media-driver VS freedesktop-sdk

You might need to install the non-free intel media driver: https://github.com/intel/media-driver

Intel had VP9 decode since Kaby Lake (7th gen); original Skylake (6th gen) could not handle it (see here).

I've heard intel-media-driver was the way to go for supported hardware, but I also heard that it could decode slower than libva-intel-driver (like #925), and that Intel doesn't officially support some kind of decode feature in intel-media-driver, but it's implemented in libva-intel-driver.

I reproduced the issue on my end and opened a ticket to let intel devs know. https://github.com/intel/media-driver/issues/1628

I can see 22.6.6 was released in December ( Releases · intel/media-driver (github.com) ), but I'm having troubles getting it installed.

You should be able to choose FFmpeg VAAPI encoder, though it is suggested that kernel 6.2 is needed for this to actually work. I can confirm that it's broken with my A770, while I can choose the device, encoder is failing. No such problem with my Rapter Lake iGPU.

On GitHub there are similar problems reported: https://github.com/intel/media-driver/issues/1282

Source: https://github.com/intel/media-driver/blob/master/docs/media_features.md

I think I might have confused two unrelated posts. The one that references Polar Signals is this one:

https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/issues/...

So not a perf issue there, but they don't think the workflow is suitable for whole-system profiling. Perf issues were in the context of `perf` using DWARF:

https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/issues/...

But the fd-sdk https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk and gnome build meta https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta projects can prove as good references.

With all of these hypothetical features out of the way and looking just at current release software, Flatpak allows you to do so much stuff that isn't accessible for a not-so-techy user. Custom installation folder? Yep. Running mesa-git GPU drivers? You got it. Any way to easily do this via GUI? In typical Linux fashion, nope. For a GUI focused packaging format this is a big letdown.

Link to (official?) how-to: https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/wikis/Mesa-git

You can load up Mesa GIT using environment variables, see here. Honestly what I miss the most from flatpak Steam is properly working non-Steam shortcuts, but I've given up on that.

It was my understanding that the packages for vaapi are just put into the -extra version of the sdk so app maintainers can opt out, but they are still available if they want to use them. See https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/-/merge_requests/10616