Fedora’s Mesa package has been built with full VA-API support(The Video Acceleration API is an open source library and API specification that provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities for video processing.)but Fedora Linux 37 is removing its H.264/H.265/VC1 acceleration support for legal (patent) reasons.

The change happened last week,Fedora Removed a bunch of H.264/H.265/VC1 support from the Mesa VA-API build with a comment saying: “We have no legal approval for this, it was “accidentally shipped” before. “

Red Hat’s David Airlie in this about VA-API The discussion thread for legal issues commented:

It was our oversight to enable this feature earlier. In addition to the new Fedora 37 release, we also had to remove it from older versions of Fedora. Fedora cannot publish any
Causes operating systems to provide APIs that expose patented algorithms Content.

The licensing of patents surrounding H264/H265 could expose Red Hat and other Fedora distributors to legal issues.

For using GPUs with open source drivers (mostly AMD),And for Fedora Linux users who use it to speed up H.264, H.265 or VC1 decoding,Will have to fall back to using CPU-based decoding, or rely on unofficial/3rd party Mesa builds.This affects common use cases for Fedora Workstation, such as watching videos, internal game streaming, participating in online meetings, and more.

There is no good solution to this problem in the short term, Fedora/Red Hat are right to be cautious,Issues involving patent licensing can lead to serious legal disputes.