VA API / video decoding on Ivy Bridge and Fedora 17

[OlivFedora]

Hello,

since I read for the first about the magic VAAPI that allow the brand new intel CPU/GPU to do accelerated video decoding I was always wondering if my own system was able to do it.

As Intel is the main provider of CPUs it seemed to me that it should be included by default... but it seems it's not...

What I did and saw :
1) yum info libva.x86_64
[...]
Description : Libva is a library providing the VA API video acceleration API.
=> Cool, it looks like I have hardware video acceleration !!!

2) yum install libva-utils
[root@azerty ~]# vainfo
libva: VA-API version 0.32.1
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns -1
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

=> NOT COOL, it looks like in fact I don't have HW video acceleration...

3) yum install libva-intel-driver

[root@azerty ~]# vainfo
libva: VA-API version 0.32.1
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.32 (libva 1.0.16)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver - 1.0.18
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Baseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Baseline : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD

=> Wunderbar ! I have some kind of hardware video acceleration !!!!

But do I ??
I dont' understand, who does what here ? what is "libva" if it doesn't have HW VA ??

And to add some confusion :
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=770371
... backend ? frontend ? reading the comments it seems that doesn't exactly do HW VA, am I right ? so what does it do ? why vainfo works after installing it ???

---------- Post added at 02:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 AM ----------

I tried with vlc...
vlc -v
=> without libva-intel-driver
[...]
libva: VA-API version 0.32.1
[0x7f604cc03f58] faad decoder warning: decoded zero sample
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns -1
[0x7f604cc0fb08] avcodec decoder warning: Failed to open VA API
[0x7f604cc0fb08] avcodec decoder warning: disabling direct rendering

=> with libva-intel-driver
[...]
libva: VA-API version 0.32.1
[0x7f7f14c03ec8] faad decoder warning: decoded zero sample
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
[0x7f7f14c0bc38] avcodec decoder: Using VA API version 0.32 for hardware decoding.


Obviously it's needed to get HW video decoding (at least for VLC).

I find it quite strange that in the usual 'fedora guide/tutorial' it's not explained...

[David Batson]

I think the problem is with VLC and the ffmpeg plugin not supporting hw decoding unless they have been specifically compiled to use it. AFAIK, Fedora's versions are not compiled to support hw decoding.

http://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_VAAPI

You might be able to get mplayer to work with hardware decoding if you get the version that is compiled to use it. I had it working before, but I just use VLC now. I find that VLC video works fine (no tearing) if vsync is turned on and compositing is working correctly. This is on a Sandybridge laptop.

See also:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657071#c2
I've pasted CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling in the /etc/environment file.