Mplayer-vaapi is an official branch from the mplayer project team and can be checked out via subversion. VAAPI is an video output device for hardware accelerated HD content playback (VC1, H264). VLC, Mplayer and maybe one day Xine can make use of it.
I’ve bought a ATI/AMD Redeon HD 5450 graphics card on a budget (35€/40$) so I can test the newest development going on. Installing Ubuntu 11.10 Server (Kernel 3.0.0.4-14-server) with openbox as window manager, I’ve been able to make mplayer-vaapi work, but don’t ask me how long it took me. If you know what to do, it’s quite simple. Actually the only thing one has to know is, that the current libva1 (version 0.32) driver is broken. And the ATI/AMD’s fglrx driver version 8.88.7 makes mplayer crash after a while. These two simple facts took me a few evening to find out.

The steps to make it work are quite simple.

• Install Ubuntu Server 11.10 and put a ATI/AMD graphics adapter into it.
• Install ATI/AMD’s newest fglrx driver and the vaapi and xvba libs. Install openbox, if you like. Else use xinit -e <command> to start mplayer later on.

  apt-get install fglrx-updates vainfo xvba-driver

  Important is fglrx-updates and not the stand-alone fglrx, which is also available and might be taken because it looks reasonable! Else you’ll get the buggy version (today. V8.88.7)

• How, since the last apt-get also installed the broken libva1 0.32 package, we have to correct this. Download the last know working lib, which is 0.31-sds4 from Splitted Desktop. This company has done the development of this drivers and their patch for mplayer was also made available to the official mplayer project team. But build the dependencies first, before you overwrite the inaccurate libs.

  apt-get build-dep mplayer
  wget http://www.splitted-desktop.com/static/libva/libva/pkgs/amd64/libva1_0.31.1-1+sds4_amd64.deb
  dpkg -i --force-overwrite libva1_0.31.1-1+sds4_amd64.deb
  wget http://www.splitted-desktop.com/static/libva/libva/pkgs/amd64/libva-dev_0.31.1-1+sds4_amd64.deb
  dpkg -i libva-dev_0.31.1-1+sds4_amd64.deb

• Now we compile and install mplayer.

  aptitude install subversion
  wget http://www.splitted-desktop.com/static/libva/mplayer-vaapi/mplayer-vaapi-latest.tar.bz2
  tar xfvj mplayer-vaapi-latest.tar.bz2
  cd mplayer-vaapi-20*
  ./checkout-patch-build.sh

• In case you didn’t start openbox yet, do it now, but configure an initial xorg.conf first.

  amdconfig --initial
  startx

  and open an terminal windows in your running openbox session

• Now play a sample file.

  cd mplayer-vaapi
  ./mplayer -vo vaapi <your-hd-sample.mkv>

• In case you don’t use openbox, but xinit only, start mplayer like this:

  aptitidute install xinit
  xinit -e mplayer -vo vaapi <your-hd-sample.mkv>

Debugging and Tips

• Make sure your vainfo output looks like this:

  Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
  libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
  vainfo: VA API version: 0.31
  vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems XvBA backend for VA-API - 0.7.8
  vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
        VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
        VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD

  You can ignore the XFree86-DRI message. It took me a while to figure out it’s totally meaningless.

• Check fglrx for the correct version and errors in the Xorg log-file:

  i# cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | egrep "(Version: 8|EE)"
          (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
  [  1005.202] (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
  [  1005.650] (II) fglrx(0):     Version: 8.91.4
  [  1005.929] (EE) HID 046a:0023: failed to initialize for relative axes.

  If you get mplayer crashes/freezes, especially when using the “F” toggle-fullscreen key intensely, then its very likely you are on an older fglrx version. Mine was 8.88.7 and it was crashing all the time in my openbox session. The only way to use it reliably was to start it via xinit.

• If you get this crash, if you start playing HD content in your new mplayer:

  root@ati:~/mplayer-vaapi/mplayer-vaapi-20110127/mplayer-vaapi# ./mplayer -vo vaapi hd-sample.mkv
  MPlayer SVN-r32819 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
  mplayer: could not connect to socket
  mplayer: No such file or directory
  Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
  
  Playing /data/Videos/hd-sample.mkv.
  libavformat file format detected.
  [matroska,webm @ 0x1ea8dc0] max_analyze_duration reached
  [matroska,webm @ 0x1ea8dc0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
  [lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0, 12 Mbp/s AVC H.264
  [lavf] stream 1: audio (ac3), -aid 0, -alang ger, 5.1 AC3 640 Kbp/s
  [lavf] stream 2: audio (ac3), -aid 1, -alang eng, 2.0 AC3 192 Kbp/s Commentary
  [lavf] stream 3: subtitle (unknown), -sid 0, -slang ger, German Forced
  [lavf] stream 4: subtitle (unknown), -sid 1, -slang ger, Commentary
  [lavf] stream 5: subtitle (ass), -sid 2, -slang eng
  [lavf] stream 6: subtitle (ass), -sid 3, -slang eng, Commentary
  VIDEO:  [H264]  1920x800  0bpp  23.976 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
  Load subtitles in /data/Videos/
  libva: libva version 0.32.0-sds2
  Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0".
  libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
  
  
  MPlayer interrupted by signal 11 in module: preinit_libvo
  - MPlayer crashed by bad usage of CPU/FPU/RAM.
    Recompile MPlayer with --enable-debug and make a 'gdb' backtrace and
    disassembly. Details in DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports_what.html#bugreports_crash.
  - MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
    It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
    gcc version. If you think it's MPlayer's fault, please read
    DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can't and
    won't help unless you provide this information when reporting a possible bug.
  

  then you definitely installed the wrong libva-version. It must be the version 0.31.1-sds4 and no other!

• If you want your new mplayer as an Debian Package, use checkinstall. I use this one-liner in the installation directory of mplayer:

  sudo checkinstall --pkgname=$( basename $(pwd) ) --pkgversion="3:$(./version.sh |
      awk -F'[" ]' '/POINT/{print $4"+svn"$5}')" --backup=no --deldoc=yes
      --fstrans=no --default

• If you want your manually installed packages upgrade persistent, than mask them on hold.

  echo libva1 hold | dpkg --set-selections
  echo libva-dev hold | dpkg --set-selections
  echo mplayer hold | dpkg --set-selections

  You can see them marked as hi standing for hold, installed.

  dpkg -l | egrep "(mplayer|libva)" | grep ^hi
  hi  libva-dev  0.31.1-1+sds4     Video Acceleration (VA) API for Linux -- development file
  hi  libva1     0.31.1-1+sds4     Video Acceleration (VA) API for Linux -- runtime
  hi  mplayer    1-1               mplayer-vaapi from splitted desktop
  

Notes
If you should get dependencies problems, install the libva packages right before the ./checkout-patch-build.sh command. Use apt-get -f install to fix integrity of the dependencies and install the libva1/libva-dev again.

I’m a big friend of it having it nice, smooth and quick. Therefor I’m using launchpad PPAs wherever I can. But looking through the available PPAs at launchpad.net I couldn’t find anything working. It’s old, outdated or simply the dependencies drove me into a mess.
If anybody have a working out-of-the-box PPA for Oneiric, feel free to post it here as a comment.

Debian Package
Download this package at your own risk. It’s build on a Ubuntu Server 11.10

Linux oneiric 3.0.0-14-server #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 21 20:49:05 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Make sure you’ve installed the libva1-0.31.1-1+sds4 debian package.

Downlaod File: mplayer-vaapi_0-1_amd64.deb [9.3M]
md5sum: 1810f2fca428bb359d5341cda2565ac3

Links

• Fixing FGLRX Problems (German)
• splitted-desktop libva section
• make VLC work with VAAPI
• libxine-vaapi project (experimental, German)
• VDR softhddevice plugin working with mplayer as frontend (German)

Please post found errors, corrections, updates.
Thanks.