VDPAU Playback Support (Video Hardware Decoding)

[beandog]

Edit: Un-stickying this because it's old, the info is now invalid, and you can get better info on the wiki (most likely)

Latest mplayer ebuild (media-video/mplayer-1.0_rc2-p20090226) adds support for VDPAU playback with nvidia binary drivers and video cards.

VDPAU allows the video card to do hardware decoding for MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 (H264), VC1 and WMV video codecs, offsetting the load from your computer's CPU.

Here's a list of supported cards: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html (warning: PDF)

If you want to compile mplayer with vdpau, you'll need >=nvidia-drivers-180.22 installed.

I recommend using the latest nvidia-drivers and the live mplayer ebuild for the best support, as they are still adding new stuff.

You will need both "nvidia" in your VIDEO_CARDS entry in /etc/make.conf as well as "vdpau" either in make.conf or package.use before emerging mplayer.

You can verify that MPlayer has added support for VDPAU by doing mplayer -vo help

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mplayer -vo help
MPlayer 29040-4.1.2 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
Available video output drivers:
        xv      X11/Xv
        vdpau   VDPAU with X11
        x11     X11 ( XImage/Shm )
        xover   General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
        null    Null video output
        xvmc    XVideo Motion Compensation
        mpegpes MPEG-PES file
        yuv4mpeg        yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
        png     PNG file
        jpeg    JPEG file
        gif89a  animated GIF output

If you want some samples to test, here's a few to try:

Example Movie Clips:
MPEG: http://inventaaustralia.zftp.com.nyud.n ... S30sec.mpg
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffmpeg12vdpau MPEGIO3MBPS30sec.mpg

H.264: http://samples.mplayerhq.hu.nyud.net/V- ... FF/Grey.ts
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau Grey.ts

http://samples.mplayerhq.hu.nyud.net/V- ... kbits.h264
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau nature_704x576_25Hz_1500kbits.h264

WMV3: http://download.microsoft.com.nyud.net/ ... es_720.exe
(use `unzip` to extract the .exe)
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffwmv3vdpau Amazing_Caves_720.wmv

VC-1: http://samples.mplayerhq.hu.nyud.net/V- ... 15Mbps.wmv
mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffvc1vdpau FlightSimX_720p60_51_15Mbps.wmv

Above taken from http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123095

[beandog]

Development for VDPAU in MPlayer's upstream is still in ongoing development, and as a result, you may want to try the most recent from SVN if you run into any errors with the packages in the tree.

There is already a live ebuild in the tree -- media-video/mplayer-9999, but it has no keywords so you will have to add them yourself before emerging. It is also package masked.

Add this to /etc/portage/package.keywords:

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media-video/mplayer **

And this to /etc/portage/package.unmask

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media-video/mplayer

[beandog]

There is a very simple way to create a playback profile for MPlayer to test / use VDPAU video out.

MPlayer's config file will use a profile by default if you use the right syntax. In this one, anytime you use -vo vdpau, it will load this one.

It will try all four possible VDPAU video codecs, and fall back on whichever one works. Don't leave the comma off on the end.

Add this to ~/.mplayer/config

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[vo.vdpau]
vc=ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffh264vdpau,

Then, just playback a file using -vo vdpau and that's all you need

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mplayer -vo vdpau x264.mkv