Intel Adds VA-API Acceleration For HEVC REXT To FFmpeg

Intel open-source developers have contributed support for VA-API acceleration of HEVC REXT "Range Extensions" content with the widely-used FFmpeg library.

HEVC Range Extensions are extensions to H.265 geared for areas of content distribution, medical imaging, still imaging, and more. Among the changes with HEVC REXT are supporting 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma sampling formats. HEVC Range Extensions are laid out in much more detail in this IEEE.org paper.

HEVC Range Extensions decoding was added to Intel's VA-API code back in 2018 while now an Intel open-source developer has made the necessary adjustments to the FFmpeg library's VA-API acceleration code path for handling HEVC Range Extensions. As part of this work is supporting the y210 pixel format, necessary parsing changes for HEVC REXT, and ultimately going through with adding 4:2:2 8-bit/10-bit VA-API decoding.

That HEVC REXT VA-API decoding work is now part of FFmpeg Git.

Completely unrelated to this VA-API work but landing on Monday in FFmpeg as well is a Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) filter for FFmpeg. This new video filter may be of use to some readers.

Other work that has been building up for FFmpeg's next release includes Vulkan-based AMD AMF encoding on Linux, ZeroMQ protocol support, VDPAU VP9 hardware acceleration, various AV1 improvements, and many new filters/decoders/demuxers.