FFmpeg Gets Mainline VDPAU Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FFmpeg Gets Mainline VDPAU Support

When NVIDIA introduced VDPAU support in November for providing excellent GPU playback support on Linux they released a set of patches that enabled the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix support within the FFmpeg and MPlayer projects. Initially it looked like these patches would not be accepted into the mainline code-base, but committed to the FFmpeg repository last night was support for VDPAU.This patch adds in support for hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding using VDPAU...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Njk3MQ

[[Knuckles]]

If this means that we can have VDPAU in XBMC Media Center it would TOTALLY ROCK.

Nvidia, sell me one of those small boxes with atom and a nvidia chipset NOW!

[deanjo]

Originally Posted by [Knuckles]

If this means that we can have VDPAU in XBMC Media Center it would TOTALLY ROCK.

Nvidia, sell me one of those small boxes with atom and a nvidia chipset NOW!

Well it was one of the major reasons for it not being integrated in XBMC. Now that objection is gone.

BTW: New ffmpeg packages supporting vdpau are already packaged up for opensuse on the Packman repo

[yoshi314]

i find it hard to believe. i thought ffmpeg would always steer clear from having proprietary dependencies (such as nvidia driver backend in this case, unless i am missing something).

oh well, i guess i was wrong.

[bridgman]

It seems like an easy way to avoid being bypassed in the future. That might sound harsh but I don't mean it that way. Right now ffmpeg is a pretty universal solution and lots of things build on it, but as full decode APIs start getting added to drivers the player devs could simply bypass ffmpeg and go straight to the driver. If ffmpeg includes a path to VDPAU it means player developers don't have to change anything and can keep using ffmpeg as they did before.

They probably feel a bit dirty, but the alternatives all require about 20x as much work and a lot more time...

[myxal]

I was under the impression the API was public? As long as that's true, what does it matter that the only implementation so far is proprietary?

And with that in mind, now that we have an acceleration API that's used in (most of?) the Linux video players, question at bridgman or whoever's got docs to Radeon ASICs - would it be (theoretically) possible to implement VDPAU in radeon or radeonHD? If so, what's your take on it - would you support it?

[Vadi]

That code is mind-warping.

[russofris]

Hi there,

While this is a nice + for the video playback crowd, what does this mean to those that do transcoding (via mencoder or, well, transcode). Has anyone had the opportunity to compare performance under ffmpeg-enabled video applications.

I realize that VDPAU only supports decode, but it should certainly have an effect on video content creators and editors mixing down multiple h264 streams.

F

[eric.frederich]

Will this get rid of video tearing in Linux?

I get it on 2 different systems with NVidia cards. I have tried different mplayer -vo options. Tried Totem, and other players. I have sync to vblank enabled when I go to the nvidia x server settings gui.

[myxal]

Originally Posted by Vadi

That code is mind-warping.

Hmm, anyone looked at nVidia's diagram? >
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vd..._data_flow.png

[sarcasm]"Can't you see? It's perfectly clear!!" [/sarcasm]