[Libva] Status of libva and mplayer/ffmpeg?

[Erik Slagter]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get h264 video decoded by my sandy bridge cpu/gpu using 
mplayer (ffmpeg - command line, would be nice too, by the way).

I really can't get a proper status on this. I know there is a set of 
patches to be applied to a certain version of mplayer Jan. this year 
(including a specific version of ffmpeg as well) which would work. This 
procedure doesn't work anymore, as the ffmpeg repo has moved to git (the 
script uses svn).

I've been very bold and checked out the specific mplayer version, 
removed the ffmpeg tree (which is the wrong version now anyway), 
replaced it with a git checkout from around the proper time (it's 
impossible to find out what git commit maps to the given svn 
revision...) and applied the relevant patches (no vdpau, amd or gm500 
etc. patches applied). This works, I had to apply 1 patch manually, but 
that was minor.

Then I went even more bold and "svn update"d mplayer to "now". I had a 
few conflicts but these were easy to resolve. I removed the ffmpeg tree 
once again and replaced it with a "current" ffmpeg (you can't have one 
without the other...). With a little help it actually compiled and 
linked okay.

I tried the executable but found two problems:

  - the -va option has gone, it's not added by the libva patches, so I 
guess it has been removed from mplayer altogether, I don't know how to 
fix that for the moment

  - with only the -vo vaapi option, mplayer shows h264 content, but 
apparently doesn't use the gpu, cpu usage stays the same.

I know that Gwénole submitted patches to mplayer, but they were burnt 
(as usual). Gwénole, if you still have the time and the interest, can 
you please try again? My experience is that the guys aren't that bad, 
they just have a big mouth and are somewhat protective of "their" 
program ;-)

I have two more questions:

The patches of the "libva jumbo patch" include patching for ffmpeg. 
AFAIK these are already included in ffmpeg nowadays, am I right in this 
assumption?

Wouldn't it be easiest to define a few extra codecs in libavcodec (like 
h264_vaapi) and then both the command line tool and mplayer could use 
these without hassle?

Thank you for your help!

PS. I am amazed by how little people have interest in this subject!