More AMD Radeon Driver Improvements Lined Up For Linux 5.18

[phoronix]

Phoronix: More AMD Radeon Driver Improvements Lined Up For Linux 5.18

Already for the upcoming Linux 5.18 kernel cycle on the AMDGPU driver side has been preparations for new hardware blocks presumably coming with RDNA3 GPUs, FreeSync Video Mode by default, and other changes. As likely the last "feature" pull of AMDGPU material for Linux 5.18, another pull request to DRM-Next was submitted on Friday...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-More-For-Linux-5.18

[Sacredsin]

While it is great to see that AMD is improving their Linux drivers, I hear that using their hardware encoder on OBS for recording/streaming is a disaster. I have wanted to buy a Radeon card for sometime, but not being able to properly record with OBS is a deal breaker for me.

[marlock]

Sacredsin

tl;dr: linux is in flux, with key established aspects changing at a fast pace, and generally being reworked for the better

iirc a recent post here on phoronix mentioned work being done on amd's gpu-accelerated video encoding...

probably still WIP, but do keep an eye out for recent info on the matter, because the situation might improve soon

also worth mentioning ongoing efforts for including video encoding/decoding in the Vulkan API, and on the video streams support on PipeWire, which will make it a zillion times easier for apps to use this sort of functionality on Linux without having to handle several APIs, exceptions, optimizations and etc directly inside each app

finally, wayland support has probably been worked on for OBS and for vdpau and vaapi too, so results may also be better on wayland now than it used to be an maybe even than on x.org... worth taking a look

[osw89]

I hear that using their hardware encoder on OBS for recording/streaming is a disaster.

I use OBS rarely to record my screen with CPU encoding but I just tried recording my screen with the hardware encoder. It worked without any problems pretty much the same way. By "disaster" do you mean being hard to use in a stable way or being worse than nvidia's encoders in terms of quality?

[Sacredsin]

As I understand their HW encoder sucks compared to NVENC, especially for recording gaming. Currently I can record gameplay, a video source all at 1080 and it is buttery smooth on my old GTX1060.

[mannerov]

While it is great to see that AMD is improving their Linux drivers, I hear that using their hardware encoder on OBS for recording/streaming is a disaster. I have wanted to buy a Radeon card for sometime, but not being able to properly record with OBS is a deal breaker for me.

I totally confirm that their hardware encoder is not good enough.
For example when using it with steam link (pc with amd card encodes, which steam link decodes), there is a very significant input lag that is gone when I select software encoding (CPU).

In addition in my tests (ffmpeg encoding), the compression ratio is really not great (though that would be ok if the latency wasn't so high).

[pete910]

While it is great to see that AMD is improving their Linux drivers, I hear that using their hardware encoder on OBS for recording/streaming is a disaster. I have wanted to buy a Radeon card for sometime, but not being able to properly record with OBS is a deal breaker for me.

Hardware encoding via AMF/ffmpeg works well in OBS.

Using VAAPI is a waist of time trying .

[agd5f]

Hardware encoding via AMF/ffmpeg works well in OBS.

Using VAAPI is a waist of time trying .

Is there an open issue on this? I believe the performance issues previously reported have been addressed:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/3540

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/2702

If not what other issues are you running into?

[pete910]

Is there an open issue on this? I believe the performance issues previously reported have been addressed:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/3540

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/2702

If not what other issues are you running into?

Admittedly not tried it since before xmass however,

When trying even at a low bitrate sub 10000 it just constantly drops frames. OBS then states it's overloaded.

Have tried both 1080p and 1440p capture.

Manjaro
5950x
6800xt.
32GB ram