Is Firefox more efficient for playing MPEG-4 files than VLC and mpv?

[SchumannFrequency]

It is known that mpv is usually more efficient than VLC for playing videos:

Which is better, MPV or VLC media player?

Answer (1 of 3): VLC PRO Simple to setup and use VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player. PRO Free, open source, and cross-platform VLC is licensed ...

www.quora.com

VLC utilises GTX 1030 to %84 on linux and it gets choppy. Video I am mentioning is 4k 10bit color. MPV on the other hand uses %72 of that same video card on same video and gives better quality.

However, recently I discovered something while playing a MPEG-4 file in 4K quality on a very old and super weak Intel Atom CPU with integrated graphics.
mpv had a lot of trouble with this file and stuttered very badly. While Firefox could play this (4K) MPEG-4 file effortlessly on the same hardware.

It was a 4K file played on a 1080p screen. It could be something else that explains this result.
My impression is that Firefox has higher performance for playing MPEG-4 files on MX Linux in combination with (old and weak) Intel graphics.

Both VLC and mpv appear to be outperformed by Firefox in efficiency. Do you achieve similar results?

VLC has recently reached 5 billion downloads.
Why is it that almost no one makes an effort to see which media player is the most CPU/GPU efficient via benchmarks?

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Online content ?
Yeah browser any local player would be a security risk so not worth testing this.

Local files ?
I've never thought to use a browser to play them so I use my favorite player which happens to be vlc or wmp.

 

[PLAfiller]

Honestly I haven't figured out how hardware acceleration works....like I have K-lite codec pack that comes with Media player Home Cinema and that's what I use. I play the movie I see in the bottom right the codecs that are needed and I know it's OK.

Every time I try to educate myself about video playback I get despaired as the guides are pages long: how to configure MadVR codec.....that's a dissertation right there. I don't have Firefox (or VLC) installed. Haven't used in years.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Yeah browser any local player would be a security risk so not worth testing this.

VLC has had many CVE flaws with a score higher than 9, while Firefox has not had a single CVE with a score >9.

Isn't that a telling analysis?

Honestly I haven't figured out how hardware acceleration works.

I can perfectly understand that this is a lot of work for one person.

Greenpeace has a staff of 3 476 people and 34 365+ volunteers. There are also many countries where there are green parties with thousands of members.

You also have tens of thousands of companies that make their living with green solutions.

What you then see is that those people who often receive high wages in this type of parties (or companies) do not behave greenly at all and take actions that offend people and that have little or no impact.

When you see that VLC has 5 billion downloads and is one of the least efficient media players, I think it would be worthwhile to investigate which technology can play video most efficiently.
Then you can, for example, collaborate with Microsoft/BSD/Apple/Linux/Google to make the most efficient media player the default option in operating systems.

That would undoubtedly have more impact than the types of solutions that are currently common in many companies/academic circles/political groups.

 

[Bill_Bright]

While Firefox could play this (4K) MPEG-4 file effortlessly on the same hardware.

Both VLC and mpv appear to be outperformed by Firefox in efficiency. Do you achieve similar results?

First, "this file" doesn't tell us which file so how can we see if we get similar results? Second, one specimen is barely even anecdotal and doesn't prove anything, one way or the other. Third, Firefox (unless something changed recently) doesn't play 4K MPEG-4 files by default - it requires installing extensions. And fourth, not everyone uses Firefox.

Bottom line, there are just too many variables and too many factors that depend entirely on personal preference to claim this player is better (or more efficient) than that player, or this browser is better than both players, or other browsers.

***

I think there is some confusion or misunderstanding and therefore a misrepresentation of what it means to be "efficient".

In electronics, something is more efficient if it uses less energy and/or wastes less energy in the form of heat for the same amount of work. The amount of time it takes to do the same amount of work may be a factor too (for some users) - though obviously playing a music or video file should always be done, by default, in "real-time" as recorded.

Using a greater percentage of a component's resources does NOT necessarily mean something is less efficient. It could easily mean it is more capable (more efficient!) at using the device to its maximum potential and not wasting its potential.

Choppy vs stable is not necessarily an indicator of efficiency. More specific information is needed.

The absolute best image quality (resolution, contrast, etc.) frequently is NOT a high priority. It depends on the content, the user, and its purpose. A brain surgeon trying to remove a tumor needs the absolute best, most accurate imagery. Someone following a GPS satellite map to the nearest Applebee's does not.

When it comes to comparing software, how it performs a specific task is only one part of the comparison. The UI plays a major role in terms of ease of use (user friendliness) and function along with user preference. MPV for example, has no real GUI - it is keyboard driven. Some people prefer that. VLC lets you add skins and has multi-level menus adding complexity - but features some people like.

Some folks prefer GUIs and navigating with their mouse through layers of tabs and context menus. Others prefer to by-pass all that with keyboard shortcuts. Yet both are fully capable of getting the job done without any significant "energy" efficiency differences - at least after the applicable learning curves are conquered.

So how quickly the user can accomplish a task may play a role in overall efficiency - and that greatly depends on how familiar the user is with the program, or "if" time is a factor for that user. It may not be. If one program requires more steps through multiple menu levels, but is easy, does that mean it is more, or less efficient than the other program that an experienced user can accomplish more quickly? It is all subjective.

My point is, both media players are great but are intended for different types of users. And again, not everyone uses Firefox.

And FTR, citing another forum poster as a reference is not valid corroborating evidence. I'm just saying, actual studies by qualified experts with results posted in white papers make valid references - not another user's personal opinion.

 

[dgianstefani]

No idea.

I personally use https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases MPC-HC x64 and have found it to be better than VLC.

 

[Dr. Dro]

When you see that VLC has 5 billion downloads and is one of the least efficient media players, I think it would be worthwhile to investigate which technology can play video most efficiently.
Then you can, for example, collaborate with Microsoft/BSD/Apple/Linux/Google to make the most efficient media player the default option in operating systems.

That would undoubtedly have more impact than the types of solutions that are currently common in many companies/academic circles/political groups.

VLC is a very old project that is still a household brand in the media player business, and it's fully self-contained. So even though it's been greatly surpassed by better media players, free and proprietary alike, it retains a large user base and following simply because it's one of those things that have always been there.

Different tools for different use cases, IMO. Under Windows, these are my softwares of choice:

General media consumption: clsid2's actively maintained MPC-HC branch (get it with K-Lite Codec Pack) and mpv
Anime playback: Potplayer
Industry-standard, DRM-compliant player: PowerDVD
Audio player: foobar2000 and Winamp 5.666 Pro (with licensed Fraunhofer encoders)
Audio and video format converters: fre:ac and Shutter Encoder

 

[cvaldes]

Like many old timers I keep using legacy VLC Player because of its well earned track record. I’ve used it since its earliest days, over two decades.

There were video files Apple QuickTime Player couldn’t handle. Same with Windows Media Player. Installing optional codecs was fiddly. But VLC seemed to handle pretty much everything with the default settings. And it was the first truly competent video player with a GUI on desktop Linux when I was still dabbling with that OS (circa 1998-2002).

And I vaguely recall a time when VLC Player needed to be installed for Handbrake to work.

VLC Player on iOS and iPadOS is still very handy since it’ll play Matroska files.

On Windows I use MPC more frequently these days. I also use Kodi (and its XBMC predecessor) when I want a nicer UI.

Today I generally consider mundane video playback as a solved issue. My bedroom HTPC runs a wimpy and power sipping Intel N95 processor and plays back high bitrate 4K content (H.264 and HEVC) without breaking a sweat.

I have other things to worry about than saving 0.15W by switching video player software on a desktop PC.

I dabbled with Firefox for a few minutes as a media player and it has a wide array of shortcomings which require another application to be on hand.

First of all, it does not play Matroska files.

Second, it has almost no control over any settings. Subtitles, foreign language, deinterlacing, decombing, et cetera ad nauseam. There is no thumbnail preview while scrolling through the video. There are no keyboard playback controls. Not even the space bar will pause the video.

Third, it has limited compatibility with media codecs. I had a MP4 H.264 video file with AC-3 2.0 audio. The browser was unable to play back audio (video was fine).

I had another 2160p HEVC DDP5.1 file that wouldn't play. And another file that only played audio but not video. Those are just a handful of examples from videos sitting in one folder. I have video files going back to the Nineties including some that are probably unplayable because some obscure codec has been dropped from support.

This is an excellent illustration why I still use VLC Player. It's still the benchmark standard, the Swiss Army knife of video file formats. With Firefox, I'd have to take a guess whether or not any given video file will successfully play or not.

I know every single Matroska file I own (thousands probably) will not work and no, I will not be transcoding those files to MP4 just so I can use a web browser. And I would still be stuck with a piss poor media player interface with very little functionality.

Basically this is why no one benchmarks media players alongside web browsers. In the end, media file compatibility and user interface are far more important than saving some milliwatts in some extremely limited random ass one-off test scenario. Web browser software really needs to be able to handle commonly used contemporary online video formats, not be the Swiss Army knife of all video codecs and containers.

 

[ThrashZone]

VLC has had many CVE flaws with a score higher than 9, while Firefox has not had a single CVE with a score >9.

Isn't that a telling analysis?

Hi,
Hell out of all your browser love benchmarking posts I thought you were a chrome user so not sure where this firefox video play thing came from.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Hi,
Hell out of all your browser love benchmarking posts I thought you were a chrome user so not sure where this firefox video play thing came from.

This has nothing to do with my browser benchmarks.
I have an old netbook costing 200 EUR and I saw that Firefox could play the video very smoothly, but that MPV failed really hard with exactly the same 4K MP4.
This is about performance on Intel graphics.

Out of curiosity, I tested the same mp4 on my powerful Alpine Linux desktop and looked at the values in radeontop for AMD cards. And it's not at all what I thought.

mpv uses an average of 15 percent of the GPU while Firefox uses an average of 5 percent of the GPU.
Why does the MPV that is supposedly more efficient than VLC use three times more GPU than Firefox?

I am going to associate mp4 and webm files with Firefox instead of mpv in Dolphin file manager.
It is not ecological that popular video players are apparently very poorly optimized.

 

[Bill_Bright]

TBF, aren't most-all browsers Chromium-based now? Last I recall, Firefox, Brave, and Chrome could all use 'Chromium' plugins and features.

Many are chromium based. Obviously Chrome is. So is Brave and Edge, among others.

Firefox, which is not Chromium based, can use "some" Chrome extensions, but not natively by default and often not without some issues.

 

[bug]

It is known that mpv is usually more efficient than VLC for playing videos:

Which is better, MPV or VLC media player?

Answer (1 of 3): VLC PRO Simple to setup and use VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player. PRO Free, open source, and cross-platform VLC is licensed ...

www.quora.com

VLC utilises GTX 1030 to %84 on linux and it gets choppy. Video I am mentioning is 4k 10bit color. MPV on the other hand uses %72 of that same video card on same video and gives better quality.

However, recently I discovered something while playing a MPEG-4 file in 4K quality on a very old and super weak Intel Atom CPU with integrated graphics.
mpv had a lot of trouble with this file and stuttered very badly. While Firefox could play this (4K) MPEG-4 file effortlessly on the same hardware.

It was a 4K file played on a 1080p screen. It could be something else that explains this result.
My impression is that Firefox has higher performance for playing MPEG-4 files on MX Linux in combination with (old and weak) Intel graphics.

Both VLC and mpv appear to be outperformed by Firefox in efficiency. Do you achieve similar results?

VLC has recently reached 5 billion downloads.
Why is it that almost no one makes an effort to see which media player is the most CPU/GPU efficient via benchmarks?

Have you checked everything, are you sure both are running hardware GPU acceleration? Last I checked this tends to be very hit and miss on Linux. Iirc Chromium has a better chance of running hardware accelerated video than Firefox does. In turn, mpv may need specific packages installed for various formats, depending on the distro you use.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Have you checked everything, are you sure both are running hardware GPU acceleration? Last I checked this tends to be very hit and miss on Linux. Iirc Chromium has a better chance of running hardware accelerated video than Firefox does. In turn, mpv may need specific packages installed for various formats, depending on the distro you use.

I see the performance difference on two different systems.

system one: Intel Atom CPU-GPU and MX Linux
system two: Intel CPU, Radeon graphics and Alpine Linux

I will test VLC and Chromium tomorrow and then I will be able to give you the GPU efficiency stats for these apps.

 

[bug]

I see the performance difference on two different systems.

system one: Intel Atom CPU-GPU and MX Linux
system two: Intel CPU, Radeon graphics and Alpine Linux

Means exactly nothing. If FF or mpv doesn't the hw acceleration working ootb on one system, it's likely it doesn't on the other one either.
For example, this is what I'm seeing:

I will test VLC and Chromium tomorrow and then I will be able to give you the GPU efficiency stats for these apps.

Just monitor the load on the CPU, too, while you're at it.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Means exactly nothing. If FF or mpv doesn't the hw acceleration working ootb on one system, it's likely it doesn't on the other one either.
For example, this is what I'm seeing:
View attachment 340183

Just monitor the load on the CPU, too, while you're at it.

For Intel, an 11th Gen processor with Xe-based UHD Graphics or newer is required to decode AV1. Encoding is also supported on all Alchemist dGPUs - a popular use of the Arc A380 is as a dedicated AV1 encoding card because it's inexpensive and does the job very well

For NVIDIA, the entire RTX 30 and 40 series can decode and RTX 40 series are also capable of encoding AV1.

For AMD, well, it's a mess. Support is completely fractured across different hardware tiers and form factors. For dGPUs, Navi 21 (RX 6800, 6900 series), 22 (RX 6700 series) and 23 (RX 6600 series) are capable of decoding AV1, but not encoding it. Navi 24 (RX 6400 and 6500 XT) lacks media encoding and decoding support entirely. Zen 2/3 APUs with Radeon Vega or RDNA 2 graphics (such as Van Gogh/Steam Deck) also lack AV1 capabilities.

All tiers of RDNA 3 currently released encode and decode, however, AV1 on APUs/mobile processors was only added with the very latest generation Phoenix (Ryzen 8000G) chips.

 

[KaitouX]

This has nothing to do with my browser benchmarks.
I have an old netbook costing 200 EUR and I saw that Firefox could play the video very smoothly, but that MPV failed really hard with exactly the same 4K MP4.
This is about performance on Intel graphics.

Out of curiosity, I tested the same mp4 on my powerful Alpine Linux desktop and looked at the values in radeontop for AMD cards. And it's not at all what I thought.

mpv uses an average of 15 percent of the GPU while Firefox uses an average of 5 percent of the GPU.
Why does the MPV that is supposedly more efficient than VLC use three times more GPU than Firefox?

I am going to associate mp4 and webm files with Firefox instead of mpv in Dolphin file manager.
It is not ecological that popular video players are apparently very poorly optimized.

mpv has a pretty big focus on high quality playback, so by default it will avoid using HW decoding (also because it causes a lot of issues), and more recent versions use even higher quality scaling than it used in the past by default, so unless you changed it, it's natural that it would be more resource intensive than Firefox.

from their github:

System requirements​

• A not too ancient Linux (usually, only the latest releases of distributions are actively supported), Windows 10 or later, or macOS 10.15 or later.
• A somewhat capable CPU. Hardware decoding might help if the CPU is too slow to decode video in realtime, but must be explicitly enabled with the --hwdec option.
• A not too crappy GPU. mpv's focus is not on power-efficient playback on embedded or integrated GPUs (for example, hardware decoding is not even enabled by default). Low power GPUs may cause issues like tearing, stutter, etc. On such GPUs, it's recommended to use --profile=fast for smooth playback. The main video output uses shaders for video rendering and scaling, rather than GPU fixed function hardware. On Windows, you might want to make sure the graphics drivers are current. In some cases, ancient fallback video output methods can help (such as --vo=xv on Linux), but this use is not recommended or supported.

mpv does not go out of its way to break on older hardware or old, unsupported operating systems, but development is not done with them in mind. Keeping compatibility with such setups is not guaranteed. If things work, consider it a happy accident.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

mpv has a pretty big focus on high quality playback, so by default it will avoid using HW decoding

These are the specs of the file I tested.
Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Video resolution: 3840x2160
Frame rate: 24
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

This is the average GPU usage I see per media player.
Chromium: 3.1%
VLC: 3.6 %
Firefox: 4.7 %
mpv: 12.5%

The specs of the system with which I achieve these values:
Hardware: Intel 12600KF (stock) -- Kingston 6200 MHz CL36 -- Sapphire RX 7600 -- BIOSTAR B760MZ-E PRO -- Antec P6 -- Xilence XP550 -- ARCTIC i35 -- EVO 850 500GB
Software: Alpine Linux -- sway wm -- open source GPU driver -- latest stable software versions of all apps -- kernel 6.6.22-0-lts

The CPU usage for Firefox and mpv is very similar.

mpv seems to offer the best playback quality visually for me. Especially compared to Chromium and VLC I can easily see the difference.
My monitor has almost 100% color accuracy and is better calibrated than most Apple product screens.
If mpv offers better playback quality then I understand the higher GPU usage.

It would be interesting if someone compared the color accuracy, dropped frames and overall image accuracy of these four media players.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The CPU usage for Firefox and mpv is very similar.

mpv seems to offer the best playback quality visually for me. Especially compared to Chromium and VLC I can easily see the difference.
My monitor has almost 100% color accuracy and is better calibrated than most Apple product screens.
If mpv offers better playback quality then I understand the higher GPU usage.

It would be interesting if someone compared the color accuracy, dropped frames and overall image accuracy of these four media players.

Unless there's post-processing going on, the image output of all players should be bit-exact. What monitor are you running? Not even OLEDs have "almost 100% color accuracy", so unless it's a reference-grade monitor, and you've got a colorimeter, what you're asking for is nigh impossible.

mpv is known for having many plugins to improve image quality, do you recall having any of them installed and/or enabled? The substantially higher usage for decoding would indicate that.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Unless there's post-processing going on, the image output of all players should be bit-exact.

Nope. The output is different and some apps also drop frames.

Different quality:

Comment
by u/SushiMaker_ from discussion
in animepiracy

Frame drops:

Chrome drops more frames on Youtube than Firefox, why?
by u/VirtualBlack in chrome

 

[bug]

These are the specs of the file I tested.
Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Video resolution: 3840x2160
Frame rate: 24
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

This is the average GPU usage I see per media player.
Chromium: 3.1%
VLC: 3.6 %
Firefox: 4.7 %
mpv: 12.5%

The specs of the system with which I achieve these values:
Hardware: Intel 12600KF (stock) -- Kingston 6200 MHz CL36 -- Sapphire RX 7600 -- BIOSTAR B760MZ-E PRO -- Antec P6 -- Xilence XP550 -- ARCTIC i35 -- EVO 850 500GB
Software: Alpine Linux -- sway wm -- open source GPU driver -- latest stable software versions of all apps -- kernel 6.6.22-0-lts

The CPU usage for Firefox and mpv is very similar.

mpv seems to offer the best playback quality visually for me. Especially compared to Chromium and VLC I can easily see the difference.
My monitor has almost 100% color accuracy and is better calibrated than most Apple product screens.
If mpv offers better playback quality then I understand the higher GPU usage.

It would be interesting if someone compared the color accuracy, dropped frames and overall image accuracy of these four media players.

Once again, you're completely missing the point. Query your software, see whether it's using hardware or software decoding. Check your CPU usage along with the GPU.
Alpine Linux is very particular pick for a PC, so we cannot begin to guess which packages you chose to install.

 

[KaitouX]

Unless there's post-processing going on, the image output of all players should be bit-exact. What monitor are you running? Not even OLEDs have "almost 100% color accuracy", so unless it's a reference-grade monitor, and you've got a colorimeter, what you're asking for is nigh impossible.

mpv is known for having many plugins to improve image quality, do you recall having any of them installed and/or enabled? The substantially higher usage for decoding would indicate that.

There are going to be differences regardless in this case as they are testing a 4K file on a 1080p monitor, so the video has to be downscaled, and mpv uses higher quality scaling by default. There are also other steps that can make the output different, like dithering and chroma scaling.

These are the specs of the file I tested.
Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Video resolution: 3840x2160
Frame rate: 24
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

This is the average GPU usage I see per media player.
Chromium: 3.1%
VLC: 3.6 %
Firefox: 4.7 %
mpv: 12.5%

The specs of the system with which I achieve these values:
Hardware: Intel 12600KF (stock) -- Kingston 6200 MHz CL36 -- Sapphire RX 7600 -- BIOSTAR B760MZ-E PRO -- Antec P6 -- Xilence XP550 -- ARCTIC i35 -- EVO 850 500GB
Software: Alpine Linux -- sway wm -- open source GPU driver -- latest stable software versions of all apps -- kernel 6.6.22-0-lts

The CPU usage for Firefox and mpv is very similar.

mpv seems to offer the best playback quality visually for me. Especially compared to Chromium and VLC I can easily see the difference.
My monitor has almost 100% color accuracy and is better calibrated than most Apple product screens.
If mpv offers better playback quality then I understand the higher GPU usage.

It would be interesting if someone compared the color accuracy, dropped frames and overall image accuracy of these four media players.

mpv is the best player when it comes to image quality, mostly due to the amount of options, both official and unofficial, to customize the playback.
Also I would think it's also one of the fastest if you set it up that way. Turn HW decoding on, and use --profile=fast and it will probably be pretty fast.

GPU usage might not be a good metric for this, same usage doesn't necessarily means the same power consumption.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Nope. The output is different and some apps also drop frames.

Different quality:

Comment
by u/SushiMaker_ from discussion
in animepiracy

Frame drops:

Chrome drops more frames on Youtube than Firefox, why?
by u/VirtualBlack in chrome

Way too many variables to account for, however, in normal conditions and same settings, players should behave similarly as the input data (file itself) is the a constant between all setups. Either way, a machine like yours (with a 12th Gen i5) should be powerful enough to software decode practically any format without difficulty without dropping frames or artifacting. It is a quite powerful processor.

You should conduct tests under a less peculiar environment if this is truly something of interest to you. Try Windows and the players I brought up earlier.

 

[Jetster]

I still use the legacy Windows Media Player that comes with CCCP. Anyone use this?

 

[Dr. Dro]

I still use the legacy Windows Media Player that comes with CCCP. Anyone use this?

I haven't used WMP as my main media player in well over 15 years. Windows 7's WMP12 (whose mortal remains are still in Windows today) is a steaming pile of crap and a massive downgrade from its predecessors.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I use legacy wmp just for music because the newer players ui is pure shit hehe
VLC for movies/ tv series I have locally.