos just turn into a pink screen.

      At any rate, I’ll look at this suggestion you posted. Thanks!

      • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldOP
        3·
        5 days ago

        No luck. I guess I just have to come to terms with the fact that the idea that new Raspbian versions are the definitive, up to date solution for old models is just a lie. The hardware decoding for the 3B+ is just broken. Just surprised how little I see about it.