From: Byron Campbell - WA4GEG <wa4geg@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: VLC; 7.6-beta AMD64 Sept. 17th
To: Stuart Henderson <stu@spacehopper.org>, ports@openbsd.org
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2024 13:07:52 -0400

> On 2024/09/18 13:33, Byron Campbell - WA4GEG wrote:
>>
>> Turns out that VLC had "hardware acceleration" set to automatic. I assume
>> that it is shipped that way, since I generally have no need to alter the
>> default settings. And the problem is indeed due to the VA-API stuff as
>> Stuart suspected.
>>
>> I got it to work by going into VLC's settings > Tools, Prefs., Input/Codecs
>> tab, and set the "hardware acceleration" to disable. Then VLC stopped
>> seg-faulting and plays both MP4 files and one test DVD okay.
>>
>> Interestingly, VLC with hardware acceleration set to automatic, works just
>> fine in my OpenBSD 7.5 box.
> 
> OpenBSD didn't support hardware acceleration VA-API until after 7.5.
> AFAIK it's currently enabled in FFmpeg, mpv and vlc and disabled in
> other ports where it was noticed that they might pick it up.
> 
> I think we could probably do with some kind of mention in the 7.6
> upgrade notes, both to help people track down problems like this,
> and to help them get it used on Intel systems (where it seems to work
> pretty well).
> 

A few more quick checks to test the selection of VLC's Input/Codecs,
see below.

Both audio and video play fine when VLC's Tools, Prefs., Input Codecs 
are set to either "disable" or to the "VA-API video decoder via DRM".

dmesg indicates:

radeondrm0: CEDAR
radeon_audio_component_init: stub
radeondrm0: 1920x1080, 32bpp
wsdisplay0 at radeondrm0 mux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0
wskbd1: connecting to wsdisplay0
wskbd2: connecting to wsdisplay0
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (std, vt100 emulation)

Yet when VLC's "automatic" Input/Codecs chooses the "Mesa Gallium driver 
23.3.6 for AMD CEDAR" it doesn't play the video portion of MP4 files.

Let me know if there is anything else I can do to be of help.

-Byron


====================================================================
VLC: Tools, Prefs., Input Codecs: VA-API video decoder via DRM

Audio and Video portions plays normally:

$ vlc
VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
[00000b586f6d7680] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. 
Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[00000b58d44ffe60] main playlist: playlist is empty
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/r600_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
====================================================================

VLC: Tools, Prefs., Input Codecs: VA-API video decoder

Audio plays but not the video:

$ vlc
VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
[000001e10ba725a0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. 
Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[000001e106f24ca0] main playlist: playlist is empty
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/r600_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
[000001e146e47060] avcodec decoder: Using Mesa Gallium driver 23.3.6 for 
AMD CEDAR (DRM 2.50.0 / 7.6, LLVM 16.0.6) for hardware decoding
=====================================================================