Hardware video acceleration: Difference between revisions

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An error along the lines of {{ic|libva: /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed}} is encountered. This can happen because of improper detection of Wayland. One solution is to unset {{ic|$DISPLAY}} so that mpv, mplayer, VLC, etc. do not assume it is X11. Another mpv-specific solution is to add the parameter {{ic|1=--opengl-backend=wayland}}.
An error along the lines of {{ic|libva: /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed}} is encountered. This can happen because of improper detection of Wayland. One solution is to unset {{ic|$DISPLAY}} so that mpv, mplayer, VLC, etc. do not assume it is X11. Another mpv-specific solution is to add the parameter {{ic|1=--opengl-backend=wayland}}.


== Driver support ==
== Comparison table ==


=== VA-API ===
=== VA-API drivers ===


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* <sup>3</sup> Hybrid VP8 encoder and VP9 decoder supported by {{AUR|intel-hybrid-codec-driver}}. [https://github.com/01org/intel-hybrid-driver/blob/master/README]
* <sup>3</sup> Hybrid VP8 encoder and VP9 decoder supported by {{AUR|intel-hybrid-codec-driver}}. [https://github.com/01org/intel-hybrid-driver/blob/master/README]


=== VDPAU ===
=== VDPAU drivers ===


{{Note|VDPAU is not updated since September 2015 and is missing VP8 and VP9 support [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/vdpau/libvdpau].}}
{{Note|VDPAU is not updated since September 2015 and is missing VP8 and VP9 support [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/vdpau/libvdpau].}}
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* <sup>4</sup> [[Wikipedia:Nvidia PureVideo|Except]] GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).
* <sup>4</sup> [[Wikipedia:Nvidia PureVideo|Except]] GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).


=== NVDECODE/NVENCODE ===
=== NVIDIA driver only ===


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* <sup>2</sup> Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)
* <sup>2</sup> Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)


== Software support ==
=== Software support ===


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Revision as of 12:30, 23 December 2018

Hardware video acceleration makes it possible for the video card to decode/encode video, thus offloading the CPU and saving power.

There are several ways to achieve this on Linux:

  • Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is a specification and open source library to provide both hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding, developed by Intel.
  • Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is an open source library and API to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware, developed by NVIDIA. VDPAU has not been updated since September 2015.
  • NVDECODE/NVENCODE - proprietary APIs for hardware video acceleration used by NVIDIA Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal generation GPUs.

For pre-2007 video cards see XvMC.

Installation

Intel

Intel graphics open-source drivers support VA-API:

NVIDIA

Nouveau open-source driver supports both VA-API and VDPAU:

NVIDIA proprietary driver supports via nvidia-utils:

  • VDPAU on GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs;
  • NVDECODE on Fermi and newer GPUs [1];
  • NVENCODE on Kepler and newer GPUs.

ATI/AMD

ATI and AMDGPU open-source drivers support both VA-API and VDPAU:

  • VDPAU on Radeon R300 and newer GPUs is supported by mesa-vdpau.
  • VA-API on Radeon HD 2000 and newer GPUs is supported by libva-mesa-driver.

AMDGPU PRO proprietary driver is built on top of AMDGPU driver and supports both VA-API and VDPAU.

Translation layers

To get VA-API support when device driver provides none:

To get VDPAU support when device driver provides none:

Verification

Your system may work perfectly out-of-the-box without needing any configuration. Therefore it is a good idea to start with this section to see that it is the case.

Tip: mpv is great for testing hardware acceleration in practice.

Verifying VA-API

Verify the settings for VA-API by running vainfo, which is provided by libva-utils:

$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.4
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.39 (libva 1.7.3)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Skylake - 1.7.3
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh      :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh      :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264StereoHigh         :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264StereoHigh         :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointEncPicture
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice

VAEntrypointVLD means that your card is capable to decode this format, VAEntrypointEncSlice means that you can encode to this format.

In this example the i965 driver is used, as you can see in this line:

libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so

If the following error is displayed when running vainfo:

libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

You need to configure the correct driver, see #Configuring VA-API.

Verifying VDPAU

Install vdpauinfo to verify if the VDPAU driver is loaded correctly and retrieve a full report of the configuration:

$ vdpauinfo
display: :0   screen: 0
API version: 1
Information string: G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0

Video surface:

name   width height types

420 16384 16384 NV12 YV12 422 16384 16384 UYVY YUYV 444 16384 16384 Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8 Decoder capabilities: name level macbs width height
MPEG1 --- not supported --- MPEG2_SIMPLE 3 9216 2048 1152 MPEG2_MAIN 3 9216 2048 1152 H264_BASELINE 41 9216 2048 1152 H264_MAIN 41 9216 2048 1152 H264_HIGH 41 9216 2048 1152 VC1_SIMPLE 1 9216 2048 1152 VC1_MAIN 2 9216 2048 1152 VC1_ADVANCED 4 9216 2048 1152 ..

Configuration

Although the video driver should automatically enable hardware video acceleration support for both VA-API and VDPAU, it may be needed to configure VA-API/VDPAU manually. Only continue to this section if you went through #Verification.

The default driver names, used if there is no other configuration present, are guess by the system. However, they are often hacked together and may not work. You can see the guessed values by running:

$ grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
(II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] DRI driver: radeonsi
(II) RADEON(0): [DRI2] VDPAU driver: radeonsi

In this case radeonsi is the default for both VA-API and VDPAU.

Note: If you use GDM, run journalctl -b | grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' instead.

This does not represent the configuration however. The values above will not change even if you override them.

Configuring VA-API

You can override the driver for VA-API by using the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME environment variable:

Note:
  • You can find the installed drivers in /usr/lib/dri/. They are used as /usr/lib/dri/${LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME}_drv_video.so.
  • Some drivers are installed several times under different names for compatibility reasons. You can see which by running sha1sum /usr/lib/dri/*.
  • LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH can be used to overrule the VA-API drivers location.
  • Since version 12.0.1 libva-mesa-driver provides radeonsi instead of gallium.

Configuring VDPAU

You can override the driver for VDPAU by using the VDPAU_DRIVER environment variable.

The correct driver name depends on your setup:

  • For Intel Graphics or AMD Catalyst you need to set it to va_gl.
  • For the open source AMD/ATI driver set it to the proper driver version depending on your GPU, see #Verification.
  • For the open source Nouveau driver set it to nouveau.
  • For NVIDIA's proprietary version set it to nvidia.
Note:
  • You can find the installed drivers in /usr/lib/vdpau/. They are used as /usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_${VDPAU_DRIVER}.so.
  • Some drivers are installed several times under different names for compatibility reasons. You can see which by running sha1sum /usr/lib/vdpau/*.
  • For hybrid setups (both NVIDIA and AMD), it may be necessary to set DRI_PRIME=1. For more information see PRIME.

Troubleshooting

Failed to open VDPAU backend

You need to set VDPAU_DRIVER variable to point to correct driver. See #Configuring VDPAU.

VAAPI init failed

An error along the lines of libva: /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed is encountered. This can happen because of improper detection of Wayland. One solution is to unset $DISPLAY so that mpv, mplayer, VLC, etc. do not assume it is X11. Another mpv-specific solution is to add the parameter --opengl-backend=wayland.

Comparison table

VA-API drivers

Codec libva-intel-driver [2] intel-media-driver [3] libva-mesa-driver [4] [5] Catalyst XvBA libva-vdpau-driver

(VDPAU adapter)

Decoding
MPEG2 GMA 4500 and newer Broadwell and newer Radeon HD 6000 and newer
GeForce 8 and newer1
Radeon HD 4000 and newer See #VDPAU
MPEG4 No No Radeon HD 6000 and newer Radeon HD 6000 and newer
AVC (H.264) GMA 45002, Ironlake and newer Broadwell and newer Radeon HD 2000 and newer
GeForce 8 and newer1
Radeon HD 4000 and newer
HEVC (H.265) 8bit Cherryview/Braswell and newer Skylake and newer Radeon R9 Fury and newer No
HEVC (H.265) 10bit Broxton and newer Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer Radeon 400 and newer
VC1 Sandy Bridge and newer Broadwell and newer Radeon HD 2000 and newer
GeForce 9300 and newer1
Radeon HD 4000 and newer
VP8 Broadwell and newer No No No
VP9 8bit Broxton and newer
Hybrid: Haswell to Skylake3
Broxton/Apollo Lake and newer Raven Ridge and newer
VP9 10bit Kaby Lake and newer Kaby Lake and newer
Encoding
MPEG2 Ivy Bridge and newer Broadwell and newer
except Broxton/Apollo Lake
No No No
AVC (H.264) Sandy Bridge and newer Broadwell and newer Radeon HD 7000 and newer
HEVC (H.265) 8bit Skylake and newer Skylake and newer Radeon 400 and newer
HEVC (H.265) 10bit Kaby Lake and newer Cannonlake and newer Raven Ridge and newer
VP8 Cherryview/Braswell and newer
Hybrid: Haswell to Skylake3
No
VP9 8bit Kaby Lake and newer Icelake and newer
VP9 10bit No

VDPAU drivers

Note: VDPAU is not updated since September 2015 and is missing VP8 and VP9 support [7].
Codec mesa-vdpau [8] [9] nvidia-utils [10] libvdpau-va-gl
(VA-API adapter)
Decoding
MPEG2 Radeon R300 and newer
GeForce 8 and newer1
GeForce 8 and newer No
MPEG4 Radeon HD 6000 and newer
GeForce 200 and newer1
GeForce 200 and newer
AVC (H.264) Radeon HD 2000 and newer
GeForce 8 and newer1
GeForce 8 and newer See #VA-API
HEVC (H.265) 8bit Radeon R9 Fury and newer GeForce 900 and newer2 No
HEVC (H.265) 10bit Radeon 400 and newer No3
VC1 Radeon HD 2000 and newer
GeForce 9300 and newer1
GeForce 8 and newer4
  • 1 Up until GeForce GTX 750.
  • 2 Except GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980.
  • 3 NVIDIA implementation is limited to 8-bit streams [11] [12].
  • 4 Except GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB).

NVIDIA driver only

Codec nvidia-utils
Decoding Encoding
MPEG-2 Fermi and newer1 No
VC-1
AVC (H.264) Kepler and newer2
HEVC (H.265) 8bit Maxwell (GM206) and newer Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer
HEVC (H.265) 10bit Pascal and newer
VP8 Maxwell (2nd Gen) and newer No
VP9 8bit Maxwell (GM206) and newer
VP9 10bit Pascal and newer
  • 1 Except GM108 (not supported)
  • 2 Except GM108 and GP108 (not supported)

Software support

VA-API VDPAU NVDECODE Documentation
FFmpeg Yes Yes Yes FFmpeg#Hardware video acceleration
GStreamer Yes, via gstreamer-vaapi Yes, via gst-plugins-bad Yes, via gst-plugins-bad GStreamer#Hardware video acceleration
Kodi Yes Yes Yes Kodi#Hardware video acceleration
mpv Yes Yes Yes mpv#Hardware decoding
VLC media player Yes Yes No VLC media player#Hardware video acceleration
MPlayer mplayer-vaapiAUR Yes No MPlayer#Hardware video acceleration
Flash NPAPI only:
freshplayerpluginAUR
NPAPI only:
flashplugin or
freshplayerpluginAUR
No Browser plugins#Adobe Flash Player
Chromium chromium-vaapiAUR No No Chromium#Hardware video acceleration
Firefox No No No Bug report
Tip: To reduce CPU usage while watching YouTube where VP8/VP9 hardware decoding is not available use h264ify extension for Firefox and Chromium.