Experimental VA-API Implemented Over NVIDIA's NVDEC - Allows Firefox Video Acceleration

[Hibbelharry]

Yeah, too bad when it already works:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/vdpau-driver
https://github.com/xtknight/vdpau-va-driver-vp9

Deadbeef, since support for VDPAU is generally fading away.

Maybe, but I think the real issue was that Intel never adopted VDPAU, even on the Linux/opensource side. The VDPAU mesa driver worked very well on my RadeonHD 4550. It was so much better than the fglrx/Catalyst driver. Even Adobe/Flash tried the VDPAU route (VAVDA?), but it didn't gain much traction when Intel said no joy.
Intel had no reason to push VA-API other than selfishness and NIH BS.

Thats not totally right, VA-API always had a broader scope than VDPAU. VA-API is generally platform and window system independent, while VDPAU never was.

As far as I know API wise VAAPI doesn't provide anything above VPDAU. They are both simple APIs that only pass information to relevant low level code where real things are happening. Introducing VAAPI basicly gave us fragmentation.

Yes and no, see above.

[DanL]

Thats not totally right, VA-API always had a broader scope than VDPAU.

What "broader scope" are you talking about? VDPAU was able to accelerate online and local media on Linux. DXVA did the same on Windows. VA-API had no reason to exist except that Intel's pathetic graphics weren't designed to handle VDPAU. Marketing beat engineering again.

[shmerl]

Something that occurred to me. Why bother with VAAPI over NVDEC/NVENC? It's a waste of effort. Why not make it over Vulkan video extensions? Then it would work in the future for all GPUs until everyone will switch to Vulkan proper.

[Quackdoc]

Something that occurred to me. Why bother with VAAPI over NVDEC/NVENC? It's a waste of effort. Why not make it over Vulkan video extensions? Then it would work in the future for all GPUs until everyone will switch to Vulkan proper.

that's already being worked on, but vulkan extensions only supports h264 and h265 right now, vp9 and av1 isn't out yet as far as I am aware.

[LinAGKar]

I never understood why Nvidia felt like removing VDPAU. They could have just kept it as it was, perhaps in deprecated/legacy mode or something

They didn't remove it. They did keep it in legacy mode, and thus it's missing some stuff that's only exposed through nvdec.

[LinAGKar]

that's already being worked on, but vulkan extensions only supports h264 and h265 right now, vp9 and av1 isn't out yet as far as I am aware.

And it will never support all the formats supported by the hardware (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, VC-1 and VP8). Not that those matter all that much, and MPEG-4 Part 2 won't work unless they fix it in libva, but still.

[ryuanlu]

VDPAU has no encoding features since it's Video Decoding and Presentation API for UNIX.