OpenBSD gets hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding

Only yesterday, I mentioned one of the main reasons I decided to switch back to Fedora from OpenBSD were performance issues – and one of them was definitely the lack of hardware acceleration for video decoding/encoding. The lack of such technology means that decoding/encoding video is done using the processor, which is far less efficient than letting your GPU do it – which results in performance issues like stuttering and tearing, as well as a drastic reduction in battery life.

Well, that’s changed now. Thanks to the work of, well, many, a major commit has added hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding to OpenBSD.

Hardware accelerated video decode/encode (VA-API) support is beginning to land in #OpenBSD -current.

libva has been integrated into xenocara with the Intel userland drivers in the ports tree. AMD requires Mesa support, hence the inclusion in base.

A number of ports will be adjusted to enable VA-API support over time, as they are tested.
↫ Bryan Steele

This is great news, and a major improvement for OpenBSD and the community. Apparently, performance in Firefox is excellent, and with simply watching video on YouTube being something a lot of people do with their computers – especially laptops – anyone using OpenBSD is going to benefit immensely from this work.