[radeon] Totem with gstreamer1.0-vaapi and Wayland is just a black screen, then crashes.

[Kristoffer Brissman]

WORKAROUNDS

Just for totem: sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi

Or to workaround in all players: sudo apt remove mesa-va-drivers

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION

Totem with gstreamer1.0-vaapi and Wayland crashes on my machine with AMD Fury graphics card and open source drivers. Video output is just a black frame and crash happens within just a few seconds after video playback starts.

Could not reproduce bug on two older Intel laptops with iGPU's where hardware acceleration seemed to work fine under Wayland.

Issue is only present on Wayland, not x.

I can get hardware accelerated video playback working on Wayland with 'mpv --hwdec=vaapi-copy --opengl-backend=wayland' but this is the only way I have found so far. Even in mpv, no other option than vaapi-copy works.

gst-play-1.0 outputs the following error:
ERROR Internal error: could not render surface for file:///***
ERROR debug information: ../../../gst/vaapi/gstvaapisink.c(1483): gst_vaapisink_show_frame_unlocked (): /GstPlayBin:playbin/GstPlaySink:playsink/GstBin:vbin/GstVaapiSink:vaapisink0

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Artful Aardvark (development branch)
Release: 17.10

totem 3.25.90.1-0ubuntu3
gstreamer1.0-vaapi:amd64 1.12.3-1ubuntu1

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It sounds like gstreamer-vaapi has found a VA driver that it thinks will work, rather than none at all which should fall back to software rendering.

Please install: sudo apt install vainfo
Then run 'vainfo' and paste its output here.

[Kristoffer Brissman (brisse)]

$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.40.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_40
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.40 (libva )
vainfo: Driver version: mesa gallium vaapi
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. Please try this as a workaround:

  sudo apt remove mesa-va-drivers

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Although if you really need hardware acceleration then just use Xorg sessions rather than Wayland.

[Kristoffer Brissman (brisse)]

That's okay, I already have some workarounds as described in the initial bug report, and Totem isn't my main video player of choice anyway.

Just thought I would point it out since Totem and Wayland are defaults out of the box and this might cause some headaches for the not so tech savvy folks who just want things to be working.

And as a sidenote, even on Xorg, Totem with hardware acceleration doesn't work perfectly because I get a few distorted frames at random intervals, about every 5 - 10 minutes. I guess that's for another bug report though.

[Kristoffer Brissman (brisse)]

Not that I think it brings anything new to the table, but here's a screencast demonstrating the issue.

https://youtu.be/3uVeVZ3kmZE

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Dimitrij Mijoski (dimztimz)]

I just got hit by this bug completely randomly. I did not wanted hardware acceleration, I just wanted to play some video and got black screen. It just happened that previously I had installed ubuntu-restricted-extras which automatically installs this vaapi thing. After I uninstalled ubuntu-restricted-extras i got my picture back.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

See also bug 1767312.

[Taddeo Manzi (sinistristradali)]

Uninstalling gstreamer1.0-vaapi does not solve the issue for me.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like we have a semi-permanent workaround now:

gstreamer-vaapi (1.16.0-3ubuntu2) eoan; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/git_no_amd.patch:
    - backport an upstream change to disable vaapi with the amd drivers,
      the current experience is buggy and it's better to just not enable it
      see the discussions on this mailing list and the referenced bug
      https://mail.gnome.org/archives/distributor-list/2019-September

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 09 Sep 2019 17:09:08 +0200