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0BADC0DE

Member

From: Regnum Utriusque Siciliae

Registered: 2018-02-21

Posts: 340

Re: chromium: hardware video acceleration with VA-API

What is the output of vainfo?

Have you tried the friendly wiki?

Last edited by 0BADC0DE (2026-01-02 06:01:38)

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Maybe Computers Will Never Become As Intelligent
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moturhead

Member

Registered: 2021-10-31

Posts: 20

Re: chromium: hardware video acceleration with VA-API

Output of vainfo:

Trying display: wayland
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 25.0.7-2 for AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, renoir, ACO, DRM 3.61, 6.12.48+deb13-amd64)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc

I did followed the wiki, but the new flags didn't work.

cyyynthia

Member

From: Toulouse, France

Registered: 2026-03-23

Posts: 1

Website

Re: chromium: hardware video acceleration with VA-API

Hello folks, I'm chiming in to report that on my end, hardware acceleration is working almost out of the box with a NVIDIA 5000 GPU. In case that may help anyone:

Wayland (hyprland), Helium browser (helium-browser-bin on AUR) 0.10.6.1 (Chromium 146.0.7680.153). I've configured the environment variables required by Hyprland as well as the one listed for hardware video acceleration support:

• LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia

• __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia

• NVD_BACKEND=direct

`about://gpu` was showing `Hardware accelerated` out of the box, but in reality `VaapiVideoDecoder` would always error out instantaneously and fallback to software decode (per the logs in `about://media-internals`). Significant CPU usage, no GPU decode activity.

After a lot of trial and error, I managed to get it working and further bisecting led me to the conclusion that the only flag I needed was `--enable-global-vaapi-lock`. Hardware video decoding now works flawlessly and video playback starts very snappily, which surprised me at first but I assume is due to the browser fallback being an expensive sad path that delays initial video playback.

Hope this helps <3

PS: I've seen Thorium mentioned quite a few times. ICYMI, Thorium has been left without updates for a long time in 2025 (9 months!), only receiving an update earlier this year... It is now based on Chromium LTS, promising to better keep up with updates moving forward. As browsers are extremely sensitive security-wise, I'd strongly advise, for your safety, keeping a close eye on whether Thorium is actually keeping up with upstream Chromium, and/or migrate to another browser otherwise (Helium's pretty cool! ). Vulnerabilities are often found in browsers and it is VERY important to keep them up to date!!!

tugoese

Member

Registered: 2023-10-15

Posts: 63

Re: chromium: hardware video acceleration with VA-API

Any support for GT 610 ?