Feature #14580

Support Video Acceleration API (VA-API)

Added by intrigeri 2017-08-31 05:28:02 . Updated 2019-08-10 09:26:52 .

Status:
Confirmed
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Category:
Hardware support
Target version:
Start date:
2017-08-31
Due date:
% Done:

10%

Feature Branch:
Type of work:
Code
Blueprint:

Starter:
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

va-driver-all pulls in all libraries/drivers needed for Video Acceleration API (VA-API), that provide accelerated video playback and video post-processing for a great number of supported graphics cards. gstreamer1.0-vaapi links them with GStreamer and thus Totem. Installing these packages would improve video playback performance on very common hardware, hence improving UX UX and possibly lowering the amount of (recurring) requests for another video player than Totem. Installing them on Tails 3.1 downloads 2 MiB of packages.

Next step is to verify that VA-API is used (in practice) in Totem with this change applied.

Subtasks

Related issues

Related to Tails - Bug #15433: Cannot open GNOME Settings menu on some computers since Tails 3.6 Resolved 2018-03-21
Related to Tails - Feature #7929: Replace GNOME Videos by VLC New 2014-09-21
Blocked by Tails - Bug #15132: devel branch FTBFS since aufs-dkms 4.14 is in sid Resolved 2017-12-29

History

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2017-12-16 13:28:25

  • Target version changed from Tails_3.7 to Tails_3.6

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2017-12-25 09:09:46

  • Status changed from Confirmed to In Progress
  • % Done changed from 0 to 10
  • Feature Branch set to feature/14580-va-api

#3 Updated by intrigeri 2018-01-02 13:13:56

  • Assignee changed from intrigeri to bertagaz
  • % Done changed from 10 to 50
  • QA Check set to Ready for QA
  • MacBook Pro 8,1 13-inch: reads video with VA-API enabled
  • ThinkPad X200: reads video without VA-API (apparently no driver support)
  • QEMU VM with virtio graphics: reads video without VA-API (apparently no driver support); sluggish, but not more than on Tails 3.3

#4 Updated by intrigeri 2018-01-02 13:14:08

  • blocked by Bug #15132: devel branch FTBFS since aufs-dkms 4.14 is in sid added

#5 Updated by bertagaz 2018-01-08 16:08:11

  • Assignee changed from bertagaz to intrigeri
  • QA Check changed from Ready for QA to Info Needed

Did you push that branch? I can not find it in the main repo. Also, how did you test to see if totem is using this driver?

#6 Updated by intrigeri 2018-01-08 18:01:23

  • Assignee changed from intrigeri to bertagaz
  • QA Check changed from Info Needed to Ready for QA

> Did you push that branch?

Ooops, I forgot. Now I did.

> Also, how did you test to see if totem is using this driver?

Yes: Feature #14580#note-3 was a reply to “Next step is to verify that VA-API is used (in practice) in Totem with this change applied”, sorry I’ve not been clear enough!

#7 Updated by bertagaz 2018-01-30 14:14:08

  • Status changed from In Progress to Fix committed
  • Assignee deleted (bertagaz)
  • % Done changed from 50 to 100
  • QA Check changed from Ready for QA to Pass

intrigeri wrote:
> > Also, how did you test to see if totem is using this driver?
>
> Yes: Feature #14580#note-3 was a reply to “Next step is to verify that VA-API is used (in practice) in Totem with this change applied”, sorry I’ve not been clear enough!

Maybe I wasn’t too, I was asking for the procedure to follow to test if that VA-API thing was used or not while playing a video. Nevermind, I found it myself. Anyway, from my testing it seems to work well on supported harware, and does not seem to break the playing on the other kind of hardwares, so it’s now merged, congrats!

#8 Updated by intrigeri 2018-02-02 05:42:32

>> > Also, how did you test to see if totem is using this driver?
>>
>> Yes: Feature #14580#note-3 was a reply to “Next step is to verify that VA-API is used (in practice) in Totem with this change applied”, sorry I’ve not been clear enough!

> Maybe I wasn’t too, I was asking for the procedure to follow to test if that VA-API thing was used or not while playing a video.

Oops, I had missed the “how” word in your question, which explains my stupid reply.

#9 Updated by bertagaz 2018-03-14 11:09:25

  • Status changed from Fix committed to Resolved

#10 Updated by intrigeri 2018-03-22 17:44:15

  • related to Bug #15433: Cannot open GNOME Settings menu on some computers since Tails 3.6 added

#11 Updated by intrigeri 2018-03-22 17:55:13

  • Status changed from Resolved to In Progress
  • Target version changed from Tails_3.6 to Tails_4.0
  • % Done changed from 100 to 10
  • QA Check deleted (Pass)
  • Feature Branch deleted (feature/14580-va-api)

This broke some things on some hardware (Bug #15433). Let’s give it another try around 4.0~betaN, when lots of people will test our stuff and then hopefully someone will notice before a final release if we regress.

#12 Updated by intrigeri 2019-03-08 15:23:15

  • Status changed from In Progress to Confirmed

#13 Updated by intrigeri 2019-04-02 15:52:06

  • Priority changed from Low to Normal

Let’s gather feedback about this potential change when we’ll release 4.0~beta1.

#14 Updated by intrigeri 2019-04-05 16:32:39

#15 Updated by intrigeri 2019-05-23 15:14:52

  • related to Bug #16749: Call for testing: feature/buster (May 2019 edition) added

#16 Updated by intrigeri 2019-05-24 09:56:58

  • related to Bug #16755: Call for testing: feature/buster (June 2019 edition) added

#17 Updated by intrigeri 2019-05-24 13:46:58

I’d rather see us test this on our own hardware before doing it on feature/buster and asking folks to see if it works: there’s a chance we identify blocking regressions ourselves, without anyone having to suffer about it. Let’s try to do this during the June Buster sprint.

#18 Updated by intrigeri 2019-05-24 13:47:08

  • related to deleted (Bug #16749: Call for testing: feature/buster (May 2019 edition))

#19 Updated by intrigeri 2019-06-17 14:44:39

  • Target version deleted (Tails_4.0)

I think we have plenty of higher prio stuff to do for 4.0.

#20 Updated by intrigeri 2019-06-17 14:44:51

  • related to deleted (Bug #16755: Call for testing: feature/buster (June 2019 edition))

#21 Updated by intrigeri 2019-08-10 09:25:53

#22 Updated by intrigeri 2019-08-10 09:26:00

#23 Updated by intrigeri 2019-08-10 09:26:52

> Blocks deleted (Feature Feature #16209: Core work: Foundations Team)

Rationale: let’s not spend time on this before we reach a conclusion on Feature #7929 (I have no idea if VLC uses VA-API).