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When using Raspbian, a Debian derivative, VLC is readily available from the repositories,
alas the binary does not make use of Raspberrypi's hardware acceleration. Watching videos
is no fun with that version of VLC. The only alternative is omxplayer which comes with the
distribution. Fortunately, VLC now does support hardware acceleration, only you have to
compile it yourself, which is not for the fainthearted.
Here's how to do it.
There is a guide on the web at
http://intensecode.blogspot.de/2013/10/tutorial-vlc-with-hardware-acceleration.html
that is the base of this document, but it is missing some details which will be provided here.
VLC on Raspbian
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Step 6: compile
Now do configure and build:
# ./configure --enable-rpi-omxil --enable-dvbpsi --enable-x264
# make clean all
Now go and watch TV, go to bed, whatever: That'll take some six hours now.
As last step, start the installation:
# sudo make install
Step 7: The installed version of VLC will not find some libs
Some libs cannot be found after make install, so let's help VLC out:
# sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libvlc* /usr/lib/
# sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libx264.a /usr/lib/
# sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/vlc /usr/lib/vlc
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If you happen to recompile VLC (e.g. if you decide to change some configure option),
remember to reset it after make install:
# vlc --reset-config reset-plugins-cache
Resume
Now that VLC works with hardware acceleration I can say this is nice, but not as expected: With acceleration on I hoped that the videos
would run inside the VLC window as usual. But they don't - an overlay opens that shows the video that cannot be resized, just as with
omxplayer.
Also, some videos that do run smoothly with omxplayer (like a full HD 1920x1080 Bluray Video by Nightwish) stops every 2 or 3 seconds for
some 5 seconds. No good.
Seems to me I'll have to put some extra work in it, still...
http://www.oblivion-software.de/index.php?id=56&type=98
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