AMD Patches MJPEG Decoding For VA-API Gallium3D

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Patches MJPEG Decoding For VA-API Gallium3D

Leo Liu of AMD is out today with another series if video/multimedia related patches for the open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver stack...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MJPEG-Gallium3D-VAAPI

[dwagner]

Always nice to see a more complete feature set - but MJPEG hardware decoding seems to me like one of least urgently required features, given that any contemporary CPU is capable of decoding this primitive format at all reasonable sizes / frame rates easily faster than realtime, without any help from a GPU. Also the number of sources for MJPEG compressed material seem to die out (yes, the legendary Panasonic GH2 could record MJPEG, but even there better quality was achieved when writing h.264 instead).

What I'm kind of missing, though, is non-crashing video encoding acceleration, which is really useful for low-energy video-conferencing. (See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102203 for my bug report.)

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Always nice to see a more complete feature set - but MJPEG hardware decoding seems to me like one of least urgently required features, given that any contemporary CPU is capable of decoding this primitive format at all reasonable sizes / frame rates easily faster than realtime, without any help from a GPU. Also the number of sources for MJPEG compressed material seem to die out (yes, the legendary Panasonic GH2 could record MJPEG, but even there better quality was achieved when writing h.264 instead).

What I'm kind of missing, though, is non-crashing video encoding acceleration, which is really useful for low-energy video-conferencing. (See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102203 for my bug report.)

Perhaps you'd like to see Pitivi and other non-linear editors bring your CPU to a crawl processing MJPEGs but I don't, hence it has many uses, including in Blender, OpenShot, on and on.

[legume]

Well you didn't get to test the crash if you didn't get to use vaapi for whatever reason!

[Adarion]

...any contemporary CPU is capable of decoding this primitive format at all reasonable sizes / frame rates easily faster than realtime, without any help from a GPU

Indeed it might not be the most pressing issue but it's welcome anyway as you said. Yes, maybe most CPUs can decode MJPEG but now you can compile AND watch MJPEG.
While the CPU is more flexible, I think it is always nice if you can use an ASIC for a job that can do it with lower energy consumption and leaves the CPU for other tasks.

[Ansla]

You have a unstable kernel configuration. Debian testing Xfce with RX460 and Oibaf ppa Mesa and custom non debug 1000Hz ~agd5f/linux/log/?h=drm-next-4.14-wip kernel does not crash when using your ffmpeg command. Instead I have this in the terminal:
libva info: VA-API version 0.40.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
[AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x6f237a7b00] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
[vaapi @ 0x6f22fab0f0] Failed to create a VAAPI device

This is EPIC!!! So your super mega optimized and stable Debian has broken support for VAAPI (read what you posted, it failed to load the driver) and you brag about not crashing. I'm sure the if you tweak your custom 1000Hz kernel a little more to not even boot it will solve that crashes with absolutely any app.

[Ansla]

It's not VAAPI that is obsolete, you're confusing it VDPAU. So go fix your broken computer and stop spreading your "wisdom" that 1000Hz kernels improve stability or other nonsence. The text you quoted says exactly what it does: lower latency, nothing more.

[Ansla]

You know what's even better than 1000Hz kernels? Fruits and vegetables. They are as efective against crashes as 1000Hz kernels, but since they don't need to customized for a particular computer they work on all that you touch.

So I just eat fruits and vegetables every day and all my computers run solid as a rock no matter what kernel they use. And on those computers where latency matters I run 1000Hz kernels and on the others 100Hz ones for better throughput.

[bridgman]

VAAPI is obsolete now, Amds bridgman wrote.

Don't think it was me. Maybe agd5f ?

[agd5f]

Don't think it was me. Maybe agd5f ?

I've never said VAAPI was obsolete.