This is an update on the troubleshooting progress, specifically regarding hardware video acceleration (VA-API) and media player issues on my system (Ubuntu 24.04, NVIDIA RTX 3060, Driver 550.120).
1. VA-API Initialization Failure: Symptom: Attempts to initialize VA-API failed system-wide, confirmed by the vainfo command returning errors like libva error: vaGetDriverNames() failed with unknown libva error and vaInitialize failed with error code -1. Action Taken: Installed the required VA-API backend driver package: sudo apt install nvidia-vaapi-driver. Set the environment variable LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia system-wide (by adding it to /etc/environment and rebooting) because automatic detection was failing even with the driver installed. Outcome: vainfo now runs successfully, confirms initialization of the "VA-API NVDEC driver", and lists supported hardware decoding profiles (H264, HEVC, VP9, AV1 etc.). VA-API appears functional system-wide when the driver name is explicitly provided via the environment variable. 2. mpv Playback Failure: Symptom: After fixing vainfo, the mpv media player failed to play videos (showed a black screen) when attempting to use the default VA-API hardware decoding (hwdec=vaapi), despite vainfo reporting success. Verbose logs indicated mpv hung during VA-API surface initialization. Action Taken: Configured mpv to use NVIDIA's native NVDEC interface instead of the VA-API bridge. This was done by adding the line hwdec=nvdec-copy to the ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf file. Outcome: mpv now successfully plays videos using hardware acceleration via NVDEC, confirmed by checking playback statistics (Shift+i shows HW Dec: nvdec (nvdec-copy)). Summary: The issues preventing VA-API initialization and causing mpv playback failures with hardware acceleration appear to be resolved through the installation of the nvidia-vaapi-driver package combined with setting the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia environment variable, and configuring mpv to use nvdec-copy. Note: I am still monitoring a separate issue where opening the Network Manager applet causes temporary system lag, which might be related to the rtl8821au WiFi driver. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2107235 Title: pc freeze for a seconds, vlc lag, terminal lag, chrome lag To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/2107235/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
