A-API hardware encoding fails on AMD Radeon 680M under Ubuntu 26.04

#1

My Channels DVR server runs on Ubuntu 26.04 with an AMD Radeon 680M iGPU using Mesa radeonsi . The GPU's VA-API hardware encoding works with Ubuntu's system FFmpeg, but Channels' bundled FFmpeg fails to initialize VA-API.

I tested both FFmpeg versions installed on my server:

  • 2026.10.15.2239/ffmpeg — FFmpeg 6.0.2, reports VA-API 1.24.0.
  • 2026.08.07.0346/ffmpeg — reports VA-API 1.22.0.

Both fail with /dev/dri/renderD128 , even when explicitly setting LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi . Both produce:

i915 does not support EXECBUFER2
DRM_IOCTL_VERSION, unsupported drm device by media driver: amdg
Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: 18 (invalid parameter)

Both bundled FFmpeg executables then segfault.

Ubuntu's system FFmpeg successfully encodes H.264 using the same GPU and device node. Could you investigate why the bundled FFmpeg's VA-API initialization is entering the Intel-specific code path on this AMD system?

#2

I'm sorry to say that when it comes to hardware encoding, AMD CPUs can be a frustrating experience for many products and this includes Channels DVR. If you just purchased the computer to run Channels DVR and can return do so and get an Intel based system. It sounds like this is a mini PC or laptop because of the CPU and this means that adding an external GPU may or may not be possible depending on the hardware. Nvidia or Intel GPUs are the best pick though for Nvidia ask others.

See systems requirements: