[mythtv-users] Vaapi use on Sandy Bridge

[Mark Kendall]

On 28 January 2012 05:35, william otten <williammotten at gmail.com> wrote:
> I decided to start over from scratch since I had tried alot different
> things. In stepping back through in getting things installed I wanted to
> verify a couple of things. Previously I loaded the following:
> sudo apt-get install libbluray1 i965-va-driver vainfo libmad0
> gtk2-engines-pixbuf
> based on another user's installation and I wanted to make sure they were
> needed, This time I didn't load them. I had ubuntu and mythtv installed and
> I tried the vaapi for the decoder and it worked or so I thought. I looked at
> the cpu use and it was between 32 - 40% (using system monitor looking at
> mythfrontend.real) then I loaded vainfo and got the same result. I then
> loaded i965-va-driver and the result was mythtv freezing with a black screen
> (this is different than the original problem but I have since loaded newer
> mythtv changes). So the questions I have:
> 1. How do I know if vaapi is really running? How can I verify?

You should get some detail with normal log levels but for  extra
information, run 'mythfrontend -v playback'. That should give you
plenty of information about what's happening with VAAPI.

Alternatively, in the OSD menu, go to Playback->Playback data. You
should see vaapi as the decoder (if it's working - if not it will say
ffmpeg).

> 2. What supporting items are needed for vaapi to work in mythtv? ie vainfo,
> i965-va-driver, etc...

In your situation, you should only need i965-va-driver (I think -
which should then pull in any libva dependencies).

> 3. This may sound  like a stupid question but another user didn't even
> realise they needed to do this....vaapi needs to be selected as the decoder
> in the playback profile to use vaapi?

Yes (which will force the video renderer to opengl-vaapi and the osd to opengl2)

regards

Mark