Comment 8 for bug 1708102

Thanks for that.

My focus for the past couple of months has been specifically on VAAPI for Intel HD graphics. That is stable and performs very well too. Intel HD graphics is important because that covers the vast majority of our users.

As an example, with a UHD test video I get CPU usage of:
  hwdec=vaapi 5%
  hwdec=vaapi-copy 40%
  hwdec=no 300%

So yes, vaapi works remarkably well. I have not measured how that translates to watts but the other benefit of using VAAPI is that videos previously unplayably slow on many machines (UHD and particularly HEVC) are now actually playable and smooth.

In order to avoid most of the issues you mention though, I think we should constrain the default config at install time to just:

  if (only one GPU and it is handled by i915) then install:
    hwdec=vaapi
  else
    hwdec=no
  endif

I don't want to step on the toes of non-Intel users. However equally I don't want to diminish the great experience we've achieved for users with just Intel GPUs.

Anyone remaining who does install mpv and continues to experience problems can get around them with:
  echo "hwdec=no" > ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
I'm happy to monitor the bugs etc and advise people so.