Re: Void Linux: Video playback works in Firefox and mplayer, fails in other programs

Carl Fink <carlf@panix.com> wrote:

Playing local files (OGG and MP4/H.264) works fine if I load them into a
Firefox tab, and also works if I run mplayer, but smplayer (which should
just be mplayer in a wrapper), vlc, mpv, and ffplay all show just a black
screen (while successfully playing audio from the files).
 
System: current Void
CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K
GPU: AlderLake-S GT1
 
The problem may be that the GPU is not being used. I installed
nvtop, and it always shows GPU usage as zero.
 
I have installed these packages: intel-video-accel, mesa-vulkan-intel,
xf86-video-intel.  Apparently that's not enough.

I know nothing about Void packages and what's in them, but you want
VA-API if Intel GPU video decoding is desired. Try installing vainfo
(from libva) and run it from the command line to see if a VA-API
driver is installed correctly.

Although they're for other distros, these links should contain
relevent info:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration#Configuring_VA-API
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/VAAPI

I think you want the "media" VA-API driver for your GPU
(installed as iHD_drv_video.so).

You can also compare video output drivers in mplayer with the "-vo"
option on the command-line. See "VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER
ONLY)" in the mplayer(1) man page. One output driver might display
the same behaviour as VLC etc., and then you can pin down exactly
which display method has a problem. I'm not sure which if any do
use VA-API in mplayer though, if that's really the problem.

If VA-API isn't being used, it must be a problem with the X display
driver (assuming you're not using Wayland). Check the Xorg log
file (wherever that is in your distro).

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