[Libva] Status of libva and mplayer/ffmpeg?

[Erik Slagter]

> Erik I compiled it a week or two ago. "-va" worked on mine although it
> wasnt really doing much.

I am really interested how you succeed in getting there, I did the whole 
procedure as "described" in the script, and there is -va option, not in 
the original source, nor in the patches.

 > artemis erik:~/src/mplayer $ ./mplayer -va help
 > MPlayer SVN-r32819-4.5.1 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
 > Usage:   mplayer [options] [url|path/]filename
 >
 > Basic options: (complete list in the man page)
 >  -vo <drv>        select video output driver ('-vo help' for a list)
 >  -ao <drv>        select audio output driver ('-ao help' for a list)

In other words: no such option. Mplayer -vo help shows vaapi indeed.

> I remember i had to do some tweaks to satisfy the checks mplayer-vaapi's
> makefile has. If it doesnt find certain headers at certain players, it
> disables VAAPI from the mplayer during build.

I only had to add a few libs to the linking stage, not really an issue.
(-lpthreads, -lX11 and -lXext)

> That said, i dont think I managed to get it to use the GPU at all. Maybe
> its because Ive got an ATI and some things I found online suggested its
> not supported. I tried to post here but my message never appeared on the
> mailing list!

Hmmm. I can't tell for ati of course, but did you compile and install 
the relevant "driver" as well? Maybe your card doesn't support hw 
decoding. At least I am sure my cpu does ;-)