H.264 VA-API GPU Video Acceleration For Flash

Splitted Desktop Systems, the embedded device company that previously wrote VA-API support for MPlayer and FFmpeg along with a NVIDIA VDPAU back-end for VA-API, has made another significant contribution to improved video playback under Linux. Splitted Desktop Systems has now implemented VA-API acceleration support within Gnash, the free software implementation of the Adobe Flash/SWF player.

Gwenole Beauchesne of Splitted Desktop Systems shares that the H.264 video playback performance has improved significantly thanks to this VA-API support and with 1080p clips it's working out much better than Adobe's own proprietary Flash 10 player for Linux. Those interested in trying out the Gnash player with the VA-API support, check out their project page. This will work with any VA-API compatible driver, or the NVIDIA driver through Splitted's VA-API back-end, and at some point the AMD Catalyst driver too.