@elcore: Don't worry we're good . I don't know why I came to be understood that way, though. It's people in my (and the OP's) position for whom libvdpau-va-gl would normally be expected to be the most useful. That is, we have Intel hardware and a piece of software (MPlayer) which supports vdpau but not vaapi. A bridge like libvdpau-va-gl would make it all work, but it doesn't, because it lacks x265 support, the only codec in the bunch which may need hardware acceleration on somewhat old (or recent but very low power) hardware. Based on the non-existent github activity, I wouldn't expect it to ever get x265 support.

So, as-is, libvdpau-va-gl would be good for someone who has software with vdpau but without vaapi (a rarity!) and an Intel GPU so weak that the x264 acceleration via vdpau would save the day. I consider this scenario very unlikely. Maybe Pat didn't find it worth maintaining because he thinks so, too. I don't know.

@Darth: If libvdpau-va-gl got x265 support then it would be a much stronger candidate for inclusion, I agree. But as-is, it doesn't help much. Chipsets which can't play x264 videos without hw acceleration must be very very old, definitely too old to run Slackware 15 (with X) anyway.

Did you know what have today Romania and North Korea in common? Both countries have a country-wide 1GB/s Ethernet network.

Of course, there is a huge difference, the Romanian network is open to Internet, while the North Korean one is closed and well tracked.

BUT, this Romanian network, which we name it "Metropolitan", contains many nasty sites, which are not visible from Turkey, from example. Because they are in our "local network", not in the real Internet.

I will not spill out everything from house, but let's say that the Romanians do not bother with x265 when they download with 120MB/s and the latest trend is to build small HTPCs, with second-hand mini-ITX motherboards, which has usually Intel Atom on-board. And trust me, an Intel Atom D525 is not capable alone to drive an 1080p display from a x264 file.

BUT, with the help of the VAAPI, it can do it. Now, how Slackware ships MPlayer, and it has no VAAPI support, make it unusable for those HTPCs.

Also trust me again, they do not bother to learn how to build packages from SBO and patch the things, instead they install quickly Ubuntu over.

So, the adoption of libvdpau-va-gl by Slackware would help a better adoption of Slackware itself, at least in Romania. Even it drive only x264.

Well, this is an interesting case really. Perhaps you might convince the Slackware team to include libvdpau-va-gl. Good luck with your quest...

Just as an FYI, this is no longer the case in -current and any future releases. MPlayer is now built against a system ffmpeg and is no longer statically linked.

Thanks for the update, I'm happy that ffmpeg has been separated.

Hi guys!

elcore read the post from IIgar, hi is right:
and again, if someone miss my statement "Just want to squeeze a maximum from hardware I own - Intel i5-7200u with only integrated graphics GPU"

elcore:
I must say, you do not have enough knowledge : GPU on Intel i5-7200u is hardware video accelerator. Not as fast as $$ nVidia, but adequate (for me) and free.
If you do not believe, take a look at attached screenshots!

Slackware64-current (4 april 2018), installed VLC-3.0.0 from Eric Hameleers.
First observation: Slackware64-current supports Intel HW video acceleration out of the box. This is excellent.
tested video 3840X2160 60Hz h.265
The result is amazing:
VLC plays the video fully HW accelerated - see attached screenshots
ffplay-3.4.2 can not play it - now I know that it do not use HW acceleration, but ffmpeg use it at encoding.

Darth Vader: I will use my box for video surveillance and h.265 encoding saves 50% of precious disk space against h.264. So h.265 is must for me.

BIG thanks to bassmadrigal to help me with configure the system to be able to boot from USB disk.
So I was able to test Slackware64-current, as Slackware64-14.2 do not support Kaby Lake - GPU HW acceleration.
Thanks also IIgar, understanding me.

As the current state is, the clear winner among Linux video players is VLC (at least for Intel integrated graphics).

This is my final post on that tread.

Attached Thumbnails

   

Then, how about you to mark this thread as [SOLVED], for the posterity's knowledge?

It's a GPU chip allright, but I wouldn't call than an accelerator.
You know that reserve tank in the car that saves some fuel, for when the car runs out of fuel? That's what it is.
You can call it what you like.

This is a key point, not an afterthought. Thanks for pointing it out, and please mark the thread solved, as it's no longer a problem.