AMD's X-Video Bitstream Acceleration

[Kjella]

So what then? Each graphics card manufactorer is going to code their own video acceleration API?

Long story short, if it mirrors the DirectX acceleration and works without infringing on anything is there any compelling reasont for the open source community to use a different API just to be different? I figure the DirectX API is something nVidia and Intel needs to follow as well. As far as I know the VA API isn't actually usable for anything, but can someone tell me what advantages it would have, at least in theory, over this?

[curaga]

In that list of things it accelerates, there wasn't anything substantial. No bitstream decoding; no full offload to GPU.

Am I to take this as DirectX cannot do that either?
That on Windows they have their own interfaces for full offload?

[_txf_]

In that list of things it accelerates, there wasn't anything substantial. No bitstream decoding; no full offload to GPU.

Am I to take this as DirectX cannot do that either?
That on Windows they have their own interfaces for full offload?

hrmm...

Bitstream Acceleration sounds suspiciously like bitstream decoding. Did you read the article?

Basically it has the features you state above and it is modeled on DXVA which is the directx video acceleration api. Now what isn't so clear is whether its modelled on dxva or dxva2, but that really isn't so relevant in this case.


and another thing:

"X-Video Bitstream Acceleration wouldn't be much of a challenge to reverse-engineer by the open-source community"
media player classic on windows has open source dxva bitstream decoding so I imagine that makes it even easier...

[Yfrwlf]

MPEG2? What about OGG, Dirac, Snow, and other open codecs that have no annoying legal issues with implementing acceleration for? Shouldn't those be a much higher priority? I mean, sure, many videos are MPEG as well as H264 and such, but some of the aforementioned open source codecs will greatly challenge them.

Unrestricted codecs FTW!

[curaga]

Bitstream Acceleration sounds suspiciously like bitstream decoding. Did you read the article?

Yes, I did, did you?

DXVA, or DirectX Video Acceleration, is Microsoft's video interface that allows the GPU to accelerate iDCT, motion compensation, de-interlacing, and color correction.

I don't care what it is named.

From those, XvMC already did idct, mc, and deint.

[dashcloud]

MPEG2? What about OGG, Dirac, Snow, and other open codecs that have no annoying legal issues with implementing acceleration for? Shouldn't those be a much higher priority? I mean, sure, many videos are MPEG as well as H264 and such, but some of the aforementioned open source codecs will greatly challenge them.

Unrestricted codecs FTW!

These will come later, probably added by the community. It sounds like they're mirroring what the cards can do in Windows. There the cards have a very specific purpose: allow much slower CPU's to play HD video (of which, H264, VC1, and MPEG2 are the big ones.)

If they can get this out there, they will blow by Nvidia in a crucial segment: the HTPC one, because now folks can get small fanless motherboards and video cards and let the GPU do all the work.

[FunkyRider]

tell me...

How am I supposed to watch video under Compiz? then we will talk.

[Vighy]

How am I supposed to watch video under Compiz? then we will talk.

that's an infrastructure problem that doesn't match anything with acceleration of these stuffs...

[_txf_]

Yes, I did, did you?
I don't care what it is named.

From those, XvMC already did idct, mc, and deint.

So then you read XvBA will allow full offload to the gpu for the usual codecs ... Of course it might not do the full deal on linux but it seems a bit silly to create a lib with that name unless they were planning on providing it.

Unless of course you were talking about support today?

[curaga]

I'm just saying, the name of the lib guarantees nothing. It could be named GforceAccel and still not run on Nvidia hw. And that I trust Michael when he says DXVA does those things.