The following video codecs are supported: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual, WMV3, VC-1 and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC). Sudo apt-get install i965-va-driver libva-intel-vaapi-driver vainfo On modern Ubuntu distributions, first install the hardware support (packages i965-va-driver, libva-intel-vaapi-driver and vainfo) and then activate GPU hardware acceleration in Preferences → Input&Codecs.
VA-API is supported for decoding only since VLC version 1.1.0. Generally, VAAPI is used for Intel and Broadcom graphic cards, while VDPAU is used for AMD/ATI and NVIDIA cards. On Linux/X11, there are two competing interfaces for hardware video decoding, VA-API from Intel, and VDPAU from NVIDIA. The following video codecs are supported: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV3, VC-1 and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC).
This has also been discussed in the forum It is available in Windows Vista (or Windows 2008) or any later Windows version it is not available for Windows XP/2003 (and never will be).
Since VLC version 1.1.0, DirectX Video Acceleration (DxVA) is supported in DxVA 2.0.
