15.04mplayervaapivideovideo player
There used to be a vaapi build of mplayer but it doesn't seem to be maintained any more and doesn't work in Vivid.
Default mplayer2 build from the repo uses 40% of CPU during 720p playback. Same as totem. VLC does have some hardware acceleration support and uses 13% but I liked mplayer's UI more and it used less than 5% with.
Is it currently possible to use mplayer with hardware acceleration on Intel integrated graphics?
Mind you if you have an nVidia graphics card you should not only specify the -vo device but also give a -vc setting. On my own system I give the following on the commandline:
mplayer -vo vdpau filename
(replacing 'filename' with the actual name of your file of course) and place the following in ~/.mplayer/config:
[vo.vdpau]
vc=ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffh264vdpau,ffodivxvdpau,
but there are several different ways of doing this. This method allows you to use different video out devices with MPlayer but will give proper -vc values when you specify -vo vdpau from the commandline.
Hope this helps :).
VA-API (Hardware Acceleration For Intel )
Is there a power saving application similar to Jupiter? check my answer for full detail
sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver libva-intel-vaapi-driver vainfo
Configuration
VLC
Its in Tools > Preferences > Input & Codecs > Enable Use GPU Accelerated decoding
How to correctly enable/test VA-API on Intel Sandy Bridge?
vlc --ffmpeg-hw -v
Check the line
[0x7fd018c02d38] avcodec decoder: Using VA API version 0.32 for hardware decoding.
Best Answer
OK, I found
mpv(a fork of mplayer) which does everything I wanted and carried all the good UI qualities from mplayer2.To enable vaapi support, run it with
mpv --vo=opengl-hq --hwdec=vaapi file.mkvor add
to
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf.Previously the answer suggested using vo=vaapi and hwdec=vaapi but this is not a recommended setup anymore. See comments.