HOWTO: VLC + VAAPI in Maverick

[Temüjin]

Skylines, it's not pretty.
First, you'll need to install the latest Catalyst. Follow the removal procedure to get rid of your old driver first. Then follow the manual installation guide: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide

Once you have Catalyst 10-12 running, you'll need libva, libva-dev, and xvba-video packages from: http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/

After that, you'll need to find a way to rebuild VLC (or another vaapi-enabled player) against the new libraries. There is a PPA that does a lot of the heavy lifting, but I do not know if it works: https://launchpad.net/~ed10vi86/+archive/video

[SkylinesSuck]

Thanks for the reply. I actually managed to get 10.12 up and running---which gave me HDMI out sound (only system sounds though, not movies ) but I hadn't started on the rest of it yet. I'll get to reading and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions. Thanks again and Happy New Years! (It's already 2011 here)

[SkylinesSuck]

So during my re-install of ATI 10.12 catalyst the guide I was following ) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI ) mentions something called libamdxvba1 saying:

16. Now "libamdxvba1" is optional but since it provides some aspects of the AMD Unified Video Decoder it may be of some use. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder).

but that's all they say about it. In the wikipedia link provided it sys my Radeon HD 4225 supports UVD 2.0 so the hardware acceleration is possible it would seem. Any ideas on how to see if that is up and running on my system and how I could enable it if not?

[mr_raider]

So after a lot of screwing around this is what I get from vainfo:

libva: libva version 0.31.1-sds1
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/va/drivers/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA API version: 0.31
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems XvBA backend for VA-API - 0.7.7
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD

I'm using 10.10 with catalys 10.12, xvba 0.7.7 from splitted desktops, and finally got a version of libva1 that doesn't throw an error. GPU is a mobility Radeon 3400 (RV 620).

VLC still has high cpu usage during playback though.

[Temüjin]

^You'll need to rebuild vlc once you have the new libva-dev installed (or you can use my new PPA where it's already done for you: https://launchpad.net/~dtl131/+archive/catalysthacks )

[mr_raider]

^You'll need to rebuild vlc once you have the new libva-dev installed (or you can use my new PPA where it's already done for you: https://launchpad.net/~dtl131/+archive/catalysthacks )

Thanks that help. I can now play with VAAPI in VLC, but the output is garbled and a messed up colors! Same think in XBMC, though my CPU use is very low!

This is with a x264 file. I have to try VC1.

[Temüjin]

xvba is broken for older RadeonHD cards (2000 and 3000 series). Catalyst 10-7 was the last blob reported working.

[mr_raider]

So I patiently wait for the fix?

Last I checked 10.7 didn't compile on 2.6.35

[Temüjin]

:\ I didn't know that. If I find the appropriate patches, I'll let you know. It would be far better if ATI fixed the issue in an upcoming Catalyst.

[koda]

i was able to enable vaapi only with the latest libva sources and the latest drivers compiled against it.

then again, most of the videos crashed with it, so i'd have been better off

VDPAU was so much better............................................ .....