I found this amazing page https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-Cedrus#VLC that explains alot on VLC and hardware accelleration but I cannot clearly figure out if my playback is using hardware acceleration. I did follow all the steps to optimize chromium with the ppu sources - chromium doesn't work well yet for me - so not sure if that install worked as expected.

My playback of h264 in VLC is super smooth but I have around 20-35% cpu usage (1080p videos) - I know h264 is more demanding than AV1 but someone reported AV1 with 15% CPU usage and 4k. Is there anything I can do to make sure the hardware acceleration is working (aka the VA-API is used)? 

Use the version compiled for the panfork drivers and run it in Wayland.

Do you have the "--use-gl=egl" flag added in /etc/chrome-browser/default?

Edited January 24, 20233 yr by royk

18 hours ago, royk said:

Use the version compiled for the panfork drivers and run it in Wayland.

Do you have the "--use-gl=egl" flag added in /etc/chrome-browser/default?

I am not sure there is a vlc version in the panfork driver repo. I have the default VLC media player 3.0.16 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2) installed - that one is actually complaining about Wayland support but even after installing the required qt stuff, there is no difference. 

 

For Chrome, I was missing the version from the ppu however even after that, I am not having any luck getting video accelleration there. After installing the panfork version, I am not getting green screens anymore for youtube, the videos play smoothly but cpu is skyrocketing. Wondering what I might be missing from your setup. I followed all your other steps.

 

To note, Wayland makes a huge difference on this box. It is surprising how snappy the UI becomes after installing the ubuntu desktop compared to the default cinnamon one. This ubuntu desktop should be a default.