Updated and Optimized Ubuntu Free Graphics Drivers

[lorn10]

Okay, will report this "h265 exposed on UVD 3.1" issue on Mesa.

And many thanks for still updating the 20.04 branch a little longer! +1

[oibaf]

One point is that 22.04...

I actually don't see specific issues with 22.04 (and I suggest to upgrade as soon as possible), but I can keep 20.04 for some more time anyway.

VA-API behavior...

Yes, I think you should report it as a mesa issue.

[lorn10]

A further addition regarding the changed VA-API behavior.

On my Radeon HD6770M GPU with UVD 3.1 there is currently exposed also h265 which is effectively not supported on that GPU generation. So this seems to be a bug. Maybe this is not a building issue, then I should report it on Mesa.

However, instead of exposing h265 it would probably make sense to expose h263 aka the "original MPEG4" variant? This codec is effectively supported at those older UVD generations as well as h262 (MPEG2) and h264 (MPEG4 AVC).

An interesting point is that h263 is as of 2022 also royalty-free like h262, the last patent will expire in 2023. But I should note that because the Intel iGPU series never supported it, the native h263 support in libva didn't get much attention and is therefore not fully stable (on all GPU variants).

[lorn10]

There is no particular single issue. I am talking more about a bunch of different bigger and smaller stumbling blocks.

One point is that 22.04 is "brand new" and because of the Wayland migration it is even more tricky to run it on older hardware. We are actually in the stage were the older drivers are adjusted and refreshed to be more Wayland compliant. (Some, like r300, were dramatically improved during the last months.) This all happens mainly in the course of !8044, - the partial migration to NIR.

Well yes, I can still default to X also with 22.04. But for the moment you will most likely not get the stability which 20.04 has. For example, the r300 driver has some strange flaws at older original Intel iMac models when Wayland is used. And at the moment also Gallium Nine is totally broken with several drivers in conjunction with NIR because of a missing feature in NIR, see !16176.

Whatever, as mentioned the Mesa devs and volunteers are working on this so also the Wayland support will be improved. I'm looking where I can help on that and mainly for this I am using the oibaf Mesa builds. At the moment this happens on 20.04 and in the not so far future this will happen mostly on 22.04.

[oibaf]

Today repository size went down from about 33 to 16GB, and the packages uploaded and built fine.

RAMChYLD : that problem appears from time to time and then resolves after some days, no need to ask for more space.

lorn10 : what is exactly the issue with 22.04? Any link to actual bug report?

[RAMChYLD]

So then 20.04 is effectively also EOL? How unfortunate, I was really hoping that it will be supported a little longer.

Well, even though I already migrated to 22.04, I agree with this observation. A LTS release should be supported 5 years. It can be argued that the 20.04 release is only halfway through it's life at this point. In any case, hoping Launchpad woud be a good sport and give Oibaf more storage, there are repos multiple times the size of what Oibaf is using on Launchpad (Savoury1 comes to mind).

EDIT: oibaf I was looking through your answers on Launchpad and found this: https://answers.launchpad.net/launch...uestion/212854

Looks like the same problem since 2012. Guess deleting does nothing and your best bet is to ask for another space increase?

[lorn10]

oibaf
So then 20.04 is effectively also EOL? How unfortunate, I was really hoping that it will be supported a little longer. Any chance to extend it for the next three months? My concern is the migration to Wayland in 22.04 which is currently especially for the older drivers like r300 and also r600 a critical thing. This will get better when the partial NIR migration is finally implemented and fully stable also for the older drivers. The corresponding devs are working on that with high priority and I think it should be done with Mesa 22.2.

Whatever, if there is too less space available for that little 20.04 extension I am willing to finance the necessary additional one. Really.

[RAMChYLD]

Yes, the problem is my use case. I’m streaming. The problem with this use case is I need H.264 because all the services and OBS only supports that.

in any case, I understand the problem. Hope you can work something out with the Launchpad team soon.

[oibaf]

Launchpad no longer releases freed space since some days and I cannot upload packages anymore:

Repository size:
33.1 GiB (100.00%) of 32.0 GiB

I also deleted some packages (backports of supertuxkart and warzone2100) but still no change in free space. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.

I'd suggest to use free codecs anyway.

[RAMChYLD]

Having issues since this morning.

OBS was suddenly barfing out the following error and won't let me stream via vaapi acceleration:

08:26:59.145: [FFMPEG VAAPI encoder: 'streaming_h264'] Failed to open VAAPI codec: Function not implemented

After trying a lot of things and failing miserably, I did a vainfo and was terrified at what I found:

libva info: VA-API version 1.14.0
libva info: User environment variable requested driver 'radeonsi'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_14
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.14 (libva 2.14.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 22.2.0-devel for AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (navi10, LLVM 14.0.0, DRM 3.42, 5.15.0-27-lowlatency)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc

The entire block of H264 entries are missing. Aside from that VC1 and HEVC is also missing.

For the record here are the entries after I downgraded the driver package to the Ubuntu stock:

libva info: VA-API version 1.14.0
libva info: User environment variable requested driver 'radeonsi'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_14
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.14 (libva 2.14.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 22.0.1 for AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (navi10, LLVM 13.0.1, DRM 3.42, 5.15.0-27-lowlatency)
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 googled and got a nasty answer about patent and licensing. Ugh.

Any plans to restore H264, VC1 and HEVC support to the VAAPI drivers? This is annoying, I need H264 support for OBS.