Karin Chan

Adobe Flash Player Hardware Acceleration on Intel Graphics Cards

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://github.com/i-rinat/libvdpau-va-gl">libvdpau-va-gl</a> is a VDPAU driver that uses OpenGL under the hood to accelerate drawing and scaling, and VA-API (if available) to accelerate video decoding.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Using it, you can get hardware acceleration on some Intel graphics cards for Mplayer </b>(well, we already have <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2010/10/use-mplayer-with-vaapi-support-hardware.html">mplayer-vaapi</a> but it hasn't been merged)<b> and even Adobe Flash Player. That means a lot less CPU usage as you'll see below. </b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1113424/img/flash-vdpau-intel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="intel flash vdpau ubuntu" border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8i1Yfqveiuryfc_QWHidU6mhKZoQeT_RNhsRnr46QqH1Iivl0KRAltoEEWi5GgODi_x-Lev0TVSWV4mOx81N7V1pYruVUhSyFK-IKz47gb0K_74jL37DIgXy60xRcDgVRF05ZN4dfpfg/s320/flash-vdpau-intel.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">AMD users: in theory, this should also work with AMD cards (Catalyst) however, from what users are <a href="https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=166593&p=2">reporting</a>, it doesn't seem to work properly and the libvdpau-va-gl developer <a href="https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1303921#p1303921">said</a> that he can only test this on Intel, so it's unlikely that the AMD bugs will be fixed soon. However, the open source AMD drivers should have built-in VDPAU support (you need Linux 3.10 and Mesa 9.2).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my test (Ubuntu 13.10, Intel graphics), a full-screen 1080p flash YouTube video used around 160-170% CPU without libvdpau-va-gl and about 14-17% CPU when using libvdpau-va-gl. There were some occasional spikes when using libvdpau-va-gl, but usually it stayed around those values which is a really great improvement.<br /><br />Note:<b> I've tested this with Firefox and Chromium browsers with Adobe  Flash Player 11.2 r202. It doesn't seem to work with Pepper Flash (available by default in Google Chrome)</b>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">libvdpau-va-gl is <b>work-in-progress</b> and while it has worked properly with Adobe Flash Player / Firefox on my system, it may not work properly for you or it may cause problems with other VDPAU-enabled applications and for this reason, it's advisable not to use this system-wide.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Below you can watch a quick video demoing the CPU usage for a YouTube flash video, with and without libvdpau-va-gl:</b></div><br /><center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZUmwtx_HA8U" width="480"><br />(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUmwtx_HA8U">direct video link</a>; for more videos, subscribe to our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/nilarimogard">YouTube channel</a>)</iframe></center><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install and set up libvdpau-va-gl in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>1.</b> Firstly, install the VAAPI drivers (for Intel HD Graphics as well as G45 and later)::</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>2.</b> Install libvdpau-va-gl by using the main WebUpd8 PPA (I've used Vincent Bernat's Debian <a href="http://packages.debian.org/sid/libs/libvdpau-va-gl1">packaging</a> - thanks!):</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install libvdpau-va-gl1</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>3.</b> Adobe Flash doesn't use hardware acceleration by default on Linux so we'll have to force it:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo mkdir -p /etc/adobe<br />echo "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg<br />echo "OverrideGPUValidation=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/adobe/mms.cfg</code></pre><br /><b>4. </b>Like I was telling you above, it's not a good idea to enable libvdpau-va-gl system-wide yet. Instead, you can simply launch an application with "VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl".<br /><br />Example: to launch Firefox with libvdpau-va-gl enabled, use:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl firefox</code></pre><br />To enable libvdpau-va-gl system-wide (not recommended for now because this may cause problems with some VDPAU-enabled applications), you need to open <i>/etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl</i> as root with a text editor and uncomment (remove the "#" in front of the lines) the last two lines. Or simply copy/paste the commands below:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo sed -i "s/^# \[/\[/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl<br />sudo sed -i "s/^#   export/  export/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl</code></pre><br /><b>5.</b> Optional: check if libvdpau-va-gl/VDPAU is working.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You can check if libvdpau-va-gl is working and Adobe Flash Player uses hardware acceleration by right clicking a Flash video on YouTube and selecting "Stats for nerds". The stats box that shows up should display the following: "accelerated video rendering, accelerated video decoding", like in this <a href="http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1113424/img/flash-vdpau-intel.png">screenshot</a>.</div><br />Another way to check if libvdpau-va-gl/VDPAU is working propely, install vdpauinfo:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install vdpauinfo</code></pre><br />Then, run:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl vdpauinfo</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And you should get something like <a href="http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cwYQzGyk">THIS</a>. If you get an error (for example "Failed to open VDPAU backend"), either your graphics card doesn't support VA-API (since this VDPAU driver requires VA-API) or you've missed a step from the instructions above.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Arch Linux</b> users can install libvdpau-va-gl from <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/libvdpau-va-gl/">AUR</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>For more information, source code or bug reports, see the libvdpau-va-gl <a href="https://github.com/i-rinat/libvdpau-va-gl">GitHub page</a>.</b></div>

Adobe Flash Player Hardware Acceleration on Intel Graphics Cards

libvdpau-va-gl is a VDPAU driver that uses OpenGL under the hood to accelerate drawing and scaling, and VA-API (if available) to accelerate...

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>VA-API is an open source library/API which enables hardware accelerated video processing. It uses the GPU to accelerate video processing in order to offload the CPU.</b><br /><br />Supported hardware includes <b>Intel HD Graphics and G45 chipsets and newer</b> as well as <b>AMD Radeon GPUs</b> (there's also a Nvidia VDPAU backend for VA-API). <b>You can find a list of supported hardware, drivers and video codecs <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API#Supported_hardware_and_drivers" rel="nofollow">HERE</a></b>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here's an example: on my laptop (Ubuntu), the CPU usage is around 40-50% when watching an 1080p H.264 video using MPlayer without VA-API and around 2-5% when watching the same 1080p video using MPlayer with VA-API. You can see some screenshots below:</div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/mplayer-novaapi.png" rel="image_group" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="CPU usage: MPlayer without VA-API"><img alt="mplayer without vaapi" src="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/mplayer-novaapi_thumb.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CPU usage: MPlayer without VA-API</td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/mplayer-vaapi.png" rel="image_group" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="CPU usage: MPlayer with VA-API (on an Intel GPU)"><img alt="mplayer vaapi" src="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/mplayer-vaapi_thumb.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CPU usage: MPlayer with VA-API</td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><br /><h2>Install Intel / AMD VA-API drivers in Ubuntu</h2><br />Before installing MPlayer with VA-API support, <b>install the VA-API drivers:</b><br /><br /><b>- for Intel GPUs (for Intel HD Graphics as well as G45 and later):</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver</code></pre><br /><b>- for AMD Radeon GPUs (you also need the proprietary drivers!):</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The Intel VA-API driver is available in the official Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin (and newer) repositories. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Nvidia users: MPlayer supports VDPAU by default so everything you need for hardware accelerated video decoding is already in the repositories. See <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2010/10/use-mplayer-with-vaapi-support-hardware.html">THIS</a> old post for more info (unless something has changed, but I can't test it since I have Nvidia Optimus and Bumblebee doesn't support VDPAU). You can also use the "vdpau-va-driver" driver which is a VDPAU-based backend for VA-API and follow use the instructions below to install Mplayer with VA-API.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><h2>Install MPlayer with VA-API support in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">By default, the MPlayer version available in the official Ubuntu repositories doesn't support VA-API, but you can use a PPA which provides custom MPlayer builds with VA-API support.</div><br /><b>To install MPlayer with VA-API support in Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.10, 12.04 or 11.10, use the following commands:</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sander-vangrieken/vaapi<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install mplayer-vaapi</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Once installed, open SMPlayer (or whatever MPlayer GUI you're using: <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/install-gnome-mplayer-107-in-ubuntu-1210.html">Gnome Mplayer</a>, KMPlayer, etc.) and in its Preferences, on the Video tab (in SMPlayer: <i>General Video > Output driver</i>) <b>set the video output driver to "vaapi"</b>:</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/smplayer-vaapi.png" rel="image_group" title="SMPlayer VA API video output settings"><img alt="SMPlayer vaapi" src="http://netupd8.com/w8img2/smplayer-vaapi_thumb.png" /></a></div><br />That's it!<br /><br /><br /><b>Other Linux distributions:</b><br /><ul><li>Arch Linux users can install MPlayer with VA-API support from the <a href="https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/i686/mplayer-vaapi/">community repository</a>.</li><li>The mplayer-vaapi source can be downloaded via <a href="http://gitorious.org/vaapi/mplayer">gitorious.org</a></li></ul><br /><b>Note: I've tested this on an Intel GPU only!</b><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>via <a href="http://help.ubuntu.ru/wiki/%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B6%D0%BA%D0%B0_hd_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE">Ubuntu.ru wiki</a></i></div>

Install MPlayer With VA-API (Hardware Acceleration For Intel / AMD GPUs) Support In Ubuntu

VA-API is an open source library/API which enables hardware accelerated video processing. It uses the GPU to accelerate video processing in ...

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