Issues in Win7 browsers (video color range, stutter in games)

[test5362]

Hi everyone,

I did a quick search and couldn't find any discussion of this, but at least for me with Nvidia under Win7, video playback in Firefox is still broken as of today (version 112, using Webrender). This is an older bug report related to the issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1459526

The test videos on that page that still work actually do show correctly now, but still, any actual video on Youtube or Twitch looks obviously washed out, with blacks showing as grey instead. I can't find the source anymore, but I've read a couple of years ago that the fix that they did really just applies to Win10+ because they used a function that is missing in older Windows versions, and I guess the userbase for Win7 is so small now that nobody really seemed to care. Can anybody confirm this issue?

As a workaround I've been running Opera additionally, which doesn't have the color range issues (though I did have to switch off HW accelerated video for performance and stability reasons), however the problem here is that whenever I run Opera I get very noticeable stutters in games that aren't traceable to any additional CPU or GPU load. The more demanding the game itself is and the more cores it uses the more frequent and worse the stutters get. Furthermore, while playing a game having any kind of video running in the background is completely impossible on Opera, it becomes a complete stutterfest. I've also noticed some severe Windows GUI performance degradation that sometimes seems to happen when running Opera for long periods of time, so considering all of that my guess is that Opera is really badly coded when it comes to interacting with the GPU driver.

Edited April 15, 2023 by test5362

[mjd79]

Install FF 102 ESR, Opera is heavy and will load your computer at startup.

Edited April 15, 2023 by mjd79

[test5362]

Why downgrade from 112 to 102 ESR when it will have the exact same issue with videos?

[NotHereToPlayGames]

15 hours ago, mjd79 said:

Opera is heavy and will load your computer at startup.

Only if you installed with the "defaults" and did not take the extra mouse click to go into install options.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

17 hours ago, test5362 said:

As a workaround I've been running Opera

What version of Opera?

Because the test video will not even run for me.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Test video doesn't play for me in Firefox either.  Does play in 360Chrome.

[msfntor]

This video: https://www.twitch.tv/narakabladepoint

- play (in Windows XP) and latest Basilisk Moebius basilisk55 win32 20230415

- play in 360Chrome latest 360Chrome 13.5.2036_r1_r

[test5362]

That bugzilla thread is a couple years old so those Twitch links don't work anymore, but any video on Twitch exhibits the issue for me. If something more akin to a test pattern is needed I found this video, I even went ahead and downloaded both H.264 and VP9 versions of it, playing those with VLC matches what Opera outputs while it is washed out on Firefox. I run a current version of Opera, right now 95.0.4635.80.

Edited April 16, 2023 by test5362

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I'm unable to duplicate, no washout effect on Firefox.

Did you try with a clean profile, perhaps something in your profile is causing the washout?

[test5362]

Ok, thanks for testing, so I need to look into why this happens only for me then. Some screenshots:

Firefox:

Opera:

I have also found the topic where a missing function in Win7 is mentioned, which is DX11 DXVA, but the topic is 6 years old already so I don't know if that is relevant anymore. I will try to disable hardware video acceleration to see if that makes a difference.

[test5362]

So I just put media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled to false, restarted the browser and am getting different results now:

Also verified there's no video engine load while playing the video so it should be software decoded now. Interesting thing is, while this isn't washed out anymore this is actually still different from what Opera is outputting, the white is brighter and in comparison it now seems that Opera has a red tint to the greys? If you download these images and flip through them you can see what I'm talking about. So, is Firefox rendering it correctly now while Opera was giving me bad video too all along? Also as a side remark, media.hardware-video-decoding.failed was already at false and is listed as a changed setting, for whatever that's worth.

PS: it just occurred to me that I had h264ify on for Firefox the entire time while it was off for Opera, so I thought this might be related, because Opera was getting an AV1 video previously. However I just turned it on and it doesn't seem to be the cause, here a quick screenshot from Opera to prove it:

Edited April 16, 2023 by test5362

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I would suggest that it is your OPERA screencap that is "discolored".  A true black should have RGB values equal to each other, which your Firefox screencap has but the Opera screencap has all of the Gs decreased.

I've looked at the black RGB values in MyPal27, NM27, NM28, St52, St55, Official Firefox 112, 360Chrome v13.5, VLC Player v2.2.8, and Opera 95.

Opera is the only RGB with unequal RGB values (G is always decreased) - I don't use Opera enough to know if this is "by design".

The numbers for one app will not agree with another app, but the RGBs always equal each other - except in Opera.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by NotHereToPlayGames

[test5362]

Maybe you can test HW acceleration on/off in Firefox to confirm that it's broken under Win7? It would be interesting to get some feedback from Intel/AMD GPU users, too.

As far as the tint in Opera goes, there are a couple of other variables that I haven't explored, such as the different backends, I was using the OpenGL backend for these tests. In addition there's also a Vulkan option in the flags that was just producing black squares everywhere in the GUI for me. Anyway, the performance issues I mentioned are present under both OpenGL and D3D11, so I would not recommend using that browser at least under Win7.

[test5362]

Sorry for double posting, but it looks like Firefox 115 is going to be the last version to officially support Win7, after which there will be ESR support until September 2024: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support

However, it's stated that ESR support will only include security fixes, while 115 is scheduled to release on July 4, so this might be the last chance to get a fix for the aforementioned color range issue with HW decoding. Again, calling for people especially with AMD or Intel graphics to verify the issue. To be clear, software decoding e.g. h264 up to 1080p60 won't really be an issue on most quad cores out there, but I reckon 4k60 or even 4k30 will be an issue for a lot of hardware still running Win7, not to mention it's less power efficient than hardware decoding.

[adi2137px]

on win7 ff 116 nightly works fine as well... atleast until now they didnt break compatibility