Whenever I try to view videos in Firefox in my trusty Thinkpad T61,
Firefox just eats up the CPU but doesn't actually show the video.
At startup I get the following message:
[GFX1-]: vaapitest: VA-API test failed: failed to initialise VAAPI
connection.
So, IIUC the problem is that the hardware video decoder drivers aren't
found for some reason. I checked my VA-related packages and they seem
to be installed:
# aptitude search '\<va\>' | grep '^i'
i A i965-va-driver - VAAPI driver for Intel G45 & HD Graphics family
i intel-media-va-driver - VAAPI driver for the Intel GEN8+ Graphics family
i A libvdpau-va-gl1 - VDPAU driver with OpenGL/VAAPI backend
i A mesa-va-drivers - Mesa VA-API video acceleration drivers
i va-driver-all - API de Video Acceleration (VA) – métapaquet de pilotes
i A vdpau-va-driver - VDPAU-based backend for VA API
#
I tried to install `intel-media-va-driver-non-free` to see if that's the
problem, but it did not make any difference.
I understand that my machine is fairly old, but it used to be able to
play youtube videos just fine without eating all my CPU time (i.e. using
hardware video decoding from its GM965/GL960 Intel integrated graphcs).
Any idea what might be going on? Any hint how I could diagnose the problem?
Stefan
