Comment 22 for bug 773466

For me it works for ATI/fglrx with these steps:
1) Install fglrx and libva1 1.0.12-1~xup from https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates
2) Download and install http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/xvba-video/xvba-video_0.8.0-1_amd64.deb (the version from the repositories seems to be missing functions)
3) libva looks in /usr/lib/dri/ for its drivers and xvba-video installs in /usr/lib/va/ so create a symolic link to fix this: ln -s /usr/lib/va/fglrx_drv_video.so /usr/lib/dri/ (see comment #9)
4) set LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME to fglrx (export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=fglrx) eg in ~/.bashrc to prevent vlc crashes (see comment #9)
5) Optional, install vainfo and run the comment to see that everything is working correctly, for me (ATI HD5870) it returns:
libva: libva version 0.32.0
libva: User requested driver 'fglrx'
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA API version: 0.32
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems XvBA backend for VA-API - 0.8.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD

So to return to this bug report, adding the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=fglrx and creating the symbolic link worked for me as a fix/workaround. So I suppose it should be included in the/a package so it is set automatically?