AMD Enables VCN Region Of Interest "ROI" Video Encoder Support For Linux GPU Drivers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Enables VCN Region Of Interest "ROI" Video Encoder Support For Linux GPU Drivers

While not talked about as much as the AMD open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for Linux, AMD's multimedia stack on Linux continues to be improved upon for supporting new use-cases with AMD-based Linux deployments continuing to come up in the embedded space for all different applications like in-vehicle infotainment systems. The newest AMD video acceleration feature to now be wired up to their open-source Mesa code is enabling region of interest (ROI) encoding functionality...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-VCN-ROI-VA-Mesa-Lands

[oleid]

Lots of good Linux news from AMD lately! My next GPU is going to be a Radeon for sure.

[sobrus]

Lots of good Linux news from AMD lately! My next GPU is going to be a Radeon for sure.

I wouldn't be so sure, because radeon is getting HEVC/H264 hardware encoding and decoding disabled by more and more distros.
Intel and nVidia somehow don't.
Maybe closed source driver isn't as bad idea as it seems

No one seems to know why watching movies on AMD is illegal, and on anything else it is not.
Maybe software patents don't apply to software (like x265 or ffmpeg), but only to hardware.
Only AMD hardware that is.

[oleid]

I wouldn't be so sure, because radeon is getting HEVC/H264 hardware encoding and decoding disabled by more and more distros.

I didn't notice this. What distros are affected. Do you have links?

[sobrus]

For example Fedora since 37, OpenSUSE and Manjaro.
I don't have full list, but basically any company (not community) backed distro can be affected.
As far as I know this is mesa upstream change that disables proprietary codecs by default (but I'm not sure - please correct me if I'm wrong).

Some distributions may offer alternative way to manually install unsupported "unlocked" va driver (Fedora).
Some don't (Manjaro).
Community driven distros like Arch are unaffected, at least for now.

It is always possible to recompile mesa or just get unlocked version somehow and install it manually, but it needs to be done almost every mesa update.

And it ONLY affects AMD.

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/hardware-acceleration-for-avc-hevc-vc-1-in-mesa-required-for-amd-graphics/136818

https://debugpointnews.com/fedora-37-mesa/

https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/1006922

[xpris]

I didn't notice this. What distros are affected. Do you have links?

So far only Fedora and OpenSuse and maybe Manjaro as mentioned above but all rest as Ubuntu, OpenMandriva, Arch, Armbian, ALT, Rosa or nixOS still keeping encoding/decoding for h26* enable in Mesa and that only small example of distros that still keeping it. So most of distros still use it

[QwertyChouskie]

I've been noticing a lot of work on AMD video encoding/decoding lately. When we had a bunch of work on HDR, it led to the Steam Deck OLED. I'm throwing my predictions in now, I think in the next year/couple of years, were getting one or both of:

- a Steam cloud gaming service, back by Linux servers running AMD GPUs
- Some sort of wireless VR thing

I just can't imagine all these improvements are being done for no reason, though the reason they are done could be anything really. Only time will tell.

[Leopard]

I wouldn't be so sure, because radeon is getting HEVC/H264 hardware encoding and decoding disabled by more and more distros.
Intel and nVidia somehow don't.
Maybe closed source driver isn't as bad idea as it seems

No one seems to know why watching movies on AMD is illegal, and on anything else it is not.
Maybe software patents don't apply to software (like x265 or ffmpeg), but only to hardware.
Only AMD hardware that is.

What a FUD spread movement. I have news for you, there is no Intel closed source/prop driver on Linux so there is no such thing as that only affecting AMD nor that is gone for good.

Basically what happened here is Fedora being Fedora...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Full-MP3-Support-In-Fedora

5 May 2017
With the last of the MP3 patents expiring, there is MP3 encoding support being added to Fedora to finally provide a full MP3 support experience atop this distribution.

The patents expired, IIS Fraunhofer and Technicolor stopped their licensing program, and Red Hat Legal has provided the go-ahead to complete the MP3 support in Fedora. Previously MP3 support in Fedora has required third-party repositories.

Using Arch Linux here, codecs are enabled by default.

Even if any distro does not compile their Mesa with support for those codecs, you as a user can do it on your own.

`-Dvideo-codecs=h264dec,h264enc,h265dec,h265enc,vc1dec`

[Toggleton]

Using Arch Linux here, codecs are enabled by default.

Even if any distro does not compile their Mesa with support for those codecs, you as a user can do it on your own.

`-Dvideo-codecs=h264dec,h264enc,h265dec,h265enc,vc1dec`

Since recently do you even need to set AV1 and VP9 as options as it is not build by default.

-D video-codecs=vc1dec,h264dec,h264enc,h265dec,h265enc,av1d ec,av1enc,vp9dec \

https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/commit/?h=mesa-git&id=15e5d3223a61c0c4a4c74eda758992fcbc7619d4

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/26320

Adds two new possible values to the -Dvideo-codecs build option: 'all' and 'all_free'

Why: 'all' is added for convenience, 'all_free' is added as default value to restore the behavior previous to 7b22dd8b where such codecs were enabled by default.

Fixes: 7b22dd8b ("meson: add vp9 and av1 codec support options")

[oleid]

.

And it ONLY affects AMD.

https://debugpointnews.com/fedora-37-mesa/

Well, if it is disabled in mesa it affects all free drivers. Even your link mentions Intel.

But it's just the way it has always been: fear of software patents, it would seem. I wouldn't worry about this too much. You always needed to install stuff from 3rdparty repos to get patent encumbered codecs coming on certain distributions.