Comment by dasyatidprime

That doesn't sound right to me at all. I'm pretty hazy on the specifics of VA-API, but I wasn't under the impression that the graphics hardware carries 100% of the decode implementation nor had codec licenses attached to it, and this Phoronix article from 2022 describing Fedora having to back off from having accidentally shipped H.264 via VA-API without appropriate licensing seems to be evidence in the direction I expected. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API