VP9 & AV1 Vulkan Video Extensions Expected Next Year

While this week saw the ratification of the Vulkan Video 1.0 extensions in stable form after being out as provisional extensions since early 2021, one of the sad aspects of it is still lacking support for the popular royalty-free VP9 and AV1 codecs. Fortunately, at least, it's been re-affirmed for VP9/AV1 support in 2023.

The Vulkan Video extensions have been focused on H.264 and H.265/HEVC to this point even with modern Intel / AMD / NVIDIA GPUs supporting VP9 and AV1. Vulkan working group members have indicated they are working on VP9/AV1 extensions but seemingly hasn't been a priority.

Yesterday it was reaffirmed though that Vulkan Video support for VP9 and AV1 can be expected in 2023. Ahmed Abdelkhalek of AMD commented on the open Vulkan ticket around the Vulkan Video extensions:

"VP9 decode and AV1 decode/encode are definitely on our list for 2023. With the core extensions in place, releasing these should be a lot quicker. We apologize for the delay!"

Hopefully it won't be too far into 2023 before seeing especially the AV1 encode and decode extensions. At least by then hopefully there will be more robust Vulkan Video driver support (namely with the Intel ANV and Radeon RADV out-of-tree driver work) and also seeing more application ecosystem support around this Vulkan video encode/decode interface.