4k and specially HDR video playback in Youtube on Iris Xe is choppy

[Marsovac]

Recently I bought a laptop for my needs. For basic stuff it is ok however I have trouble with Youtube 4k/60 and specially HDR video playback which is important to me.

Lenovo Ideapad 3 15IAU7

Product Number: 82RK008DSC, Bios Version: JKCN42WW

Intel 12th Gen Core i5-1235U

24GB DDR4 3200

My OS is Windows 11 Pro with the latest updates. The browser is Edge (or Chromium if you will).

The Iris Xe graphics in it is supposed to have good video capabilities, however I get frame drops in 4K/60 content and HDR (even at 720p) is completely unusable and makes the whole system laggy and choppy.

It work much better when the video is fullscreen.

The video decoding in Task manager is usually not maxxed out, but the 3D section is, so I suspect it is something about hardware decoding.

I chose this CPU because it is supposed to have VP9 and even AV1 HW decode support (Intel Quick Sync Video - Wikipedia)

If it matters I have an external monitor connected via the USB-C display port connection.

Can you please help me out?

In attachment screenshots with more info.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Marsovac

Thank you for posting on the Intel Communities. I see you are getting drop frames when using video playback on YouTube at 4K/60fps.

Just to make sure are you getting a side effect like audio issues, stuttering, or buffering as a result of the frame drops? It would be useful to check if this issue happens in a different browser perhaps you can test one that is not Chromium based like Mozilla Firefox. Also, check if the same issue can be seen when playing a 4K video store locally on your system.

As an extra recommendation, I would advise you to test our latest driver version 31.0.101.4952, and use Display Driver Uninstaller to uninstall the current driver on your system. Since you are using the latest recommended driver provided by your manufacturer if the issue persists after testing 4952, roll back to your previous driver version 31.0.101.4502.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Marsovac]

Firefox seems a bit better for 4k/60 and doesnt seem to drop frames, however the GPU 3D is almost maxxed out and little would be needed for it to drop.

Chromiums also don't drop frames if the video is full screen, but they do if not.

The HDR part cannot be checked in Firefox since it doesnt support HDR at all.

This one is completely broken, not even in 1080p HDR can be run windowed without extreme stutters.

I will try the driver and let you know.

[Marsovac · Accepted solution]

I've tried the new driver and it didn't help.

What did help was enabling "Media Foundation for Clear" in edge://flags

It seems this is a problem in MS Edge or Chromiums with this GPU.

The builtin video decoding is not able to work correctly and needs to go through Media Foundation.

I would suggest Intel developers to work more closely with the Chromium team and make this work out of the box.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Marsovac

It is great to know that you found a fix for this issue. It is actually interesting that Media Foundation is needed for Chromium browsers. I see this thread marked as resolved, however, before we close it allow me to pass your feedback to our team, I will let you know once done.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Marsovac]

With Media Foundation it can play higher resolutions and handles HDR better, and even AV1.

8K videos on Youtube are Av1 and those are completely unplayable on the Iris Xe on a 1235U without using Media Foundation.

Even with it it still skips frames.

I'm not sure if this is expected, since this GPU features AV1 decoding on the specs.

Neither of the two browsers are good in everything. Chrome with choppy AV1, Edge with choppy HDR.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Marsovac

Thank you for the information. We passed your findings and feedback to the corresponding team, however, we would also recommend reporting this issue to the browser developer team or Chromium team since they might have further information on the underlying processes the browser has to go through in order to decode higher resolution without dropping frames.

We appreciate you took the time to share all your findings with us and the community.

Best regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Marsovac

Once again we want to thank you for your feedback and for sharing your findings with the community. We will be closing this thread since it is now marked as resolved. In case you have any other questions, feel free to open a new topic.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.