VLC VAAPI

Introduction

This page is about compiling VLC with support of GPU acceleration on Linux. This howto has been written by Jean-Baptiste Kempf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi

Before starting

libva

Install libva from http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/libva/ . We do not support other libraries than the one from Mr. Beauchesne.

Drivers

nVidia

http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/vdpau-video/ for nVidia.

ATI

http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/xvba-video/ for ATI.

Run

vainfo

To check if everything works.

FFmpeg trunk

Get the latest FFmpeg trunk as of 2010-January. Compile it with vaapi hwaccel support.

./configure --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --prefix=/path/to/ --enable-shared --enable-vaapi
make
make install

Copy vaapi.h to the includes.

VLC

Get VLC from Git. Get the necessary external libraries (on debian/*buntu: apt-get build-dep vlc)

./bootstrap
./configure
make

Compile VLC with vaapi

Patch VLC with http://vlc.pastebin.com/f59445620

Reconfigure VLC.

Edit vlc-config and add

-lX11 -lva-x11

to the avcodec line.

Mine looks like this:

avcodec)
     cflags="${cflags} -I/home/jb/VideoLAN/vlc/vlc/extras/ffmpeg"
     libs="${libs} /home/jb/vlc/extras/ffmpeg/libavcodec/libavcodec.a /home/jb/vlc/extras/ffmpeg/libavutil/libavutil.a -lz -lm -lva -ldl -ljack -lasound -lm -lX11 -lva-x11"

Recompile VLC

make clean && make

Check

That everything went ok:

./vlc --list | grep avcodec

should return something.

Activate

Activate acceleration in the preferences.

Profit