Intel Hardware Video Decoding on Linux! VDPAU, VA-API, and Flash!

My laptop has a Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz CPU with an integrated Intel video chipset (GM45). It plays flash fine, but I wondered if I could get some HW decoding like the ATI. Here goes:

Intel supports va-api, not vdpau (required by flash) I'm running Arch on my laptop, so it may require some modifications to use on other distros (or it may not work at all).

Requirements

• xf86-video-intel
• libva
• libvdpau
• libva-intel-driver (only does mpeg2)
• libvdpau-va-gl

Optional

• libva-driver-intel-g45-h264 - replaces libva-intel-driver (in the AUR, it does h.264 on specific chipsets, but may be worse than software decoding)
• vainfo
• vdpauinfo

Setup

After the required software is installed "vainfo" should return the supported decoders. vdpauinfo will return an error. Create a file (as root) /etc/profile.d/vdpau_vaapi.sh containing:

#!/bin/sh

export VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl

Save and add execute permissions (chmod +x vdpau_vaapi.sh). Log off and back on or execute the export command above and vdpauinfo should return the supported codecs. Then modify /etc/adobe/mms.cfg and uncomment or add 

EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

Next in chrome://flags enable 

Override software rendering list

Now it should work!

Notes:

1. This works with flashplugin (11.2). I haven't played with it much, but it doesn't seem to work with pepper-flash (11.8). It has lower cpu usage than 11.2 with EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode commented out in /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, but uncommenting it has no effect. Either it's looking somewhere else for that config or it doesn't support it. 11.2 drops way below 11.8 with it enabled.
2. Obviously different chipsets support different codecs, some may not support any at all. The VA-API Wiki page linked below has some info to that end.
3. The Chrome flag may improve overall performance or it may break things / slow things down. you'll have to try it and see.
4. You can check chrome://flash and chrome://gpu before and after to see what changes.

Links

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=166593&p=1

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VA-API

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VDPAU

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel

ATI Hardware Video Decoding on Linux! VDPAU, VA-API, and Flash!

XKCD - Supported Features

I love that XKCD. Anyway, I built a HTPC / home server around a Biostar Deluxe A681-350. It is powered by a AMD E-350 APU that combines a dual core 1.6ghz cpu and an ATI Radeon HD 6310 gpu on one chip. It's a low end system, but I don't need a lot of power here. It handles full screen 1080i video from an ATSC tuner beautifully. It won't play 360p flash smooth at 1/2 screen, and it's a slide show at full screen (1920x1200). It just doesn't have the CPU to decode and scale video. Mythtv uses hardware scaling, so it only has to decode on the cpu, and ffmpeg's software decoders are well optimized.

Today I installed Arch Linux on it. This post was going to cover that, but I discovered hardware acceleration for flash on ATI chipsets works!

Comparison

• With software decoding and rendering flash takes 60-75% of my total cpu time (windowed, scaled as large as smooth playback allows).
• With hardware decoding and (possibly?) rendering it takes 10-25% and plays smoothly full-screen.

 Requirements

• A very up-to date system. (Arch hasn't supported it long, most distro's will probably take some time to, but you may find a ppa or can always compile from source)
• kernel 3.10+
• mesa 9.2+
• libvdpau
• ati-dri
• xf86-video-ati
• flashplugin

Optional

• vdpauinfo (print info about VDPAU (and show's it's working)
• vainfo (same as above, but for VA-API)
• libva-vdpau-driver (allows va-api enabled apps to be accelerated)
• libva

Setup

Assuming you have installed all these packages vdpauinfo should spit out a bunch of information on what's supported. If it doesn't you may need to specify the driver. I didn't need to, but you might (shouldn't) need to add something like this to your environment variables:

VDPAU_DRIVER=

Flash probably won't work until you edit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg and uncomment the line:

EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

I haven't tried it in anything but chromium, so I'll stick to that for now. In chrome://flags I had to enable

Override software rendering list

Now Flash should have hardware decoding! MythTV can be configured to use vdpau decoding and it works nicely too.

VA-API

(I haven't messed with VA-API much, so this may or may not work.) For VA-API it may be necessary to add the following to your environment variables setup. (you don't need this for flash, it only supports vdpau)

LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=vdpau

One way to do this is create a file (as root) /etc/profile.d/vaapi_vdpau.sh containing:

#!/bin/sh

export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=vdpau

Save and add execute permissions (chmod +x vaapi_vdpau.sh . Log off and back on or execute the export command above and vainfo should return the supported codecs.

Notes

1. It only works with the open source driver, though there is a way to get it in fglrx. (see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=166593&p=1)
2. Before "top" shows flash using 120-150% cpu. After "top" shows  20-50% (dual core = 200% max)
3. This works with flashplugin (11.2). I haven't played with it much, but it doesn't seem to work with pepper-flash (11.8). It has lower cpu usage than 11.2 with EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode commented out in /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, but uncommenting it has no effect. Either it's looking somewhere else for that config or it doesn't support it. CPU usage under 11.2 drops way below 11.8 with it enabled.
4. Obviously different chipsets support different codecs, some may not support any at all. The VA-API Wiki page linked below has some info to that end.
5. The Chrome flag may improve overall performance or it may break things / slow things down. you'll have to try it and see.
6. You can check chrome://flash and chrome://gpu before and after to see what changes.

Links:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VDPAU

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VA-API

http://xkcd.com/619/

Linux Mint 15 and Amazon Video (This also affects other video sites)

I just bought a new drive for my HTPC, A 3tb WD Red, but that's for another post. I had Amazon video working on Mythbuntu (just had to install HAL) but installing HAL on my (fairly) fresh new Linux Mint 15 install didn't work. I finally figured it out, with some help of course

What I've found:

1. Amazon's error is completely useless. It makes you think that you have the wrong version of flash.
2. If you haven't already, you need to install hal and libhal1 "sudo apt-get install hal libhal1"
3. Adobe has a guide for sorting out these problems once you figure out it's DRM related. Here the test page was the most helpful.
4. The test page gave me the cryptic error 3322 - device binding failed. 
5. I tried the solution found here, "rm -r ~.adobe/Flash_Player" it didn't work, but was needed later, after I actually fixed the problem
6. It turns out HAL wasn't starting, I ran "sudo hald --daemon=no --verbose=yes" it spat out a bunch of errors and died. I found the solution here, I'm not sure it's a perfect solution, but I ran "sudo rm -r /etc/hal" then "sudo ln -sn /usr/share/hal /etc/hal" and HAL runs! I think I will copy rather than link it at some point, but that's what I did.
7. I rebooted and the test page still doesn't work, I had to do step 5 again, now it works.

Whew, only took me half the night to figure that one out.

Notes:
I tried this on Linux Mint 14.1 and just installing HAL worked, I couldn't reproduce the problem on 15 by removing the /etc/hal directory. It's possible I corrupted something at some point, I'll try on a clean Mint 15 install sometime and report back.

I also got a 3323 error while HAL was broke, also fixed with #5.


Update: Only steps 2, 5, and 6 are necessary to solve the problem, the others are either diagnostics or irrelevant. (Thanks Douglas Roberts!)

Update 2: This affects other sites (Thanks NikAmi!), I don't really have the time to determine which ones myself, so I'll do a list and update it if anyone finds one that needs it (Post it in the comments). It may help someone else.
Known Sites Also Affected:
NBC Sports

Update 3: There is a package available (at least in Arch Linux's AUR) called HAL-Flash that lets you play DRM Flash content without needing the HAL package / daemon. I'm using it on both my laptop and HTPC and it seems to work fine.

Update 4: Chromium no longer supports NPAPI (netscape plugin API), pepper-flash doesn't work with protected files. Firefox still uses NPAPI and works with Amazon Prime Video. HD doesn't seem to work for me, but SD works fine. I'm not sure why.