AMD's UVD2-based XvBA Finally Does Something On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD's UVD2-based XvBA Finally Does Something On Linux

For a year now we have been talking about XvBA, which stands for X-Video Bitstream Acceleration and is designed to implement AMD's Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD2) engine on Linux systems for improving the video decoding and playback process on desktop systems. AMD has been shipping an XvBA library with their ATI Catalyst Linux driver since last year, but they have yet to release any documentation on the XvBA API or any patches to implement the support within any Linux media players. Heck, AMD has not even officially confirmed XvBA with Phoronix being the lone source of information for the past year. Today though, XvBA has finally become useful under Linux. But it is not what you may be thinking...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14340

[WhiteRabbit]

Any acceleration is better than none!

[droidhacker]

Just UVD2? Why not UVD/UVD+ (R600)? The only difference I can tell from reading the wikipedia article is that UVD2 supports dual-stream decoding, which most people don't need or care about.

[blindfrog]

It's just good that it supports freedesktop.org's "standard" api for video accel VA-API will be highly likely get implemented more since more or less both amd and intel are supporting it.

[Fixxer_Linux]

What means "HD5000" is recommended ? I thought any recent Radeon HD had UVD2 built-in (that what at least is written on the boxes since at least 2 years) ?

Hope to see that Xvba support soon spreading through the distro, especially stable gentoo...

[dosenpfand]

True, its nice that they follow the va-api standard, but all in all ATI sucks again, not only because they completly forget UVD and r600 UVD but they also very limited in supported Codecs.

This will be my last ATI Card i see the progress but im not willing to wait any longer until fglrx gets as good as the nvidia blob or until the free driver matures(which will never have UVD support annyway )

Grüße

[d2kx]

You will need libva and xvba-video packages.

Check "vainfo" to see if it is installed correctly.

[bridgman]

Originally Posted by dosenpfand

True, its nice that they follow the va-api standard, but all in all ATI sucks again, not only because they completly forget UVD and r600 UVD but they also very limited in supported Codecs.

R600 doesn't have UVD. It was a pretty big chip already and it had enough shader power and bandwidth to do a fair amount of decode acceleration on the shaders.

Originally Posted by Fixxer_Linux

What means "HD5000" is recommended ? I thought any recent Radeon HD had UVD2 built-in (that what at least is written on the boxes since at least 2 years) ?

The article didn't just say "HD5000 is recommended", it said "HD4000 ... as well as the newer HD5000 ... is recommended" :

Radeon HD 4000 series hardware (R700) as well as the newer Radeon HD 5000 series (R800 series; Evergreen) is recommended for XvBA usage.

I believe the RS780 also falls into the "recommended" category.

[Fixxer_Linux]

Originally Posted by bridgman

The article didn't just say "HD5000 is recommended", it said "HD4000 ... as well as the newer HD5000 ... is recommended" :

Thanks for the answer Bridgman and, you're right, I've read the article a bit fast. Sorry for that.

[Veerappan]

Random curiosity.. Do the 780G/785G have UVD2 onboard, or is that UVD1, or some weird hybrid of the two?

I'm glad that there's support coming out for the 4000+ radeons, but my main interest at the moment is video acceleration on my mythbox, which has a 780G (HD3200) in it. If the 780G ends up being supported by this new software I might just switch back to fglrx. I know mythtv doesn't support VA-API yet, but at least I'll be able to use it for external videos I've got loaded onto my mythbox (using MPlayer).

And hopefully now that VA-API can be used by ATI/Intel/Nvidia cards it'll get more support. I wouldn't be surprised if some developers were holding off on choosing an API until they saw what ATI was going to do.

Edit: N/M. Bridgman's edit answered my question...