How can I tell if Ubuntu driver is using integrated graphics GPU to hardware decode HEVC when playing videos using VLC?

Question

I've found that VLC uses ~17% CPU for x264 FHD videos, ~28% for HEVC FHD videos, and ~80% for HEVC 4k videos.

sudo lshw -c video

produces..

  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Cezanne
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: c3
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi msix vga_controller bus_master cap_list fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=amdgpu latency=0 resolution=3840,2160
       resources: irq:40 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:e0000000-e01fffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fcc00000-fcc7ffff

Processor: AMD® Ryzen 5 5560u with radeon graphics × 12

Graphics: RENOIR (renoir, LLVM 15.0.6, DRM 3.47, 5.19.0-35-generic)

Answer 1

The solution for me was...

sudo apt remove vlc

then...

sudo apt install mpv

I now get consistent ~8% CPU usage playing UHD HEVC videos vs. ~80% with VLC.

Answer 2

To simply cite another site:

• In Settings/Preferences
• look for Input/Codecs tab
• check out the option Hardware-accelerated decoding
• select the Automatic option and you are fine

( please comment if you have trouble ;) )