Arch Linux User Repository

NOTE: I no longer have time to maintain this package. I am looking for a co-maintainer who would be willing to take over. I am willing to help you, but I no longer have the time to spend compiling and debugging.

The version in the repo/on AUR is outdated and has certificate issues due to some timer inside Chromium that was triggered after a certain length of time from the build. You could also try chromium-dev-vaapi from ArchCN http://repo.archlinuxcn.org/x86_64/


I am now providing a repository in case you don't want to build the entire package yourself. The repository can be used by adding this to you pacman.conf:
[samcv]
Server = https://cry.nu/repo/$arch/
SigLevel = Required

The package is signed with my PGP key, so you must add my key to pacman by doing:
pacman-key -r C3881D62
pacman-key --lsign-key C3881D62

If you have an Intel GPU you should use the chromium-vaapi package, but if you use Radeon/NVIDIA you should use another package in my repository called chromium-vaapi-other (If you want compile it yourself, please rename the package name in the PKGBUILD to chromium-vaapi-other and it will use the chromium-vaapi-other patch instead of the intel one). If someone can test it out and email me if it works along with the make and model of your video card that would be great. Contact information is samantham@posteo.net Thank you.

Other useful info:
Run "vainfo" in terminal to see what your card supports. Most don't support VP9 encoding which is used by default on YouTube and other sites. If so you may try this plugin https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal If your card doesn't support 60fps H.264, make sure to go into the options for the plugin and disable 60fps video.
To see if it is working properly, when a video starts playing you should see the following in your terminal:
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.2
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0

This message also shows up twice when chromium first opens when chromium checks if the computer supports VAAPI.

Latest release compiles perfectly. Thanks.

I'd like to use the onboard Intel graphics for video decoding, since it supports VP9 for Youtube while my discrete nVidia card does not. It seems like while you can tell VA-API which driver to use via the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME environment variable, there's no corresponding way to tell it what device to use (eg /dev/dri/renderD129). Each application seems to have its own argument (--device for vainfo, -vaapi-device for ffmpeg); does anyone know if Chromium has such a parameter?

It seems the problem is with the new version itself. It is apparent when downloading new pages (low fps animation) and switching between tabs. VA-API works normally (with couple % more CPU resources used).

I also experience this lag, but it happens seemingly on all websites, even on those without a video. Have you had a chance to double check that this is VA-API problem, and not the problem with official chromium v65 in general? I'm planning to do some tests, but I had no time so far.

The new version (65) is using more CPU resources on videos and lags considerably when downloading new pages. Just downgraded to older version (64) which works fine.

Thanks again @xsmile for the VA-API patches.

These two patches are necessary for 65.0.3325.146 to enable VA-API. According to chrome:gpu hardware accelerated encoding is supported too.

https://github.com/gcarq/inox-patchset/blob/d471a8a7ec28f1b8c57f21ef347632e8ab1dae19/chromium-vaapi-init-r16.patch

https://github.com/gcarq/inox-patchset/blob/d471a8a7ec28f1b8c57f21ef347632e8ab1dae19/chromium-vaapi-r16.patch

I use gnome in wayland and install libva-git which enabled dri3.

Running in xwayland:

[1444:1444:0222/211359.139478:ERROR:vaapi_wrapper.cc(252)] : vaInitialize failed: unknown libva error

[1444:1444:0222/211359.139555:ERROR:vaapi_wrapper.cc(636)] : Failed to create VaapiWrapper for va_profile: 7

[1444:1444:0222/211359.139595:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(367)] : HW video decode not available for profile h264 high

getting double title bars when enabling Hardware-accelerated video and disabling Use system title bar and borders

@bwat48 Thanks for the quick response. It looks like Intel aren't interested in fixing this and other players have had to add their own workarounds (trying the Wayland backend if the X11 one fails?). Would that be possible for Chromium, and is there someone with the time and expertise to do it?