.Markku Reunanen.

Intel+Linux+Video Acceleration

May 18th, 2019

Seems there is still some manual work to do before VLC accelerates video decoding using integrated Intel graphics on Linux – at least on Mint. Installing i965-va-driver should do the trick. By issuing vainfo (another package) you can make sure it works too. VLC might not use the acceleration by default so go to Preferences – Input / Codecs – Hardware-accelerated decoding and choose VA-API. Dunno if X11 vs. DRM makes any difference, but both seemed to be ok. With some luck you should see massive savings in CPU usage: at least on my laptop there was a 75% drop when decoding fullhd h264.

edit: On my Chromebook one fullhd h264 video peaked at 120% CPU without acceleration and now it consumes steady 21%.

Filed under: linux,softat