Vulkan Video Finally Introduces AV1 Video Decoding Extension

[DanL]

As for what's so great about it, ideally it could be a vendor-neutral interface to replace the hodgepodge of vendor-specific video HW acceleration API's (VA-API, VDPAU, AMF, NVDEC/NVENC, etc.). It remains to be seen how well it'll work out.

My bet is on: https://xkcd.com/927

[Quaternions]

The YouTube codec selection is controlled by the upload resolution, the uploader's identity, and the view count / view rate.

Upon upload:

• At 1080p and below, uploads will be in AVC only.
• At 1440p and up, YouTube encodes a VP9 version for all available resolutions. AVC encodes do not go above 1080p.
• At 8k upload resolution, YouTube encodes an AV1 version for all available resolutions. VP9 encodes do not go above 4k.

I have noticed that for specific channels, such as Spacedock, I always saw an AV1 version available even though they upload in 1080p and the view count is in the tens of thousands. At some point according to view count or maybe view rate, videos gain an AV1 version. For one 1080p video on my channel it happened in the millions of views.

[ahrs]

Can't browsers just go through ffmpeg and use whichever acceleration methods and codecs it supports on a given system?

This is exactly what they do today, at least in the case of Firefox. It has its own in-tree "fork" called ffvpx:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/media/ffvpx/README_MOZILLA

It also can load the system ffmpeg by loading it dynamically at runtime using dlopen (this used to be necessary for VAAPI but I'm not sure if that's needed anymore, it might work with ffvpx)

[Quackdoc]

Their video renderer might be separate, but yeah, I want to see WebRender use Vulkan. You also don't present anything on encoding path anyway.

it really just doesn't make a lot of sense to spin up a separate vulkan context just for hwdec, especially when you already have vaapi/vdpau support. now if vulkan did become some super well supported api by loads of vendors that would be different, it could for sure be worth it, however as it stands there has been no signal that this might become the case

[shmerl]

it really just doesn't make a lot of sense to spin up a separate vulkan context just for hwdec, especially when you already have vaapi/vdpau support. now if vulkan did become some super well supported api by loads of vendors that would be different, it could for sure be worth it, however as it stands there has been no signal that this might become the case

Depends. From what I understand, VAAPI isn't perfect anyway and is usually more limited than capabilities of video hardware in GPUs. Vulkan in theory should expose them more fully, so it should be better.

[Quackdoc]

Depends. From what I understand, VAAPI isn't perfect anyway and is usually more limited than capabilities of video hardware in GPUs. Vulkan in theory should expose them more fully, so it should be better.

yes it has the potential to be better, but that lands into the optimization space again that just isnt really necessary for browser. Browsers only really need hwdec, and basic hwenc for stuff like face calls and what not. Chrome may change to vulkan since it actually has programs that use it that may actually need that optimization like chromium, but who knows, not me for sure. Chrom{e,ium} is Chrom{e,ium}.

[Rovano]

https://github.com/alextrv/enhanced-h264ify

For AV1 block. VP9 is possible accelerate by my old GPU.

VAAPI It is possible that you will update the software in your Linux, so new codecs of acceleration in Vainfo will appear maybe.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration

Firefox about:support is saying:

Codec Support Information
Codec Name Software Decoding            Hardware Decoding
H264               Supported                  Supported
VP9                  Supported                 Supported
VP8                  Supported                 Unsupported
AV1                  Supported                 Unsupported
HEVC               Unsupported            Unsupported
Theora            Supported                 Unsupported
​

But I believe that we will soon be a universal solution. Here I had to allow some things in the browser or install the packages.

[Rovano]

So it works through the GPU decoder!
Wayland+Firefox+Vaapi+Nvidia 545+YT 4K video.
Also under Wayland works well VLC for acceleration.
Finally, I missed the libnvidia-egl-wayland1 package marked as unstable.

[Danny3]

Finally!
But they should implement the AV1 encoding too, ASAP as that's required for a lot of things.