Seems like this feature doesn’t bother a lot of people. At least I didn’t find too much information let alone instructions on how to get Video Acceleration API (VA API) to work on my machines with Intel GMA X4500MHD. Since this is still work in progress Intel has not merged g45-h264 branch into their drivers and it seems unclear, when those will be available from Ubuntu repositories. I have already been using Nvidia’s Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) for a couple of years on capable hardware and have since then been longing for a solution on Intel G45. VDPAU is very easy to install and to get running with e. g. mplayer or XBMC. VAAPI is not. But it’s not as troublesome as I thought. All of the following instructions are likely to break your system or leave it in unusable state. Either you know exactly what you’re doing and hence can reverse it or you are simply brave. Like me. Here’s how I finally did it.
Step 1: Add the Xorg-Edgers PPA to your system as you will need the bleeding edge
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install libva1 i965-va-driver vainfo build-essential
Step 2: Get everything you need from GIT
download libva source into subfolder libva)
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/libva libva
download intel-driver source into subfolder intel-driver)
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/intel-driver intel-driver
download mplayer source into subfolder mplayer)
git clone git://gitorious.org/vaapi/mplayer.git mplayer
Step 3: You need to checkout the branches with applied vaapi-patches from inside each subdirectory
cd libva
git pull origin g45-h264
cd ..
cd intel-driver
git pull origin g45-h264
cd ..
cd mplayer
git pull origin hwaccel-vaapi
cd ..
Step 4: Compiling time! First you need to install necessary dependencies
sudo apt-get build-dep libva mplayer
then compile livba and install it
cd libva
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..
same with the intel-driver
cd intel-driver
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..
At this point – if everything went well – you should have support for VAAPI! Verfiy with vainfo. Result should be something like this:
libva: VA-API version 0.32.0
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/local/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.32 (libva 1.0.16.pre1)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver - 1.0.16.pre1
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Baseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
New are the H264 profiles which enable us to do some serious video decoding on HD content.
Step 5: Compiling mplayer and ffmpeg (hit ENTER when asked!)
cd mplayer
./configure
make
make install
cd ..
If that worked you can run your first GPU accelerated test
mplayer -vc vaapi file.mkv
Note: Best you put vc=vaapi,xv, into your ~/.mplayer/config file. Also don’t use multithreaded decoding with lavdopts=threads=2. It won’t work!
Can u please tell the changes for i7 2600k (hd 3000)
Sorry, I don’t own one of these so I can only focus on G45.
Does this mean hardware support for H.264 decoding? More specifically, does this make 720p and 1080p mkv-s smooth?
Exactly! Although it’s still work in progress and hence not included in the main driver tree it already does a quite good job. XBMC does somewhat better than mplayer in my opinion in case it doesn’t stutter at higher bitrate streams.
[…] « Intel G45 with VA API on Ubuntu 11.10 […]
Sounds great! I just have a little problem when pulling vaapi. Namely, there is a conflict when merging the h264 branch (git pull origin g45-h264). Could you explain how you managed to resolve it? Or it just didn’t happen back then?
Sounds great! I just have a little problem when pulling libva. Namely, there is a conflict when merging the h264 branch (git pull origin g45-h264). Could you explain how you managed to resolve it? Or it just didn’t happen back then?
As far as I recall I did a
git commit -aand CTRL-X from nano. After that the response from the pull isFrom git://anongit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/libva* branch g45-h264 -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
and it worked.
That’s good to know. I have a small issue with libva, however — g45-h264 won’t merge. There are conflict messages when I run “git pull origin g45-h264”. Did you encounter the same problem and how did you solve it? Thanks in advance!
You can ignore (delete) the previous message, I just didn’t know that the previous one had made its way (two times).
As for your suggestion, I did exactly the same thing, I just wasn’t sure if I did the right thing. Apparently I did, but it still doesn’t work. “vainfo” gives what it should give, it’s mplayer that is complaining now. Twisted. I’ll try your tutorial for XBMC, that will maybe work.
Got it to work with VLC. 720p is nice and smooth, 1080p is obviously a work in progress: stutters all the time. Unfortunately, AVCHD from my handycam is totally unplayable. I guess I’m condamned to Windows for this… There are no recent activities regarding g45-h264 as far as I can see (5 months since the last patch).
Thank you everyone! Worked. I installed the intel_gpu_tools package in ubuntu to monitor my gpu usage & its finally at 100%. Mplayer’s video is still a little choppy.
I used: mplayer -vo vaapi video.mkv to run it though mplayer -vc didn’t work.
I have Ubuntu 12.04 x64 with Intel 4500MHD video, when I give the command vainfo get this info:
libva: VA-API version 0.32.0
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.32 (libva 1.1.0.pre1)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver – 1.0.15
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
how can I solve for h264?
I solved part of the video but now when you only hear the audio
Thanks!
I did use that under debian, and for an i5 2500k – so I didn’t ‘git pull origin g45-h264’ as it’s not needed, but I have to use the option -vo vaapi, and let mplayer decide the codec and not -vc vaapi – that wouldn’t work.
BTW, as that might help somebody:
I did install the build dependencies that way:
apt-get build-dep libva mplayer
when it was finished, I did remove those that way:
aptitude markauto $(apt-cache showsrc mplayer | grep Build-Depends | perl -p -e ‘s/(?:[\[(].+?[\])]|Build-Depends:|,|\|)//g’)
Cheers!
needs
sudo apt-get install libva-dev
Dude please i have really tried this a billion of times with almost any ubuntu based distro and i never had this working….my laptop got an x4500mhd as you have but……please tell me what im doing wrong even if i follow every step you wrote….now im just installed xubuntu 11.10 to see if the problem is with 12.04 but….same things
libva: VA-API version 0.33.0
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/local/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_33
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.33 (libva 1.1.0.pre1)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver – 1.1.0.pre1
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
please i dont want to go back in windows for this silly reason but my little kid wants to see H264 cartoons that i have on my server…..thx in advanced for any help.
I have the same problem as John. I do not see the h264 part in vainfo. How to fix this?
Check where you installed the libraries, I had a problem of not picking up the /usr/local one.
If you need h264/AVC hardware decoding support, you need intel-driver from branch gčř-h264, NOT from master tree.
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/intel-driver/commit/?h=g45-h264
download: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/intel-driver/snapshot/intel-driver-g45-h264.zip or git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/intel-driver -b g45-h264
libva you can install from your distro.
How about ubuntu 12.04?
This works for Ubuntu 12.04.
No need to use the xorg-edgers ppa.
It’s making some difference, but:
Got an 4500mhd here. 40mbps video-test-file stutters a bit. must be either the limit of the decoding-capabilities or the intel-driver is not really good…
I get libva for g45-h264. When I `make` I get:
Making all in test
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/yannis/intel/libva/test’
Making all in basic
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/yannis/intel/libva/test/basic’
CC test_01.o
CCLD test_01
/usr/bin/ld: test_01.o: undefined reference to symbol ‘vaMaxNumProfiles’
/usr/bin/ld: note: ‘vaMaxNumProfiles’ is defined in DSO /home/yannis/intel/libva/va/.libs/libva.so.1 so try adding it to the linker command line
/home/yannis/intel/libva/va/.libs/libva.so.1: could not read symbols: Invalid operation
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [test_01] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/yannis/intel/libva/test/basic’
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/yannis/intel/libva/test’
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/yannis/intel/libva’
make: *** [all] Error 2
@yannis: this might be a bug in binutils. you should try another version of it.
but discovered here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-March/133616.html
DO NOT use libva branch g45-h264.
So in step 3 do not do the following for 12.04/12.10
cd libva
git pull origin g45-h264
cd ..
you only need to add
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/
to ~/.profile in order to use the new libraries!
mplayer2, ffmpeg (libav-tools) and kplayer work with vaapi out of the box.
VLC does not currently support vaapi.
my mistake, vaapi is not supported without patches.
Yannis, do you have any idea on what to to allow this export line to be loaded by default on an ubuntu system? tried several things link putting it on .profile or .bashrc…
more specifically I want it to load on a XBMCBuntu system, to enable VAAPI.
thanks!
or maybe we could link the files in there to wherever place libva is trying to link… I am thinking of a more automated solution.
didn’t work for me…
no problems during the process, but “vainfo” still returns only two mpeg2 profiles…
btw, I am on ubuntu 12.04