Hardware accelerated video decoding for H.264 on Radeon 6600XT Leap 16.0

English Multimedia
1

After migrating from Leap 15.6 to 16.0, I see that hardware accelerated video decoding for H.264 does not work anymore. The driver is missing the bits because of some patent fears, I guess.

vainfo 
Trying display: wayland
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment.
Trying display: x11
error: can't connect to X server!
Trying display: drm
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 24.3.3 for AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (radeonsi, navi23, LLVM 19.1.7, DRM 3.61, 6.12.0-160000.6-default)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileAV1Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc

There are no VAProfileH264* entries.

To compare, on a laptop with Intel integrated graphics, it looks complete, because the driver that Intel provides has all the features enabled.

vainfo
Trying display: wayland
Trying display: x11
error: can't connect to X server!
Trying display: drm
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel iHD driver for Intel(R) Gen Graphics - 25.3.4 ()
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointStats
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           : VAEntrypointEncPicture
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointFEI
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            : VAEntrypointVLD

The driver for Radeon is in the Mesa-libva package.

rpm -qf /usr/lib64/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
Mesa-libva-24.3.3-160000.2.2.x86_64

Packman has it, but not for 16.0
http://packman.links2linux.de/package/Mesa-drivers

Anyone has more information as to what can be done? Wait for Packman? Will it ever release it?

2

You should ask on the Packman mailing list, but seeing that no Leap version is supported currently, I would not hold my breath.
Anyway HW decoding offers modest benefits with recent CPUs and Mesa was moved to the Packman-Extra even for Tumbleweed as updates often created problems (just scan the Forum…).
I don’t use AMD graphics so I cannot tell for sure, but maybe there is some HW decoding support with ffmpeg via Vulkan, so at least players based on ffmpeg and using the Packman version of ffmpeg may use the GPU for decoding.
You may start by looking at ffmpeg HWAccelIntro.

3

I’m using mpv with vo=gpu-next

Playing a H.265 video

hwdec=vaapi gives the warning [ffmpeg/video] hevc: No support for codec hevc profile 1.

hwdec=vulkan gives [ffmpeg/video] hevc: Device does not support the VK_KHR_video_decode_queue extension!

So both revert to CPU decoding.

And for H.264

hwdec=vaapi: [ffmpeg/video] h264: No support for codec h264 profile 100.

hwdec=vulkan: [ffmpeg/video] h264: Device does not support the VK_KHR_video_decode_queue extension!