Qubes YouTube html5 videos (HD) without stuttering possible?

[Patrick Schleizer]

Hi,

have you been able to watch YouTube html5 videos? Without stuttering? I
haven't. So I would like to compare with you if my exception is even
justified.

In good quality? Even HD?

If your answer is 'yes', what hardware?

Did you need to install proprietary graphics drivers?

My issues can't be because of a slow system. (Intel Core i7-4770HQ,
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200, 16GB RAM, SSD, fast internet)

Qubes R3 RC1

Tested kernels:
3.12
3.18
3.19

Cheers,
Patrick

[7v5w7go9ub0o]

If you provide a link to a specific video, and instructions on how to
evaluate it (e.g. what tools; do I shut down other VMs, streams, etc.)
I'll tell you what I get.

[cprise]

On 07/09/2015 05:55 PM, Patrick Schleizer wrote:

FWIW, I was just noticing today on Qubes R2 / debian 8 / Iceweasel that
youtube html5 was stuttering infrequently but fairly regularly, for
about one second every 60 seconds or so.

Kernel is 3.12.40-1 for both dom0 and appvm, on Intel HD4000 with
Optimus switched off.

[Patrick Schleizer]

7v5w7go9ub0o:

Watching youtube. A fairly popular activity, no? Anyhow. You can just
pick any video from youtube.com. If you can't imagine a search term,
type "hd trailer" or so. If you really need a specific video, use this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY

But applies to any youtube videos I have tested so far.

Evaluate... Well, you know how a lag free video is looking, because
you've seen it before. Maybe you heard about low FPS (frames per second)
or experienced it once somewhere in your life. That's the kind of
stuttering I am describing here. No specialized testing tools. I just
see, it's stuttering and it's plain obvious.

I haven't had any non-essential VMs running. Just the untrusted on with
Firefox.

Cheers,
Patrick

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Just tested on some random video and works perfectly (720p, fullscreen).
Try enabling audio low latency mode:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/UserDoc/ConfigFiles/

FWIW The hardware is Dell Latitude E6420 (listed on our HCL), dom0
kernel is 3.19.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[7v5w7go9ub0o]

Actually, I *have* heard of FPS, and *have* experienced it once
somewhere in my life. I asked for specifics in order to compensate for
the quality of what may have been uploaded.

Obviously, any test should also consider network quality/congestion, as
well as the quality of the stream, other loads on the processor and gpu.
Here's a qualitative WAG; other dispvms open.

- Your link brings up html5 on chrome; 720p on full screen is smooth and
nice - no problems.
- It brings up flash using firefox; 720p on full screen is possibly
better than html5/chrome (better lip sync).

[Patrick Schleizer]

Marek Marczykowski-Górecki:

> On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 09:55:15PM +0000, Patrick Schleizer wrote:
>> Hi,
>
>> have you been able to watch YouTube html5 videos? Without stuttering? I
>> haven't. So I would like to compare with you if my exception is even
>> justified.
>
>> In good quality? Even HD?
>
>> If your answer is 'yes', what hardware?
>
>> Did you need to install proprietary graphics drivers?
>
>> My issues can't be because of a slow system. (Intel Core i7-4770HQ,
>> Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200, 16GB RAM, SSD, fast internet)
>
>> Qubes R3 RC1
>
>> Tested kernels:
>> 3.12
>> 3.18
>> 3.19
>
> Just tested on some random video and works perfectly (720p, fullscreen).

> Try enabling audio low latency mode:
> https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/UserDoc/ConfigFiles/

This helped a lot on two different machines.

On one machine I got still a slight sound stuttering. Do you have
further ideas what I could try?

Cheers,
Patrick

[vuarnet]

I just tried setting the config file globally (after failing to get the intended result with per-VM) for low latency audio, and still no HD video... any ideas?

Currently, the global setting for my config file looks like this:

global: {
  # default values
  #allow_fullscreen = false;
  #allow_utf8_titles = false;
  #secure_copy_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-c";
  #secure_paste_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-v";
  #windows_count_limit = 500;
  audio_low_latency = true;
};

I did try to make the personal VM only have audio_low_latency set to `true` but to the same effect (none). The config file instead looked like this:

# most of setting can be set per-VM basis

VM: {
  work: {
    #allow_utf8_titles = true;
  };
  personal: {
    audio_low_latency = true;
  };
};

(I added 'personal' and deleted the '#' in front of "audio_low_latency"

Is there something I'm missing? Thanks for the help! (and sorry to resurrect a few month-old thread).
 

[Alex]

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Hash: SHA256

On 10/13/2015 08:49 PM, vuarnet wrote:
> I just tried setting the config file globally (after failing to get
> the intended result with per-VM) for low latency audio, and still

> no HD video... any ideas? [...]
Might sound a little basic, but did you try rebooting?

- --
Alex
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[vuarnet]

Indeed, I did try rebooting... after each change. I figured since it's in dom0, it *might* require rebooting in between config file changes, just in case. My config file now looks like:
 

# Sample configuration file for Qubes GUI daemon
#  For syntax go http://www.hyperrealm.com/libconfig/libconfig_manual.html

global: {
  # default values
  #allow_fullscreen = false;
  #allow_utf8_titles = false;
  #secure_copy_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-c";
  #secure_paste_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-v";
  #windows_count_limit = 500;
  #audio_low_latency = false;
};

# most of setting can be set per-VM basis

VM: {
  work: {
    #allow_utf8_titles = true;
  };
  video-vm: {
    #allow_fullscreen = true;
  };
};

Still, I can only get 360p video in YouTube... very odd. It wasn't like this on R2, IIRC.

Thanks for the help!

[vuarnet]

Whoops. That's the default file. Mine looks like this:

# Sample configuration file for Qubes GUI daemon
#  For syntax go http://www.hyperrealm.com/libconfig/libconfig_manual.html

global: {
  # default values
  #allow_fullscreen = false;
  #allow_utf8_titles = false;
  #secure_copy_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-c";
  #secure_paste_sequence = "Ctrl-Shift-v";
  #windows_count_limit = 500;
  #audio_low_latency = false;
};

# most of setting can be set per-VM basis

VM: {
  work: {
    #allow_utf8_titles = true;
  };
  personal: {
    audio_low_latency = true;
  };
};

 

[Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)]

On 07/09/2015 09:55 PM, Patrick Schleizer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> have you been able to watch YouTube html5 videos? Without stuttering? I
> haven't. So I would like to compare with you if my exception is even
> justified.
>

> [...]

>
> Qubes R3 RC1
>
> Tested kernels:
> 3.12
> 3.18
> 3.19
>

After I upgraded to R3.0, the audio started to stutter and exhibit "blips".

Weird.

--
Rudd-O
http://rudd-o.com/

[Connor Page]

Apparently google doesn't offer HD videos in HTML5 player on Firefox with just VP8 codec. When using the hated flash player FullHD works well enough. It seems limited by computing power of one core though and there are occasional droped frames as my notebook is built for portability, not performance :(
I hoped that open source Cisco codec OpenH264 could solve the problem but I can't get it installed as a plugin in Firefox. Any hints other than getting it from github?

[raah...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, July 9, 2015 at 5:55:23 PM UTC-4, Patrick Schleizer wrote:

I haven't had any issues with video stuttering on firefox on fedora vm, or with whonixvm and tor browser. Using nouveau drivers 3.19 kernel with kde.

For fedoravms only issues i had was streaming mp4 videos without downloading them or playing long streams without it stopping midway. So i installed the gstreamer1 plugins and gstreamer1-libav. and from terminal in the vm do sudo mount /tmp -o remount,size=512M