[SOLVED] Chromium + VA-API + h264 = decoding issues

[an7h]

Hey, guys.

I succesfully compiled www-client/ungoogled-chromium from pg_overlay with the vaapi flag enabled, and enabled hardware acceleration in chrome://flags. Now there's an issue with hardware acceleration while streaming videos on youtube and other sites while using the h264 codec, which I swithced to using an extension called h264ify. Yes, in chrome://gpu it shows that video acceleration is available, and yes it sucessfully switched to h264 codec properly and it says GpuVideoDecoder, so it definately works. For some reason it decodes the videos with wrong colors while the h264 codec is enabled (here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/QjdXsz6l.png ). The terminal doesn't seem too show anything useful either. I tried recompiling ffmpeg with the openh264 flag, and also I tried disabling x264, but that didn't help. I throught about using libav, but I'm not really sure that would help in any way with this problem. I'm using the open source radeon driver (r600), but I'll give more info about the system below...

Any suggestions on how to fix this are welcome. Thank you.

Here's more info about my system:
lshw => https://pastebin.com/HrXz8rNB
make.conf => https://pastebin.com/F7cj4agM
emerge --info => https://pastebin.com/G1rz1NGU
vainfo => https://pastebin.com/Nqt5nR15

Please tell me if there's anything else that I can provide. Perhaps certain logs? I'm not sure...
_________________
If dreams were horses, beggars would ride.

[CooSee]

i get this too on NF, just with the little preview pictures, but NF working just fine when watching.

using current ' ungoogled-chromium-72.0.3626.105_pre ' from chaoslabs.

i assume this has to do with the current version.
_________________
" Die Realität ist eine Illusion, die durch Mangel an ehrlicher Kommunikation entsteht "
---
" Der Mensch ist von Natur aus neugierig, was am Ende übrig bleibt ist die Gier "

[an7h]

NF? You mean non-free codecs? Sorry, but what does NF stand for?

-- edit --
My version of Chromium is 71.0.3578.127
_________________
If dreams were horses, beggars would ride.

[Perfect Gentleman]

NF=NetFlix

[an7h]

@Perfect Gentleman
Oh, that's right! Not sure why I didn't get it. Anyway, guess I'll have to try another version, because MPV and VLC work fine with hardware acceleration, so it must be a problem with chromium. Is there some binary package with vaapi support by any chance?
_________________
If dreams were horses, beggars would ride.

[Perfect Gentleman]

try here https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/

[CooSee]

[Gusar]

You need to disable 10bit fbconfigs. To do so, add this to the device section in /etc/drirc

[an7h]

Uhh, looks like something with my install went wrong. For whatever reason the permissions are not working right... I noticed this, because I can't even connect to a wifi network or mount a flash drive via the xfce4 desktop. I checked hardware acceleration in VLC, and it didn't really work, so I'm doing a clean install again. I'll get back to this thread later when I'm done. I'm guessing I messed up the kernel config somehow, but I exactly sure what went wrong, because according to my config and group permissions everything should be okay, and I didn't have any errors or anything like that either. I think the va-api problem has something to with permissions, because I have another computer (Lenovo G585) with a similar CPU/GPU, and it seems to work just fine with the same software setup (haven't checked hardware acceleration yet).
_________________
If dreams were horses, beggars would ride.

[an7h]

Okay, so I'm back after a clean gentoo install on the same netbook. This time I solved the permissions issue. Guess I messed up something in the kernel config (most likely, actually), but whatever, now it works, and I have to say that wasn't the reason why I'm having issues with hardware acceleration in ungoogled-chromium. Currently I've got =www-client/ungoogled-chromium-72.0.3626.96_p1 installed from the chaoslab overlay, and unfortunately the issue isn't solved.

@Perfect Gentleman
Haven't tried those in particular at that link, but none of the binary packages on ::gentoo or overlays support va-api. Same goes for google-chrome and google-chrome-beta. I had to compile the whole thing myself.

@CooSee
Should I try downgrading that one or something? Guess I'll try that.

@Gusar
Hmm, nice, but it didn't work. I tried adding another workaround for the executable chromium-browser, but it's still bugging out the same way for some reason. Man, what a bummer...

Btw, I should also add for people that might lurk the thread that at my friends place he has some weird Chinese router made by Xiaomi that has little to no settings, and for whatever reason some piece of software on linux really hates it, and manifests this hate as severly decreased transfer speeds, especially while using wifi. Weird, but of course my friend blames linux. In other words - it's one of the main reasons high definition vids were a pain to watch. I'm guessing it might have something to do with NetworkManager, but I going to check soon now that I've got connman installed instead.

Hopefully, other users have suggestions on how to deal with this hardware acceleration problemo.

-- edit --

[an7h]

Okay, I've found a way to get it to work. I don't know why the options suggested by Gusar do not work in /etc/drirc for me, but adding allow_rgb10_configs=false to /etc/environment did the trick. After editing the file I rebooted, and then it started to decode videos properly with h264 and hardware acceleration enabled. FullHD works nicely now on YouTube and other streaming sites. Big thanks to Gusar for pointing out what was causing this problem.
_________________
If dreams were horses, beggars would ride.

[PF4Public]

For anyone having the same issue, the drirc could be created in ~/.drirc with the following contents: