Ubuntu 17.10 Video Acceleration Progress, New Unity-Session Package

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 17.10 Video Acceleration Progress, New Unity-Session Package

We recently reported on Ubuntu planning to finally ship video acceleration by default, at least for Intel hardware, and they have made progress in this area...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-17.10-VA-API-Progress

[Veerappan]

Hopefully they're also aware that radeons support VAAPI as well... If they'd just I stall the video acceleration packages that are already available in the default distro... Or turn on the gallium VAAPI support

[microcode]

One wonders why this is a "plan" rather than the simple action of adding like... 3 packages to the base distro, and changing one or two build flags.

[Gusar]

Hopefully they're also aware that radeons support VAAPI as well...

Considering they're messing with the Intel SDK instead of simply using libva-intel-driver, they don't seem to be aware at all about what's out there.

If they'd just I stall the video acceleration packages that are already available in the default distro... Or turn on the gallium VAAPI support

This. Just pass the appropriate configure flags when building mesa and then package up the resulting drivers. This gives you both VAAPI and VDPAU for the gallium drivers (nouveau, r600, radeonsi). Intel's driver isn't in mesa, but it can be easily compiled and packaged up separately. Other distros can do it, I don't know why Ubuntu is messing about with who knows what.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I don't know why anyone above don't bother with checking what is actually available in Ubuntu repository, what Mesa build options has been used, etc. Both of VA-API and VDPAU is available and actually even preinstalled by default (at least on Kubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome, as far I remember). Package that is not installed by default is gstreamer1.0-vaapi, which is useless anyway, since Totem using hardware decoder inefficiently:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/1698282

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/1698270

Video encoding maybe works with some command line utilities, but for example with Pitivi file encoded via Intel's open source VA-API implementation is empty, green-ish, or something like that (I don't clearly remember, but the point is - it's broken in one way or another) . Maybe Intel Media SDK could solve this? I don't know, but Canonical attempt on bringing Intel Media SDK could be good idea, hopefully then it will work.

[Gusar]

I don't know why anyone above don't bother with checking what is actually available in Ubuntu repository, what Mesa build options has been used, etc.

The need for a plan to provide hardware decoding implies that currently hardware decoding isn't available. It's true none of us checked whether the implication is actually the case, but was a reasonable conclusion to make.

Both of VA-API and VDPAU is available and actually even preinstalled by default (at least on Kubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome, as far I remember). Package that is not installed by default is gstreamer1.0-vaapi, which is useless anyway, since Totem using hardware decoder inefficiently:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/1698282

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...m/+bug/1698270

That looks like Totem's rendering and/or presentation pipeline being crap. Could also be gstreamer itself, but considering gst on the commandline seems to work as it should, it points to Totem. So it's not a generic problem with hardware decoding, but a specific problem with one specific player.

Video encoding maybe works with some command line utilities, but for example with Pitivi file encoded via Intel's open source VA-API implementation is empty, green-ish, or something like that (I don't clearly remember, but the point is - it's broken in one way or another) . Maybe Intel Media SDK could solve this? I don't know, but Canonical attempt on bringing Intel Media SDK could be good idea, hopefully then it will work.

Maybe the SDK could help here, but I don't see why it inherently would. It's the applications that need work, and this work could very well be done in terms of VAAPI, because it's apparently already available and doesn't require jumping through hoops like the SDK does.

[tuuker]

Any idea when snap can be installed in user level without password?

[perpetually high]

Excellent news about unity-session!

[verde]

If Ubuntu dont bring somehow Unity as an option, 16.04 will be the last version of Ubuntu and Linux generally I ever used. Thank god I have nVidia GPU and I wont miss anything from newer versions.

[starshipeleven]

If Ubuntu dont bring somehow Unity as an option, 16.04 will be the last version of Ubuntu and Linux generally I ever used. Thank god I have nVidia GPU and I wont miss anything from newer versions.

Your only hope is in UBports and their desktop team mates making a unofficial Ubuntu Unity again.