Re: VLC; 7.6-beta AMD64 Sept. 17th

On 2024/09/18 09:38, Byron Campbell - WA4GEG wrote:
>
> Okay, launched VLC from terminal. Here's the output when attempting to play
> an MP4, and audio plays but not the video portion:
>
> $ vlc
> VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
> [00000d0660d53220] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use
> 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
> [00000d0660d64ca0] main playlist: playlist is empty
> libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
> libva info: Trying to open /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/r600_drv_video.so
> libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
> libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
> [00000d06e842d060] avcodec decoder: Using Mesa Gallium driver 23.3.6 for AMD
> CEDAR (DRM 2.50.0 / 7.6, LLVM 16.0.6) for hardware decoding
...
> radeondrm0 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 "ATI Radeon HD 5450" rev 0x00
> drm0 at radeondrm0
> radeondrm0: msi

I only have machines with Intel graphics handy - in that case things
are working fine for me with or without hardware decoding (to actually
use it there requires the intel-media-driver package to be installed).

I'm not familiar with how it works with AMD and wasn't keeping a close
eye when VA-API was brought in but based on your debug messages it seems
that it's included directly in the driver in xenocara so that programs
supporting it will try to use it automatically without installing any
extra packages.


On 2024/09/18 13:33, Byron Campbell - WA4GEG wrote:
>
> Turns out that VLC had "hardware acceleration" set to automatic. I assume
> that it is shipped that way, since I generally have no need to alter the
> default settings. And the problem is indeed due to the VA-API stuff as
> Stuart suspected.
>
> I got it to work by going into VLC's settings > Tools, Prefs., Input/Codecs
> tab, and set the "hardware acceleration" to disable. Then VLC stopped
> seg-faulting and plays both MP4 files and one test DVD okay.
>
> Interestingly, VLC with hardware acceleration set to automatic, works just
> fine in my OpenBSD 7.5 box.

OpenBSD didn't support hardware acceleration VA-API until after 7.5.
AFAIK it's currently enabled in FFmpeg, mpv and vlc and disabled in
other ports where it was noticed that they might pick it up.

I think we could probably do with some kind of mention in the 7.6
upgrade notes, both to help people track down problems like this,
and to help them get it used on Intel systems (where it seems to work
pretty well).