Intel Media Driver 2020.3 Released With Gen12 AV1 Decode, Other Improvements

Just in time for the end of the quarter Intel's open-source multimedia team has released the Media Driver 2020.3 package for the Intel graphics accelerated media encode/decode component on Linux platforms.

The Intel Media Decode Driver 2020.3 is notable in that it rounds out the Gen12/Xe support. This support is not only for the Tiger Lake support now beginning to appear in shipping notebooks but also for DG1 and upcoming Rocket Lake and SG1 solutions as well.

Most significant on the Gen12/Xe Graphics front with Media Decode Driver 2020.3 is the AV1 accelerated decode capabilities now being exposed. This latest-generation Intel graphics support AV1 4:2:0 8-bit and 10-bit decode at up to 8K video decoding or 16K still picture decoding with AVIF.

The Gen12/Xe work in this driver update also includes Y212 and Y412 format support for 12-bit decoding, RePAK changes for better VP9 performance, error status reporting improvements for VP9 encoding, added scaling interpolation method, SFC bilinear scaling, and other Gen12 enhancements.

The Intel Media Driver Q3'2020 update also features sharpness enhancements for Jasper Lake and Elkhart Lake, various VP9 VDEnc fixes, and various video processing fixes.

More details on this quarterly Intel Media Driver open-source driver update via GitHub.