How to enable "MMAL x11 splitter for Raspberry Pi" on vlc (or mpv) for rpi(4)?

[gc-user]

I'm in the process of testing if I can switch from PiOS to void linux on my rpi4.

Video playback is an essential feature that has to work on the rpi.

On PiOS, the only player that works for hd playback in full screen mode is vlc when set to "mmal x11 splitter for Raspberry Pi" for video output. Otherwise the playback is "juttery" or video / audio are even out of sync.

On void linux, I haven't yet found a setup that works in that regard. Neither vlc (with any of the available output settings) nor mpv nor mpcqt.

Transferring over the vlc mmal libraries from debian to void didn't work.

That's why I wanted to compile vlc (or mpv) with mmal x11 splitter included. But so far I haven't been able to succeed - I just added entries for mmal analogue to the omxli entries in the configure_args+= section of the template for vlc (line 83). But that's apparently not correct or not sufficient.

I wonder if therein lies the clue?

	aarch64*)
		# XXX only for rpi
		build_options_default+=" rpi"
		;;

I'm cross-building on x86_64 and now I'm wondering if ./xbps-src -a aarch64 pkg vlc isn't enough, and I somehow have to also state that I want to build for rpi? Or does aarch64 automatically mean "for rpi"?

Maybe someone else knows how to do that and can point me in the right direction or maybe make the rpi build for all include mmal x11 splitter.

Thank you!

[classabbyamp]

the rpi-related configure flags in vlc are always enabled for arm/aarch64, but you probably won't need OMX/MMAL if you enable the full KMS device tree overlay (dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d in /boot/config.txt)

[gc-user]

Thanks for your reply.

I'll have to check. I remember having that in my config, just not sure atm if enabled or disabled. I copied the settings from the PiOS sdcard to the void sdcard. I'll check and test enabled if it's disabled atm.

Thanks for the hint!

Edit:

I have

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
#dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d

in /boot/config.txt. Apparently that's not enough (on my setup at least) to make video playback smooth / make the rpi use hardware acceleration... :-(

[gc-user]

Update after some more testing:

Apparently, there is also a dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4 setting. But I don't notice any difference even though the corresponding dtbo file is a bit larger than the one without "-pi4".

As the PiOS is a debian bookworm, vlc, smplayer and probably mpv are not up-tp-date, the smplayer / mpv option doesn't work really, vlc works. Now even without mmal. Maybe they changed something since I first set up the pi - or I never tested without mmal after enabling dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

On void it's the opposite. Smplayer works if video output is set to xv. vlc doesn't really work - for some reason there's no sound.
I'll have to check with some other files, maybe.

But at least the smplayer option works ok.