1. Home/
  2. modify ubuntu/
  3. Enable Hardware Acceleration on Intel Graphics Cards in Ubuntu

Enable Hardware Acceleration on Intel Graphics Cards in Ubuntu

Last updated: February 11, 2014

intel graphics

This tutorial is going to show you how to enable hardware acceleration on Intel graphics cards using VDPAU driver.

VDPAU is an open-source library and API allows to video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware. If VDPAU available, CPU usage can be significantly lower.

Applications that uses VDPAU:

  • Avidemux as of version 2.6
  • Boxee
  • GStreamer
  • MPlayer
  • MythTV
  • XBMC Media Center
  • XBMC Live
  • Xine
  • MLT
  • Adobe Flash 10.2 Stage Video and later versions (32-bit only presently)
  • VLC media player 2.1

VDPAU is not available on Intel graphics cards. Fortunately, there’s an open-source project called libvdpau-va-gl, which is a VDPAU driver that uses OpenGL under the hood to accelerate drawing and scaling, and VA-API (if available) to accelerate video decoding. You can use it on some Intel chips.

Install libvdpau-va-gl via PPA on Ubuntu

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one (Supports Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.10, 12.04).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libvdpau-va-gl1

To install the VAAPI drivers for Intel HD Graphics:

sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver

To launch an application with the driver, for example, launch firefox:

VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl firefox

To force Adobe Flash to use the hardware acceleration:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/adobe
echo "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
echo "OverrideGPUValidation=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

To enable the driver for system-wide (not recommended):

sudo sed -i "s/^# \[/\[/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl
sudo sed -i "s/^# export/ export/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl

via: libvdpau-va-gl on Github | webupd8

In modify ubuntu ,
 permalink

    Twitter

    I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via [email protected] Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

    10 responses to Enable Hardware Acceleration on Intel Graphics Cards in Ubuntu

    1. Lepo October 20, 2013 at 2:57 pm

      This was working perfectly on Ubuntu 13.04, now on the 13.10 doesn’t… how can I solve?

    2. Rovano December 16, 2013 at 3:03 pm

      Install others needes packages..
      For me:
      libvdpau1 (0.7-1) needed! Library call API libvdpau1.
      vdpauinfo (0.0.6-1) = only for informations.

    3. beo December 24, 2013 at 12:18 pm

      (ubuntu 13.10 64bit)
      i’ve made all steps you write above, but after system restart i can’t login(!?).
      the password i use is correct but after it seems to work it jumps back to login screen.
      any ideas to solve that problem?

      • Panda December 24, 2013 at 12:38 pm

        Sorry beo, I’ve no idea what’s going wrong, but you can follow the below steps to remove previous installed driver.

        1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to command console. Log in with your username and password.

        2. Run below command to remove previous installed driver:

        sudo apt-get remove libvdpau-va-gl1

        3. Remove the PPA:

        sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

        Then restart your computer.

        • beo December 24, 2013 at 11:20 pm

          Thanks for quick reply Panda!
          Probably that would have been the best and fastest solution, but now i can’t test it, because i have setup the os completely new :(

          But thanks for the time you spent for it. merry christmas from germany :)

      • pcrazy May 12, 2016 at 12:57 pm

        same problem to me

    4. Ziggy February 7, 2014 at 7:19 pm

      How can I enable the driver for xbmcbuntu?

      Thnx in advance
      Ziggy

    5. Andrew February 10, 2014 at 9:31 pm

      Well, I see my commands here but why isn’t there a link back to the WebUpd8 article? :)