Zink Seeing VA-API Video Acceleration Implemented Over Vulkan Video

The Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver has experimental code now available for testing that also implements the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) atop the Vulkan Video APIs. This is an interesting effort that now allows VA-API applications to rely on drivers with Vulkan Video support underneath.

David Airlie and Mike Blumenkrantz have long toyed with the idea of VA-API over Vulkan Video while as of yesterday this merge request was opened with the initial bits. In that merge request it initially gets H.264 video decoding with VA-API working over Vulkan Video when using Zink. Most of the driver testing has been with the Radeon RADV Vulkan driver underneath.

While not part of the initial merge request, there is code baking for getting H.265 and AV1 video decoding working with this VA-API-over-Vulkan-Video flow too. Plus video encoding support.

As of this morning Airlie commented in the merge request, "There are a few broken things in this, so don't try it yet :-)" We'll see if it's ready for merging in time for Mesa 24.3 or ends up being a Mesa 25.x feature. A full-featured Vulkan driver is becoming quite valuable as besides the Vulkan API offerings with Zink there is then the ability to enjoy "free" support for OpenGL, OpenCL with Rusticl, and now VA-API too.

Some brief commentary on this VA-API over Vulkan Video achievement for Zink over on David Airlie's blog.