I wouldn't buy a toaster to cook a turkey and then act surprised when it didn't work.

I tend to lean towards Amlogic SoC's for video play back and use CoreELEC and just throw things at it like you would any commercial device: Chromecast, Firestick and Roku. This could also be done using the Pi4 and LibreELEC, but generally not as cost effective.

I've tried following the path "32-bit Devuan + vlc from Raspbian", but still no luck h264 works but only in full screen, h265 doesn't work at all... It throws errors about "CMA buf pool alloc buf failed" so I've tried fidgeting with the "cma=" parameter on cmdline.txt, but to no avail.

hello joril,
yeah it shouldn't be easy indeed..

While the kernel space indeed as seen tremendous advances,
The userspace is still lacking and it still depends on manual builds/hacks and such..

What are the mount of MB you added to the Contiguous Memory Allocator( cma )?
it should need at least 256MB,
I would, as a precaution, add 'cma=384M', its a kernel parameter usually set in the bootargs..

At least some people around ARM is using 384MB( but I believe its for different userpace tools..by other words different hardware, but its a nice consensus value for any device.. ), anyway it deserves a shot..

I don't hold my breath on it, because probably it won't work, but one needs at least to try..

(unfortunately looking for a new maintainer now)

tuxd3v wrote:

For what I saw v3.0.3 was the version they were speaking of in the forum.. and complaining because debian updated to v3.0.6

I've tried compiling 3.0.3 too (had to add --disable-wayland and patch a line inside the x264 codec) but still no h265 acceleration
Maybe I could try building a 32bit image of Beowulf and use the vlc debs from Raspbian...?

You can build the binaries for 32 bits( like the instructions say ), if it fails,
C0rnelious has images for 64 bits

You can give them a try..

if its not possible, then see all dependencies that raspbian has for vlc, and get those files from there

For what I saw v3.0.3 was the version they were speaking of in the forum.. and complaining because debian updated to v3.0.6

I've tried compiling 3.0.3 too (had to add --disable-wayland and patch a line inside the x264 codec) but still no h265 acceleration
Maybe I could try building a 32bit image of Beowulf and use the vlc debs from Raspbian...?

tuxd3v wrote:

That could be a problem, because VA API is the one responsible to get acceleration in VLC

Ouch X-) I disabled it because compilation was complaining about missing "EGL_LINUX_DRM_FOURCC_EXT" and other constants, and here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view … 5#p1396812 someone said "You shouldn't need vaapi - that's an Intel API."
--disable-wayland didn't solve the issue

You seem to be right, vaapi maybe its not used for raspberrypi.
They refer instead mmal

I also found a thread in videolan forums that say that rpi doesn't use vaapi..

For what I saw v3.0.3 was the version they were speaking of in the forum.. and complaining because debian updated to v3.0.6

CFLAGS="-I/opt/vc/include/ -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vcos/pthreads -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vmcs_host/linux -I/opt/vc/include/interface/mmal -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vchiq_arm -I/opt/vc/include/IL -I/opt/vc/include/GLES2 -mcpu=cortex-a72"
CXXFLAGS="-I/opt/vc/include/ -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vcos/pthreads -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vmcs_host/linux -I/opt/vc/include/interface/mmal -I/opt/vc/include/interface/vchiq_arm -I/opt/vc/include/IL -I/opt/vc/include/GLES2 -mcpu=cortex-a72"
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/vc/lib" ./configure --enable-omxil --enable-omxil-vout --enable-rpi-omxil --enable-gles2

and the result is:

libvlc configuration
--------------------
version               : 3.0.10
system                : linux
architecture          : aarch64
optimizations         : yes
vlc aliases           : cvlc rvlc nvlc

No need for --disable-libva this time On to compilation...

cat you check the cpuinfo

grep Features /proc/cpuinfo

Features    : fp asimd evtstrm crc32 cpuid

Ok I'll try right away, many thanks again

That could be a problem, because VA API is the one responsible to get acceleration in VLC

Ouch X-) I disabled it because compilation was complaining about missing "EGL_LINUX_DRM_FOURCC_EXT" and other constants, and here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view … 5#p1396812 someone said "You shouldn't need vaapi - that's an Intel API."
--disable-wayland didn't solve the issue

I had to fiddle a bit with the "configure" invocation (remove -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 and -mfloat-abi=hard, add --disable-libva) to get it to compile... Sadly, still no HVEC acceleration

That could be a problem, because VA API is the one responsible to get acceleration in VLC

I don't know what extensions has the rpi4:
cat you check the cpuinfo

grep Features /proc/cpuinfo

maybe the compiler doesn't like this combination for arm64..
-mfpu=neon-vfpv4 - is armv7 related
-mfloat-abi=hard   - this one I think its arch agnostic,  i don't get why it gives error, maybe compiling for armv8, already implies hard-float.. but even so..

This options are very standard for armv8..
-march=armv8-a+simd+crc
-mtune=cortex-a53

One thing that maybe can create problems..
The compiled VLC, should use the same specs as the the libraries compiled in rpi userland..
or maybe the VLC code you downloaded require latest versions of some library that are not present in beowulf yet.. try getting a less recent version and see if it compiles without errors with va-api

3) Then build VLC or FFmpeg with support for RPi( will take advantage of the RaspberryPi userspace Libraries built above.. ):

a) Build VLC..
VLC has lots of dependencies,
So I just searched for RPI Build, and this tutorial is from 2017, its better to get the last VLC source code, to build..

On those cflags/cxxflags , you can compile for '-mcpu=cortex-a72'( rpi4 ), or if compiling for a generic arm64 '-mcpu=cortex-a53', the binary will work on rpi3 and rpi4 in this last case..

I had to fiddle a bit with the "configure" invocation (remove -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 and -mfloat-abi=hard, add --disable-libva) to get it to compile... Sadly, still no HVEC acceleration