Black video (audio works) with FFmpegVideoDecoder HEVC Main 10 on NVIDIA + Wayland — fixed by --use-gl=egl

[nakinney]

Description
On Linux (Fedora 44) with NVIDIA + Wayland, HEVC Main 10 videos play with audio only (completely black video) when using the new software decoder path (FFmpegVideoDecoder).
Decoding itself succeeds — brave://media-internals shows the pipeline reaching kPlaying with FFmpegVideoDecoder selected — but the frames are never displayed.
The issue is fixed by either:

Adding --use-gl=egl, or
Switching to --ozone-platform=x11

Environment

Brave: 1.93.134 (Chromium 151.0.7922.108)
OS: Fedora 44, KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090
Driver: 610.57.04 (proprietary)
Plex Web (Direct Stream of HEVC Main 10 content)

Steps to reproduce

Launch Brave normally on Wayland (no extra flags).
Play an HEVC Main 10 video in Plex Web (or any site that uses MSE + HEVC Main 10).
Observe: audio plays, video stays black.
Check brave://media-internals — it shows:
kVideoDecoderName: "FFmpegVideoDecoder"
kIsPlatformVideoDecoder: false
Pipeline reaches kPlaying
Correct resolution and framerate reported

Actual result
Black video + working audio.
Software decoder is selected and appears to succeed, but frames are not displayed.
Expected result
Video should be visible when using the software decoder path.
Workarounds that fix it
These both restore video:
Bash# Preferred (stays on Wayland)
brave-browser --ozone-platform=wayland --use-gl=egl --disable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

Also works

brave-browser --ozone-platform=x11
Additional notes

brave://gpu shows Video Decode: Hardware accelerated at the top level, but the Video Acceleration Information section is empty (no codecs listed), which is expected on NVIDIA.
Log line present: Should skip nVidia device named: nvidia-drm
The problem only appears on Wayland. X11 works without extra flags.
This is not a decoder selection failure — FFmpegVideoDecoder is correctly chosen after VA-API is rejected (kUnsupportedConfig).

[adarsh1001]

I have the same setup, Nvidia GPU on Fedora (Wayland). I'm using Brave Origin. Today, all of a sudden, some Netflix movies are playing with black screen and sound only. Even the ones I've watched just days ago without any issues.

Disabling GPU acceleration fixes this but that is not a solution as scrolling becomes very janky and I start seeing dropped frames on YouTube.

[goodov]

Can you share more details please? I want to know what case are we seeing here:

1. HEVC did work via H/W decoder, but now a software path is used which doesn't work
2. HEVC did work via software decoder for some time, but now it broke
3. HEVC was never used (was not supported by the browser), but now it is supported and websites started to push HEVC format which doesn't work for you.
4. Chromium video renderer in Wayland broke recently for software decoder path.

The software decoder can be disabled with brave-ffmpeg-software-hevc-decoder flag at brave://flags. Does video work for you in this case? Is it HEVC or a fallback to other format?

[goodov]

Maybe @fegauthier-paragon have some ideas what's going on here.

[nakinney]

Thanks for the questions.
To get it working, I currently launch Brave with:
--ozone-platform=x11
I haven’t fully investigated why this fixes the display issue yet.

Which case is this?
Case 3 matches exactly what happened.
Once Brave enabled the software HEVC decoder path, Plex started offering Direct Stream of HEVC Main 10 instead of falling back to H.264 transcoding.

Test results with the brave-ffmpeg-software-hevc-decoder flag

1. Default Brave (flag enabled, no extra command-line arguments)
   Plex shows:

   Video: 1080p (HEVC Main 10) → Direct Stream
   Audio: English (EAC3 5.1 + Atmos) → AAC – Transcode

Result: Black video, audio plays fine.

2. Same setup, but with #brave-ffmpeg-software-hevc-decoder set to Disabled
   Plex shows:

   Video: 1080p (HEVC Main 10) (hw) → 1080p (H264) – Transcode (hw)
   Audio: English (EAC3 5.1 + Atmos) → AAC – Transcode

Result: Both video and audio work normally.

This confirms that when the software HEVC decoder is available, Plex switches to Direct Stream of Main 10, and the video ends up black on my NVIDIA + Wayland setup. Disabling the software decoder forces Plex back to H.264 transcoding, which works.

[goodov]

Thank you. I think we're going to disable this feature by default for now, but let it be available via brave://flags for users to enable it on demand.

I see there are some flags we might need to adjust to expose HEVC decoder as NOT power efficient to let websites choose the H/W-accelerated decoder instead. This should solve most of the problems, but also allow HEVC to co-exist and be available.

Wayland problem is not that simple though..

[goodov]

@nakinney can you please run this in devtools and print what do you get in different configs (wayland/x11, egl/non-egl, software decoder on/off)?

navigator.mediaCapabilities.decodingInfo({
  type: 'file',
  video: {
    contentType: 'video/mp4; codecs="hvc1.1.6.L153.B0"', 
    width: 3840,       // 4K resolution width
    height: 2160,      // 4K resolution height
    bitrate: 15000000, // 15 Mbps (bits per second)
    framerate: 60      // 60 frames per second
  }
}).then(result => {
  console.log('Supported:', result.supported);
  console.log('Smooth:', result.smooth);
  console.log('Power Efficient:', result.powerEfficient);
}).catch(err => {
  console.error('Test failed', err);
});