HOWTO: VLC + VAAPI in Maverick

[screaminj3sus]

I don't think you can do it with your hardware? I thought that only the HD3x00 series (on up) were supported for h.264 acceleration. I might be wrong, though, so check around.

My card definitely supports it. I can use dxva in windows just fine. I actually did get it to work after a long time messing around with packages and I managed to find the libva-glx package in a ppa. I was able to get vlc to load the video up and have vaapi acceleration enabled but the output was all garbled :/.

It was just the hd 2900 cards that did not have the capability, they were the first 2xxx card released. other 2xxx cards do have it. In windows 7 I use MPC-HC and dxva is enabled, and 720p videos play with only 2-4% cpu usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_...neous_features

[bsmith1051]

I realize the HD 2600 is physically capable of h.264 acceleration but there's a lot more support under Windows than under Linux; that's what I meant.

I followed-up and checked the ATI/AMD downloads and, yes, their Linux driver supports the HD 2x00 series. Sorry, still don't know how to help you, though...

[beew]

It doesn't work for me. I have a Nvidia card and have installed the driver and the vdpau-va-driver. Checked "Accelarated Video Output" and also "Use GPU Accelaration" in "Input and Codecs" but it makes no difference. Still using the same amount of cpu (~60% for 1080p)

I know vdpau works for my card and Ubuntu 10.10 because it works spectacularly for mplayer. For the same files if mplayer's video output is set to "xv" it uses roughly the same cpu respources as VLC, but with output switched to vdpau it drops to 10~ 15%. For 720p it is under 10% for mplayer with vdpau but VLC still uses 30 to 40%.

[....]

It doesn't work for me. I have a Nvidia card and have installed the driver and the vdpau-va-driver. Checked "Accelarated Video Output" and also "Use GPU Accelaration" in "Input and Codecs" but it makes no difference. Still using the same amount of cpu (~60% for 1080p)

I know vdpau works for my card and Ubuntu 10.10 because it works spectacularly for mplayer. For the same files if mplayer's video output is set to "xv" it uses roughly the same cpu respources as VLC, but with output switched to vdpau it drops to 10~ 15%. For 720p it is under 10% for mplayer with vdpau but VLC still uses 30 to 40%.

What does vainfo command show?

[Yellow Pasque]

What does vainfo command show?

^If you're using nvidia vdpau, you still need to install the version of libva found at splitted-desktop site in addition to va-vdpau.

[beew]

What does vainfo command show?

Here it is

libva: libva version 0.31.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA API version: 0.31
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems VDPAU backend for VA API - 0.6.3
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD

[mc4man]

It doesn't work for me. I have a Nvidia card and have installed the driver and the vdpau-va-driver. Checked "Accelarated Video Output" and also "Use GPU Accelaration" in "Input and Codecs" but it makes no difference..

You shouldn't need to go outside to enable as long as your ffmpeg libs and vlc are vaapi enabled. (libva1, vdpau-va, and maybe libva-x11-1

To test your vlc/ffmpeg libs in a terminal this, should come up clean

vlc --ffmpeg-hw

vainfo should show in part
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0

Ex. ( heavily clipped from vlc -vvv

[0x8a61d7c] avcodec decoder debug: Available decoder output format 53 (PIX_FMT_VAAPI_VLD)
[0x8a61d7c] avcodec decoder debug: Trying VA API
[0x87ea52c] main input debug: Buffering 100%
ibva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
[0x8a61d7c] avcodec decoder: Using VA API version 0.31 for hardware decoding.

I'd say the performance gotten would most likely will be dependant on your hardware and to a degree the source material, for the most part here no big deal, maybe 35 - 50 % reduction, if that, compared to mlayer/vdpau which is in the 80 - 90 % range.
(though I'd take my results w/ a large grain of salt, the card here on this laptop is only minimally enabled in this area.

I would certainly try the ubuntu libs first, then maybe any outside versions if desired.

If your vlc is deficient, (never used mav's version), then you may want to build your own or entertain this ppa, (updates frequently), some -r's may have small regressions
https://launchpad.net/~videolan/+archive/master-daily

Edit: small note about the ppa - the build today failed due to a new plugin, no big deal, someone will adjust the vlc-nox install file soon to reflect this. (prior build from a day or so ago is still available

[beew]

Hi, mc4man

vlc --ffmpeg-hw

produces the following (and vlc opens)

VLC media player 1.1.4 The Luggage (revision exported)
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_ADDRESS")
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_BUS_TYPE")
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
Blocked: call to sigaction(17, 0xb71ff0d4, 0xb71ff048)
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
Warning: call to srand(1292889795)
Warning: call to rand()
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")

(process:29154): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)

What do these mean?

My vainfo output is above your post.

[mc4man]

What do these mean?

That means vlc/ffmpeg libs are vaapi enabled. Why don't you try
vlc -vv /path/to/video
where the video file chosen can be decoded w/ vaapi (h.264 would be good.

Then stop the playback/close vlc and search thru the terminal output to see if vaapi is being used. (look for similar lines as I posted, note -vv produces a fair amount of output.
You can use the search -> find function in the terminal to make it quicker to locate, search VA API or similar

( as mentioned I don't find vaapi in vlc to be worth it w/ my hardware

[SkylinesSuck]

Any way to make this work with 10.4? I can't upgrade to 10.10 on this netbook (1.3ghz AMD dual core, ATI HD 4225 GPU, 4gb ram) do to hardware issues, and I cant get 1080p stuff to play smoothly in Ubuntu, but it works fine with Win 7. This is killing me. I've love to get 1080p working in Lucid so I can strip winblows off this netbook for good.

The third package, for ATI/AMD chips, is called xvba-video.

I tried to find this pluggin but I couldn't fin it in synaptic anywhere. Where else should I look? Is it only a 10.10 thing? Im using vlc 1.1.5 in 64 bit lucid BTW.