The libva package contains a library which provides access to hardware accelerated video processing, using hardware to accelerate video processing in order to offload the central processing unit (CPU) to decode and encode compressed digital video. The VA API video decode/encode interface is platform and window system independent targeted at Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) in the X Window System however it can potentially also be used with direct framebuffer and graphics sub-systems for video output. Accelerated processing includes support for video decoding, video encoding, subpicture blending, and rendering.
Install libva by running the following commands:
cd build && meson setup --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release && ninja
Now, as the root user:
ninja install
Install lib32-libva by running the following commands:
rm -rf * &&
CC="gcc -m32" CXX="g++ -m32" \
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib32/pkgconfig \
meson setup --prefix=/usr \
--libdir=/usr/lib32 \
--buildtype=release &&
ninja
Now, as the root user:
DESTDIR=$PWD/DESTDIR ninja install && cp -vr DESTDIR/usr/lib32/* /usr/lib32 && rm -rf DESTDIR && ldconfig
In order to use VA-API, you need a VA-API driver. Which one you will need depends on your GPU and driver in use for that GPU. The drivers are needed at runtime. For VA-API drivers that come from Mesa, there is a cirular dependency. Read from the Mesa-25.2.2 page to see how to break it.
For Intel iGPUs, Haswell CPUs or earlier, install intel-vaapi-driver.
For Intel iGPUs, Broadwell CPUs or later, and Intel Arc GPUs, install intel-media-driver.
For ATI/AMD Radeon HD 2xxx GPUs and later, install Mesa-25.2.2.
For supported NVIDIA GPUs, using Mesa's open source drivers, install Mesa-25.2.2.
For NVIDIA GPUs, using NVIDIA-580.105.08, install NVIDIA-VA-API-Driver-0.0.14.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Inspect meson_options.txt or
meson.options for a full list of
options.