Comment by afavour
1 day ago
> not usefully true with most videos on the web today
> The only time video is fully hardware decoded is when it's a simple video element to a static video file.
These seem in disagreement to me. The vast majority of videos on the web are simple video elements going to static video files. It is not usual for each frame to pass through JavaScript before being displayed.
The decoded frames do not pass through JavaScript. The compressed data may (e.g. if you are using the Media Source API).
Most of the things you think of as static video files (say youtube) are actually video segments operating more or less exactly the way live streams work.