UVD-Based HEVC Video Encoding Main Now Supported In Mesa 18.1

[phoronix]

Phoronix: UVD-Based HEVC Video Encoding Main Now Supported In Mesa 18.1

Earlier this month AMD developers landed VCN-powered video encode support for the HEVC main format while now this has come to the UVD engine so it will work with pre-Raven GPUs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=UVD-H265-HEVC-Encode-In-Mesa

[Elyotna]

What is the common frontend to take advantage of this ? VA-API ? Or yet another one ?

[Gusar]

What is the common frontend to take advantage of this ? VA-API ? Or yet another one ?

VAAPI yes, and also OpenMAX.

[davidbepo]

why is video encoding done on unified video DECODE

[smitty3268]

why is video encoding done on unified video DECODE

That's actually a great question. From everything I can see, the encoding is actually part of the VCE encoding hardware block. I suppose maybe the developers just decided to call it all the same name (UVD) in the code for some reason? Seems odd.

[Jumbotron]

Man...my Bristol Ridge APU equipped desktop and laptop are looking at MESA 18.1 and Linux kernel 14.7 and going "Feed me Seymour, FEED ME !

[bridgman]

why is video encoding done on unified video DECODE

Not sure, but I think UVD has been picking up some encode capabilities as part of evolution from UVD/VCE to the new VCN block in Raven.

[Brisse]

It's a bummer that barely any (if any) front end software on GNU/Linux taps into AMD's hardware encoding as of yet. OBS does it on Windows only

[aufkrawall]

It's a bummer that barely any (if any) front end software on GNU/Linux taps into AMD's hardware encoding as of yet. OBS does it on Windows only

Yep, we need vaapi-encode for OBS and better performance of OBS in general really, really badly. It could easily be a great substitution for ReLive.

[Adarion]

why is video encoding done on unified video DECODE

agd5f explained this r(oughly a month or more back) to me, at the same question, I just need to dig it out here in the forums... aaah...

But the newer UVDs aren't so unsimilar in en/de-code operation for some codecs so you can kind of use it backwards. (in my simple words)
This is also a reason why the newest GPUs/APUs do no longer have UVD+VCE but rather VCN (video core next).
So yes, AMD uses a unit that is called DE-coder also for a few EN-condings.