nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

nTia89 · 2013-06-13 11:16:30

hi to everybody,

I've recently switched to nouveau from nvidia blob. all it's fine except hw acceleration on videos (youtube and mplayer2) where I get this non-fatal error:

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

and the system get reason because this file doesn't exist.....

proud to know that also nouveau is VDPAU capable I search a similar file in my system. result:

[mattia@arch-dekstop ~]$ sudo find /usr/lib | grep vdpau
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/dri/vdpau_drv_video.so
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_softpipe.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nouveau.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_softpipe.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_softpipe.so
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nouveau.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nouveau.so
...
...
...

know my easy questions are:
- can I link libvdpau_nvidia.so to /usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nouveau.so ???
- so, why the link does not already exist ??? are my assumptions wrong ???

thanks

Last edited by nTia89 (2013-06-13 19:13:03)

Gusar · 2013-06-13 11:32:34

Of course you can't link the libraries like that.

Does VDPAU work? As in, do you get hardware presentation in flash (right-click on a youtube video and click View Video Info)? In any case, ignore the error, it's harmless.

PS. To also get hardware decode in flash and not just presentation, a bit more work is needed - you need to extract some firmware from the proprietary driver and only a few cards are actually supported.

kokoko3k · 2013-06-13 15:49:00

I really don't think nouveau is capable of h264/VC-1 hw decoding.
I hope i'm wrong!

Gusar · 2013-06-13 18:54:27

kokoko3k wrote:

I really don't think nouveau is capable of h264/VC-1 hw decoding.

Like I said, only a few card families are supported and you need to extract firmware from the proprietary driver.

Otherwise, there's hardware presentation (the P in VDPAU, useful for flash) and a not at all useful shader-based mpeg2 decoder.

nTia89 · 2013-06-13 19:11:52

from nouveau freedesktop wiki:

    NV04 - NV30: No firmware used.
    NV40 - NV50: No firmware needed. The Nouveau driver generates the ctxprogs and related state internally (commits 48c6dfb8 and 266229a5).
    NVC0: Free firmware provided by the driver, presumably working.
    NVD0: Free firmware provided by the driver but imperfect (commit 902530693ef38f3bb007efae594e54443d84fa56)
    NVE0: Free firmware provided by the driver, presumably working (commit eca15296a9c2a5d5d7d8281a710ba4bd0c2e7cd3) The proprietary firmware is not readily available, you need to extract it yourself (instructions).

my card is a NV50, so I don't need to do anything to get the firmware

I don't have the entry

View Video Info

in the right-click youtube video menu
where can I get to information ?

Last edited by nTia89 (2013-06-13 19:12:35)

Gusar · 2013-06-14 10:48:55

That stuff you quoted is for different kind of firmware.

The youtube function is now called "Stats for nerds"

nTia89 · 2013-06-14 11:51:20

Gusar wrote:

That stuff you quoted is for different kind of firmware
...

What do you mean???

Gusar · 2013-06-14 12:31:07

There are several kinds of firmware used on Nvidia cards. One is to get the card running in the first place, your quote talks about that. The nouveau developers managed to reverse-engineer it, so you don't need to extract it from the proprietary driver.

The other kind of firmware is for the hardware decoder unit. This one has not been reverse-engineered yet, you need to extract it from the proprietary driver if you want to use the hardware decoder with VDPAU.

There's more, I think some kind of firmware is also used for power management, but I'd need to check up on that.

nTia89 · 2013-06-14 16:02:07

Gusar wrote:

There are several kinds of firmware used on Nvidia cards. One is to get the card running in the first place, your quote talks about that. The nouveau developers managed to reverse-engineer it, so you don't need to extract it from the proprietary driver.
The other kind of firmware is for the hardware decoder unit. This one has not been reverse-engineered yet, you need to extract it from the proprietary driver if you want to use the hardware decoder with VDPAU.
There's more, I think some kind of firmware is also used for power management, but I'd need to check up on that.

could you share the source?
thanks

Gusar · 2013-06-14 16:25:25

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nouveau+vdpau

Yeah, that was rude. But seriously, search engines are a very fine thing.

nTia89 · 2013-06-14 17:10:54

I means official documentation...

Gusar · 2013-06-14 17:14:05

What official documentation? Nouveau is 100% reverse-engineered, Nvidia doesn't provide any documentation.

nTia89 · 2013-06-14 17:14:58

official = freedesktop.org

nTia89 · 2013-06-15 16:10:40

youtube stats (stats for nerds):

...
software video rendering, software video decoding
...

Last edited by nTia89 (2013-06-15 16:11:09)

imirkin · 2013-07-31 03:57:04

Take a look at http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/. Depending on which card you have, VDPAU may or may not be supported.

nTia89 · 2013-07-31 12:27:19

imirkin wrote:

Take a look at http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/. Depending on which card you have, VDPAU may or may not be supported.

Thank you.
I've already seen that page due to the notice of Vdpau update on kernel 3.11

In fact I'm going to try those steps ... now I'm on holiday ;-)

desaparecido · 2013-08-01 11:42:27

hi, using nouvea-fw from AUR, with [testing] enable, the core kernel works fine for some video files. I use smplayer-svn and mplayer2, and in youtube, vimeo, etc all works fine. I have GT440 nvidia card, is a NVC0, than is marked like OK in precedent post. It isn't like with proprietary drivers but is in the road...

nTia89 · 2013-08-01 12:04:12

Thank you for the feedback!

I'm on a 9800GT, so VP2
which will be supported in next kernel version.

jwhendy · 2013-10-28 04:36:50

@nTia89: did you get this working? I'm in the process of trying to do the same for my NV50 family of card (Quadro FX 1800M). It's specifically NV94, which looks to be supported in VP2 as well... but I still see their feature matrix (that's the official documentation you asked for ) lists it as requiring external firmware.

Just wondered if your dream came true concerning "... which will be supported in [the] next kernel version"?

I've unpacked the firmware, created /lib/nouveau/firmware, copied it in, and am building the stock Arch kernel from ABS under a different name, just in case it requires re-compiling to pick up the firmware files, as the VP2 documentation seems to suggest.

Just thought I'd see if you made any progress. I can only even do `startx` with noaccel=1 in /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf. The post in which I finally figured that out is here.

Last edited by jwhendy (2013-10-28 06:36:45)

Jasa · 2013-10-28 05:15:37

Slight recompile is required for nouveau-dri package, current in reposity doesn't come with vdpau libraries.

Also to have vdpau information shown in vainfo, you need to link a file in /usr/lib/dri folder.
It does show 2 codecs for nv50 and after last one of those there is an slight error output that is found posted by someone else, haven't tried itself were those functional in media players.

jwhendy · 2013-10-28 06:21:47

@Jasa: yeah, my attempt didn't go so well:
- went through VP2 steps above
- copied firmware files to /lib/nouveau/firmware
- built a custom vanilla Arch kernel from ABS

When I booted, I got the same mangled screen of multi-color pixels as before.

Do you have any further information about nouveau-dri? Are you saying a "slight recompile" is necessary for the kernel, or that I need to also build nouveau-dri from ABS?

I have libvdpau installed, if that's of any significance.

I'm not sure I follow about linking to a file in /usr/lib/dri...

$ vainfo 
libva info: VA-API version 0.34.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns -1
libva error: va_getDriverName() failed with unknown libva error,driver_name=(null)
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

[jwhendy@bigBang ~]$ ls -l /usr/lib/dri/dummy_drv_video.so 
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22584 Jun 27 07:30 /usr/lib/dri/dummy_drv_video.so

So... is something on the fritz there with the error code from `vainfo`?

Lastly, based on my issue with jumbled/scrambled pixel screens and in further reading on nouveau (and your comment)... is hardware acceleration simply for media codec playback/viewing? If so, would it have anything to do with me not getting a coherent X rendering when using `noaccel=0` for the nouveau module? If not, I must have some other issue going on... then again, `noaccel=1` lets me boot, so if that's the same option that enables the media playback you're talking about, perhaps it is the ticket?

Many thanks for the assistance.

Jasa · 2013-10-28 06:43:07

For me it did post about missing nouveau_drv_video.so, just link vdpau_drv_video.so to that in same folder. Not sure if that is clean method, does give some information however.

I'd suggest using AUR build also for firmware, but as there is change in by archive used to reduce download that might fail on x86_64, one needs to modify PKGBUILD x86 -> x86_64.

From packages in reposities only nouveau-dri might be one that needs recompile, even when it does do all other packages at same from sources.
https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit … kages/mesa (uncomment removal of /usr/lib/vdpau).
Also to actually build that package, LICENSE file can be downloaded from source files at package information page.

And yes, that is regarding accelerated video playback that no one of desktops should use to boot up. If trying from git reposities some desktops with composite enabled might be unable to boot up. That ticket is not about being able to use desktop or video players, only to force using video accelerated playback.

Last edited by Jasa (2013-10-28 07:07:29)

nTia89 · 2013-10-28 17:21:38

thank you, so this thread isn't dead yet

I haven't tried it due to confusion about vdpau in general at the moment

I'll give a try in future

keep this thread alive! will be useful, I'm sure

Last edited by nTia89 (2013-10-28 17:22:20)

jwhendy · 2013-10-28 18:13:46

Did not work for me, nor did it solve my problems about CPU load, so I'm stuck with a near-unusable computer whenever it decides to ramp up and bog. Still interested in figuring this out if possible.

- linked /vdpau_drv_video.so to /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_drv_video.so
- rebuilt nouveau-dri via the mesa PKGBUILD and `makepkg -si --pkg nouveau-dri`, after editing the PKGBUILD to not delete the dri/vdpau stuff as it does by default
- compiled customer 3.11 kernel
- extracted and installed firmware from NVIDIA 325.08 into /lib/nouveau/firmware
- unusable system at startx (pink/white/black scrambled pixels)

nTia89 · 2013-10-28 18:18:17

why do you need to recompile the kernel ?

are firmwares needed provided by this package in AUR
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nouveau-fw/
?

Arch Linux

#1 2013-06-13 11:16:30

nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#2 2013-06-13 11:32:34

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#3 2013-06-13 15:49:00

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#4 2013-06-13 18:54:27

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#5 2013-06-13 19:11:52

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#6 2013-06-14 10:48:55

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#7 2013-06-14 11:51:20

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#8 2013-06-14 12:31:07

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#9 2013-06-14 16:02:07

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#10 2013-06-14 16:25:25

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#11 2013-06-14 17:10:54

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#12 2013-06-14 17:14:05

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#13 2013-06-14 17:14:58

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#14 2013-06-15 16:10:40

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#15 2013-07-31 03:57:04

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#16 2013-07-31 12:27:19

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#17 2013-08-01 11:42:27

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#18 2013-08-01 12:04:12

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#19 2013-10-28 04:36:50

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#20 2013-10-28 05:15:37

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#21 2013-10-28 06:21:47

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#22 2013-10-28 06:43:07

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#23 2013-10-28 17:21:38

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#24 2013-10-28 18:13:46

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

#25 2013-10-28 18:18:17

Re: nouveau and VDPAU: hardware acceleration

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