Totem does not use the va-api gstreamer backend

[noname2]

installing gstreamer -vaapi from ubuntu repos breaks thumbnail generation in nautilus
furthermore acceleration does not work in totem - cpu usage is as high as with software rendering.

mplayer-vaapi works perfectly on the same system.

gst-launch-0.10 -v filesrc location=~/test.mkv ! matroskademux ! vaapidecode ! vaapisink
makes it possible to use vaapi via commandline

i did not find a way to use vaapi for mpeg4 part 2 video streams.

and i wasnt able to find proper values for gstreamer-properties that fix thumbnails and acceleration in totem.

id like to share debug information. just tell me what you need.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Timur I. Davletshin (timur-davletshin)]

gst-launch-0.10 -v filesrc location='some.mkv' ! matroskademux ! vaapidecode ! vaapisink
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
libva: VA-API version 0.32.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
/GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstVaapiDecode:vaapidecode0.GstPad:src: caps = video/x-surface, width=(int)1280, height=(int)720, framerate=(fraction)500000000/20854199, pixel-aspect-ratio=(fraction)1/1, type=(string)vaapi, opengl=(boolean)true
/GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstVaapiDecode:vaapidecode0.GstPad:sink: caps = video/x-h264, level=(string)5.1, profile=(string)high, codec_data=(buffer)01640033ffe1001867640033ac34e2805005ba10001974f004c4b408f18318a801008468eebce5531cc305d2628d13080214868783a1c0d04e12142c0ac0da02fe10042ad35e9e850b748c778a1410088b172105449ca3050e204448b20a4d8a081827090809848541dc4290a43164215a201900cae8340f81e86f03300b6017002ac05981d61a07802a8400a902087404700bc010506e036404b811805902e07203e0087ff85b, stream-format=(string)avc, alignment=(string)au, width=(int)1280, height=(int)720, pixel-aspect-ratio=(fraction)1/1, framerate=(fraction)500000000/20854199
gst-launch-0.10: vdpau_decode.c:1264: vdpau_EndPicture: Assertion `obj_buffer' failed.

[markusj (markusj)]

Messages logged into .xsession-errors while trying to generate thumbnails:
> libva: VA-API version 0.32.0
> libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
> libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
> libva: va_openDriver() returns 0

> ** (totem-video-thumbnailer:24249): CRITICAL **: gst_vaapi_context_get_surface: assertion `GST_VAAPI_IS_CONTEXT(context)' failed

GPU: Intel HD3000 (Sandy Bridge)

With VLC, VAAPI works, but provides only a poor performance (which might be cause by the not very powerful GPU ...)

[noname2 (noname2-deactivatedaccount)]

dont use vlc with vaapi . you should rather use mplayer .

[Mastermind (ibrahammastermind)]

I tried to change the default video think in gconf2 to vaapisink but the result is:
"could not link ffmpegcsp0 to vaapisink0"

vaapi works perfectly with mplayer

It seems an error in compiling gst-vaapi without linking some libraries

mastermind@mydesk:~$ gst-inspect-0.10 |grep vaapi
vaapi: vaapidownload: VA-API colorspace converter
vaapi: vaapiupload: VA-API colorspace converter
vaapi: vaapidecode: VA-API decoder
vaapi: vaapipostproc: VA-API video postprocessing
vaapi: vaapisink: VA-API sink

[Alin Andrei (nilarimogard)]

Well, it seems at least Totem doesn't support this, so with totem it's not a gstreamer issue:

"The problem is that Totem is using the videobalance element, which is a
pure software element. Using software element prevent using hardware
acceleration like libva or VDPAU."

From here: http://gstreamer-devel.966125.n4.nabble.com/Gstreamer-VAAPI-and-Totem-td4655188.html

[Coman Mihai (z0id)]

I removed gstreamer-vaapi, removed ~/.thumbnails, but thumbnails display as loading all the time. Does anyone know how to fix the thumbnails generation?

[noname2 (noname2-deactivatedaccount)]

still there in 13.04

[noname2 (noname2-deactivatedaccount)]

on 13.04 gst-launch-0.10 playbin2 uri=file:///path/to/file.whatever video-sink=vaapisink works again for mkvs and h.264

but the same line does not work for avi mpeg4 part2 (xvid)
and i dont know what to put as videosink in gstreamer-properties to use it as default for totem

[papukaija (papukaija)]

I opened the tomtem task because of comment 6.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

According to http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/gstreamer-devel/2013-November/044555.html "Depending on the underlying hardware, the following video decoders are supported: JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4:2, H.264 and VC-1."

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

@madbiologist (s-j-turner) it's a Totem problem not using the right gstreamer element. not a gstreamer BUG, we can decode any of those files using gst-launch.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Thanks Ekimia. It is certainly frustrating not being able to use Totem with VA-API or VDPAU. According to Julius in comment #9, MPEG4 part2 (xvid) files will not decode with gst-launch and VA-API. This may be due to the support not landing until after his comment, or because it is not supported by his hardware.

Julius - what hardware do you have and does it work now?

[noname2 (noname2-deactivatedaccount)]

I switched to Fedora 20 and play all files with vlc. 5% cpu utilisation on 1 core intel i5 4000m which means hd4600 with 1080p

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Yes We know VLC can call VAAPI directly, the subject here is Totem, let's stick to it.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

julius - Isn't that a Haswell processor? Ubuntu 13.04 was released with version 1.0.17-1 of the va-api driver. According to http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libva/2012-November/001420.html Haswell support was not added until version 1.0.19 of the va-api driver.

According to http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/gstreamer-devel/2013-April/040527.html MPEG-4:2 support was present in gstreamer-va-api 0.5.3 (earlier than I mentioned in comment #11). MPEG4 support seems to have been present since the original gstreamer-va-api release, but I'm unsure of which part of MPEG4.

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Will this be Fixed in 14.04 ? it's a shame that Linux is almost the only OS where accelerated video decoding is a mess !

[madbiologist (me-again)]

It doesn't look like it will be fixed in Ubuntu 14.04 - see https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem and https://download.gnome.org/sources/totem/

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Does anybody can advise a gstreamer-based default player for Ubuntu that would support gstreamer-vaapi ?

[Jochen Fahrner (jofa)]

I don't know about gstreamer, but mplayer-vaapi works fine:
https://launchpad.net/~sander-vangrieken/+archive/vaapi

As GUI you can use Gnome Mplayer or SMplayer.

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Nobody is working on this ? Shall we set VLC as the default player on Ubuntu 14.04 ?

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Good news it seems ( and I'm surprise nobody told it here ) , the needed Fix for Totem was introduced by gnome team in April 2012 :

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674083

But I don't see if it's still working for Totem 3.10.1 which I guess uses gstream 1.0

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas)]

If I've gstreamer1.0-vaapi installed in Ubuntu 14.04 Totem thinks it doesn't have anything to play h.264 with :(
But when I remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi package this video file plays fine in Totem:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-libav1.0/+bug/1290368/+attachment/4095344/+files/00004.MTS
This issue was noticed also by Ubuntu developer Mirv (Timo Jyrinki AFAIK), see
http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2014/04/24/%23ubuntu-desktop.txt

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

I'm tempted to close this one as fixed, since totem in vivid at least does attempt to use vaapi.. just that it fails completely as shown in bug 1416005

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

Agreed, the new bug more accurately reflects the current situation.

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

Really happy that this is becoming an 'oem-priority' . I see that a fix was released , where ?

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

this bug is/was about "totem not using va-api gstreamer backend", that's fixed now in totem

thing is that bug 1416005 is a result of enabling va-api (and a reason why gstreamer-vaapi can't be in the default install), so further progress should be tracked there

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

You are totally right for Vivid, I though it was fixed for trusty but not yet.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

Will we see a fix for trusty?

[Davide Capodaglio (davidecapod)]

Still not working for me on 14.04, I have a NVidia card with binary drivers, VDPAU and VAAPI working ok.
mplayer and gst-play-1.0 using hw acceleration, but nope for totem.
So this is supposed to work on 16.04, that also has gstreamer1.0-vaapi 0.7.0 ?

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

I can confirm this is fixed in 16.04 , congrats to everyone , that was though.

[Davide Capodaglio (davidecapod)]

For me does not work on 16.04.
If I install gstreamer1.0-vaapi (on NVidia card with binary drivers and vdpau working perfectly with mplayer), totem prints this and does not play anything

libva info: VA-API version 0.39.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0

(totem:9596): Cogl-WARNING **: driver/gl/cogl-framebuffer-gl.c:157: GL error (1280): Invalid enumeration value

However, gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=... works perfectly with hw acceleration (checked "video engine utilization" in nvidia-settings)

[petit-prince (petit-prince)]

I can confirm Davide's comment. This is still not working with Nvidia binary drivers using vaapi and vdpau, while mplayer works flawlessly using vdpau hardware acceleration.
gst-launch-1.0 does work indeed.
How do we proceed? What further information is required to debug this issue?