Kdenlive AppImage HW Rendering (VAAPI) Issue

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1 
Operating System: Fedora Linux 43
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.24.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.19.10-200.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U with Radeon Graphics
Memory: 9 GB of RAM (7.6 GB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Graphics

I noticed that I am unable to render videos using VAAPI rendering on any AppImage version of Kdenlive. Whenever I attempt to render a clip using the default VAAPI preset, I get this pop-up message:

Rendering of /home/abdurrahmangohar/Videos/untitled.mp4 aborted, resulting video will probably be corrupted.
Frame 2

This is the error that is produced in the Rendering window’s error log:

Rendering of /home/user/Videos/untitled.mp4 crashed

[VAAPI @ 0x7fb7c82040c0] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
[consumer avformat] Failed to initialize VA-API: -5
[h264_vaapi @ 0x7fb7c8201740] A hardware frames reference is required to associate the encoding device.
[VAAPI @ 0x7fb7c83079c0] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
[VAAPI @ 0x7fb7c8f3e700] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).

This is quite odd because according to @Ron , this is a bug that was fixed some time ago. Additionally, I am able to render videos using HW with the Flatpak version of Kdenlive (last tested using 25.12.3) and record videos on OBS using VAAPI. I checked my ffmpeg encoders, and I verified that I have h264_vaapi installed as well.

I ran the AppImage through the terminal as well. If needed, I can provide the full log (though I would like to know if there is anything I may want to remove/redact before posting it).

2

What version of libva do you have installed. And are you using OBS from system RPMs or also flatpak?

You’ll either be missing some system dependency that you need to install, or the one you have is an incompatible version to what the AppImage is built with.

This is working on Debian Trixie, and was confirmed working on several other systems when the build version bug I referred to was fixed a while back, so it’s almost certainly going to be either a Fedora Thing in general, or something missing on your system.

We just need to figure out what.

3

Might be more of a Fedora thing, but have you installed the patented codecs from RPMFusion ?

On your hardware it would probably be helpful to get mesa-va-drivers-freeworld as well as the full ffmpeg.

4

libva version: libva-2.22.0-6.fc43.x86_64
OBS installed through RPM
AMD Mesa: mesa-va-drivers-freeworld-25.3.6-1.fc43.x86_64

I use the patented codecs from RPMFusion.

5

Oh yeah - I just remembered something else: If I go to the Config Wizard under Settings and check for hardware acceleration, the AppImage doesn’t find any hardware encoders. When I do the same for the Flatpak, I get “hardware encoders found and enabled (VAAPI).”

6

I’m going to put my first dollar on a conflict/clash between these two.
libva-2.22.0 should be a compatible version.

The other package might be treading on its toes.

Oh, or we are connecting to libva-2.22.0, and Fedora didn’t build it with H.264 support.