OBS VAAPI

GStreamer based VAAPI encoder implementation. Taken out of the GStreamer OBS plugin as a standalone plugin. Simply because the FFMPEG VAAPI implementation shows performance bottlenecks on some AMD hardware. [2024: OBS's FFMPEG VAAPI encoder now supports texture sharing, so it should be the better choice performance wise.]

Supports H.264, H.265 and AV1.

Note that not all options in the encoder properties may be working. VAAPI is just an interface and it is up to the GPU hardware and driver what is actually supported. Not all options make sense to change.

Install

One option is to copy the plugin to the current user's OBS plugin directory:

~/.config/obs-studio/plugins/obs-vaapi/bin/64bit/obs-vaapi.so

For Flatpak use:

flatpak install com.obsproject.Studio.Plugin.GstreamerVaapi

Checklist

1. Check VAAPI is working. You are looking for VAEntrypointEncSlice entry points.

$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 1.16.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_16
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.16 (libva 2.12.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 22.3.0 for AMD Radeon RX 6600 (navi23, LLVM 15.0.6, DRM 3.48, 6.0.0-6-amd64)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSlice    ←
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice    ←
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice    ←
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice    ←
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointEncSlice    ←
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileAV1Profile0            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc

2. Check GStreamer is working

$ gst-inspect-1.0 va
Plugin Details:
  Name                     va
  Description              VA-API codecs plugin
  Filename                 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstva.so
  Version                  1.22.0
  License                  LGPL
  Source module            gst-plugins-bad
  Documentation            https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/va/
  Source release date      2023-01-23
  Binary package           GStreamer Bad Plugins (Debian)
  Origin URL               https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gst-plugins-bad1.0

  vaav1dec: VA-API AV1 Decoder
  vacompositor: VA-API Video Compositor
  vadeinterlace: VA-API Deinterlacer
  vah264dec: VA-API H.264 Decoder
  vah264enc: VA-API H.264 Encoder           ←
  vah265dec: VA-API H.265 Decoder
  vah265enc: VA-API H.265 Encoder           ←
  vajpegdec: VA-API JPEG Decoder
  vampeg2dec: VA-API Mpeg2 Decoder
  vapostproc: VA-API Video Postprocessor    ←
  vavp9dec: VA-API VP9 Decoder

  11 features:
  +-- 11 elements

Build

meson setup --buildtype=release build
meson install -C build