Exporting a clip in h265 on a 2080 results in a generic "Failed to export 2"

[Lifeismana]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): 1734743608
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch Linux
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
• GPU: Nvidia 2080 565.77

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Trying to export a clip in h265 results in a generic "Failed to export 2" error
Switching to h264 solves that error (recording is reported as being in h265)
2080 should support h265 hardware encoding but it could still be a driver error (not sure if i have a way to look into that)

I would expect it to not fail (maybe try to fallback to a software encoder?) or to at least to not show such a generic error (maybe recommend to try another codec)

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Make a clip out of a recording (recording seems to be in h265, (enabled in settings))
2. Export the clip with the "Original" setting

[TTimo]

Hello @Lifeismana,

Please set LIBVA_MESSAGING_LEVEL=2 before running steam (LIBVA_MESSAGING_LEVEL=2 steam from the CLI), then run Help -> Steam Runtime Diagnostics and upload the result.

It is likely you have no working 32 bit vaapi, or it's not actually pointing to your NVidia card, but I'd like to make sure.

[Lifeismana]

Is there even libVA encoding support on nvidia gpus? since nvidia doesn't provide any support you (I) have to resolve to use nvidia-vaapi-driver which doesn't have encoding support (elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver#116)

vainfo

Trying display: wayland
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: VA-API NVDEC driver [direct backend]
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP8Version0_3          : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain12             : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain444            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain444_10         : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain444_12         : VAEntrypointVLD

Steam Runtime Diagnostics: https://gist.github.com/Lifeismana/ec8ac4dbf493a2518b0d856b462c1d1c

[TTimo]

Oh, right. LIBVA_MESSAGING_LEVEL defined in /etc/libva.conf overrides the env variable, so it didn't actually verbose .. please edit/comment out /etc/libva.conf instead..

In any case you'd need to look at 32 bit vainfo, which you probably don't have atm (the steam client is 32 bit).

The Steam Runtime diagnostic reports:

        "x11/vaapi" : {
          "messages" : [
            "vaInitialize (va_display, &major_version, &minor_version) failed: unknown libva error (-1)"
          ],
          "renderer" : null,
          "version" : null,
          "issues" : [
            "cannot-draw"
          ],
          "exit-status" : 1
        },

Showing you don't have 32 bit vaapi.

And yes I think you are correct, in order for this to work you may need a 32 bit build of https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/

[Lifeismana]

In the end, this made me realize that nvidia-vaapi-driver was of no use for me since it isn't even used by steam for "accelerated rendering in web views" so i ended up uninstalling it since it cause games to lags when there's some decoding happening in firefox. (thanks nvidia :D)
(Fwiw i was unable to compîle a 32bit build on arch, meson was complaining about deps missing (cmake & ffnvcodec) (it was building fine in 64bits))

Hopefully in the future nvidia will implement va-api or web browsers will be able to use vulkan video to hw accelerate dec/enc

This also made me realize that ffmpeg was only used for the record (which explains why i can record in h265) but not for clips, i assume it's easier to do everything in chromium once the stream record is loaded than to somehow export a buffer to ffmpeg