AMD Toying With XvMC In Gallium3D R300 Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Toying With XvMC In Gallium3D R300 Driver

XvMC support came to Gallium3D through a Google Summer of Code project for 2008 that involved getting X-Video Motion Compensation running atop the Nouveau driver with NVIDIA hardware. We described this work in The State Of Gallium3D Video Decoding and subsequently in Nouveau's Gallium3D Driver Gets Video Boost...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Nzk1Mw

[luciferin]

This is interesting news. Is there any insight into what exactly this may pertain for the future? I was under the impression that ATI hardware was not capable of XvMC playback, has it always just been that the drivers do not expose the hardware through this particular API?? It seems silly if the latter were the case.

Basically, I'm asking which cards would one day be capable of supporting this, if there were developer commitment and enough time?

[agd5f]

The hardware is capable and the documentation is available, but no one has written the code yet.

[xeros]

Great news!
Does it mean that I could have even better video acceleration than Xv on my R3xx cards?

[droidhacker]

Now presumably, this means R300 through R500, correct?

[agd5f]

Now presumably, this means R300 through R500, correct?

r3xx through r7xx as far as documentation goes. the gallium driver in question in only r3xx through r5xx.

[brent]

XvMC? Oh come on, this is useless. Hardly anyone needs MPEG2 decode acceleration nowadays. Besides, it would make more sense to support a modern API like VDPAU/VA-API instead of XvMC, even if it's just for MPEG2.

[mattmatteh]

ALL features are important!

[agd5f]

XvMC? Oh come on, this is useless. Hardly anyone needs MPEG2 decode acceleration nowadays. Besides, it would make more sense to support a modern API like VDPAU/VA-API instead of XvMC, even if it's just for MPEG2.

The information is all there. Patches are welcome. It just so happens that the XvMC code is already in place in gallium so much of the work is already done in that case.

[drag]

It's a API that exists and is supported by a lot of applications. Sure; high-res mpeg2 is not a big deal anymore cpu-wise, but it's still nice to have.

If somebody can add support with a patch like this it just helps confirm the design of Gallium and the quality of AMD's documentation and support as it would take years to get support like that previously.