[Bug 1889784] [NEW] Hardware-accelerated video decoding (VA-API) broken in Firefox 79 (Wayland)

[Jani Uusitalo]

Public bug reported:

After updating Firefox from 78 to 79, hardware-accelerated video
decoding no longer works properly in Wayland: streaming video gets cut
off with an error message from the service.

== Steps to reproduce ==
1. Follow the steps in [1] to enable VA-API.
2. Open a Youtube/Twitch video (for instance https://www.twitch.tv/rifftrax), press play

== What I expect to happen ==
For the video be played without issues (as it did with Firefox 78).

== What happens ==
After playing for a while (anything from just a few seconds to a couple of minutes), the video stops and is replaced by a service-specific error message, such as error #3000 (in case of Twitch). Even when playing, the video also flickers green. After reloading the tab, the video again plays for a few seconds before the error message reappears.

== Other info ==
A fix is apparently already in the works upstream [2].


* [1] https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/
* [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1645671

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: firefox 79.0+build1-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-42.46-generic 5.4.44
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.4
Architecture: amd64
BuildID: 20200720193547
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Jul 31 17:07:50 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-10-13 (1387 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: 2020-05-11T14:52:22.308877

** Affects: firefox
     Importance: Unknown
         Status: Unknown

** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug focal wayland-session

** Bug watch added: Mozilla Bugzilla #1645671
   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1645671

** Also affects: firefox via
   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1645671
   Importance: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

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Title:
  Hardware-accelerated video decoding (VA-API) broken in Firefox 79
  (Wayland)

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