Hardware Accelerated Video Encoding for Chrome/Chromium

[russjr08]

Hello!

First, apologies if I am posting this in the wrong spot.

I’ve been loving EndeavourOS, and have gotten my system mostly configured to where I like it! The team has done a fantastic job on this distribution.

Where I’m running into issues however is trying to figure out how to get the hardware accelerated video encoding working on Chrome/Chromium based browsers. I’d like to have this enabled so I can use Google Stadia at a resolution higher than 720p (I have a 1080p monitor, so I don’t need 4K or anything higher than 1080p).

Based on my research however, this seems to be a bit of a… mess(?) across a bunch of Linux distributions - for Arch I found that there is a chromium-vaapi package, however I’m having issues getting that package to compile on my system. I had also seen that it may not be required to actually build that package, and that various versions of Chromium (or other Chromium browsers such as Brave) should have it included now?

That being said, when installing Chromium or Brave, I still receive the following in chrome://gpu:

Video Decode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled

However running vainfo looks as if it should be enabled/supported on my system:

vainfo: VA-API version: 1.12 (libva 2.11.1)
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems VDPAU backend for VA-API - 0.7.4
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG4Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG4AdvancedSimple    : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD

I would appreciate any information as to what is the latest method best method of enabling hardware accelerated encoding/decoding via Chrome - so that I’m not having to restart my computer back into Windows to play some games if possible. If not, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask!

If there’s any further information you need from me, I’m happy to provide it.

Thanks,
Russ

[dalto]

Have you tried these tips yet? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chromium#Hardware_video_acceleration

[russjr08]

Thanks for that! Somehow I managed to go through the docs and hit every page except for that one.

Seems to have enabled it for me now! and Chromium shows video decode as hardware accelerated now.

Performance is still a bit on the off-side (playing Stadia on my Chromecast with Google TV is flawless and that is on WiFi in comparison to my PC which is hardwired), but that is more on the Stadia side rather than anything on Endeavour/my system.