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+## Iteration 33 — Phase 8 (close): VP8 FIXED, MPEG-2 surfaced
+
+Closes 2026-05-14, fourth campaign-day milestone after iter31 α-29 (HEVC) + iter32 (kernel cleanup).
+
+### Goal
+
+Unblock VP8 through libva backend → hantro. Pre-existing libva single-device probe limitation can be overridden via env (LIBVA_V4L2_REQUEST_VIDEO_PATH=/dev/video3 + MEDIA=/dev/media1) so the hantro device is targetable.
+
+### Result
+
+| Codec | Status | sha-16 |
+|---|---|---|
+| H.264 10F | PASS | dd4f5f2d552c07bc |
+| HEVC 10F | PASS | 108f925bb6cbb6c9 |
+| VP9 10F | PASS | cf35908ae0f9ab60 |
+| **VP8 10F** | **PASS** (iter33 α-30) | d3231e5b6c0ee10b |
+| MPEG-2 10F | FAIL (separate bug) | libva=95c5905890c937d4 sw=933b744134e47ba4 |
+
+4 of 5 codecs PASS byte-equal SW.
+
+### Root cause for VP8
+
+Hantro's `rockchip_vpu2_vp8_dec_run` (`rockchip_vpu2_hw_vp8_dec.c:349`) hard-codes the byte offset to the first compressed partition:
+
+```c
+u32 first_part_offset = V4L2_VP8_FRAME_IS_KEY_FRAME(hdr) ? 10 : 3;
+```
+
+It uses this offset for:
+- `mb_offset_bits = first_part_offset * 8 + first_part_header_bits + 8`
+- `dct_part_offset = first_part_offset + first_part_size`
+
+So hantro expects OUTPUT[0..N] to start with the VP8 uncompressed frame header (10 bytes for keyframe = 3-byte tag + 3-byte sync + 4-byte width/height; 3 bytes for interframe = tag only).
+
+ffmpeg-vaapi's `vaapi_vp8_decode_slice` (vaapi_vp8.c:191-192) STRIPS this header before submitting to VAAPI:
+
+```c
+unsigned int header_size = 3 + 7 * s->keyframe;
+const uint8_t *data = buffer + header_size;
+int data_size = size - header_size;
+```
+
+ffmpeg-v4l2request (kdirect) DOES NOT strip — appends the full frame bytes directly. So kdirect's OUTPUT is byte-correct; libva's OUTPUT is missing the header bytes.
+
+### Investigation path
+
+- **iter33 kernel printk** (`vpu2_iter33_vp8` in `rockchip_vpu2_hw_vp8_dec.c`) dumped the full `v4l2_ctrl_vp8_frame` struct. Verified that libva's struct is BYTE-IDENTICAL to kdirect's modulo self-consistent timestamp values (α-7 counter vs PTS-derived; both schemes work).
+- **libva-side OUTPUT dump** via existing α-16 `LIBVA_V4L2_DUMP_OUTPUT` showed libva OUTPUT for keyframe starts at `00 47 08 85 …` — NOT at the expected `d0 1a 0b 9d 01 2a …` (the VP8 keyframe tag + sync).
+- IVF stream-copy of the source webm confirmed the real frame starts with `d0 1a 0b 9d 01 2a 00 05 d0 02 00 47 08 85 …`. libva's OUTPUT lines up with byte 10 of the real frame → header stripped.
+
+### Fix: α-30
+
+In `src/picture.c::codec_store_buffer`, when `profile == VAProfileVP8Version0_3` and the picture parameter has been parsed (iqmatrix_set as proxy, since IQMatrix is submitted in start_frame BEFORE slice data per ffmpeg-vaapi VP8 hwaccel flow), prepend `header_size` zero bytes to the OUTPUT buffer before the slice-data memcpy:
+
+```c
+if (profile == VAProfileVP8Version0_3 && surface_object->params.vp8.iqmatrix_set) {
+    unsigned int header_size =
+        surface_object->params.vp8.picture.pic_fields.bits.key_frame == 0 ?
+            10 : 3;
+    memset(surface_object->source_data + surface_object->slices_size, 0, header_size);
+    surface_object->slices_size += header_size;
+}
+```
+
+VAAPI's `pic_fields.bits.key_frame` is INVERTED (0 = keyframe per VP8 spec convention). Hantro only uses these prepended bytes for offset arithmetic, not actual parsing, so zero-fill is sufficient.
+
+Source: backend commit `7e0848d`.
+
+### MPEG-2 (surfaced, deferred to iter34)
+
+Same libva → hantro path. Decodes to non-zero output but byte-different from SW for all 10 frames. Likely a similar ffmpeg-vaapi-strip / OUTPUT-mismatch as VP8, possibly with different offset semantics for MPEG-2. To investigate in next iteration.
+
+### Substrate state at iter33 close
+
+- Backend fork tip `7e0848d` (α-25 through α-30 + iter29/iter30/iter33 env-gated DIAG probes; α-25, α-29, α-30 are load-bearing fixes).
+- Kernel: `linux-fresnel-fourier 7.0-13` with iter33 kernel printk in rockchip_vpu2_hw_vp8_dec.c. NOT shipping; clean revert needed after MPEG-2 investigation.
+
+### Memory entries
+
+- New: `feedback_vaapi_strips_vp8_uncompressed_header.md` — ffmpeg-vaapi strips VP8 frame header (3 byte for inter, 10 bytes for keyframe) before submitting via VASliceData. libva backend must prepend matching placeholder bytes for any hardware that hard-codes the first_part_offset (hantro does).