A Hackfest To Improve Linux Video Playback

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Hackfest To Improve Linux Video Playback

When it comes to video playback on Linux, the premiere choice for video acceleration is currently using VDPAU with its CPU-efficient, GPU-accelerated capabilities that even has no problems playing 1080p video files with extremely low-end hardware. However, VDPAU is not yet widespread in all Linux video drivers, and other free software developers have been working on improving other areas of the Linux video stack too...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzY0Mg

[m4rgin4l]

This is a fantastic opportunity for AMD to get its shit together regarding video acceleration.

[bridgman]

This work seems to be more about making the render part of the pipe more efficient (reducing # of copy operations etc.) when going through Cairo/pixman rather than through Xv. It's not really a decode acceleration initiative AFAICS.

I'm not sure how this work aligns with discussions about building a video decode pipeline into Gallium3D, since the Gallium3D effort is also trying to keep all the processing "in one place" but keeping it in Gallium3D rather than in Cairo/Pixman.

[RealNC]

VDPAU in Catalyst pretty plz plz pretty plox? :P

[Zhick]

I don't get what this work is about?
Something about playing back videos in a webkit-browser (epiphany as far as I could gather) with gstreamer... that seems like a rather exotic corner case which maybe affects 5% of the linux-user base (Gnome users which don't use Firefox).

[KellyClowers]

I don't get what this work is about?
Something about playing back videos in a webkit-browser (epiphany as far as I could gather) with gstreamer... that seems like a rather exotic corner case which maybe affects 5% of the linux-user base (Gnome users which don't use Firefox).

It is about video with GStreamer, period. And other players could presumably hook into the same Cairo/Pixman infrastructure, once it is ready.

[highlandsun]

Hmm. I dunno 'bout others, but when I think of "linux desktop video experience" I think of a lot of things, like mplayer, totem, whatever, but "webkit" definitely doesn't leap to mind.

I guess you might want to improve the experience when playing videos in a web browser. Me, I'd prefer to play videos outside the browser, after downloading them to a tmpfs so that I can control the playback and not worry about stuttering due to network slowdowns/congestion/whatever.

[Yfrwlf]

I'd just be happy having a tear-free desktop experience especially with video playback. I have yet to witness such a desktop on Linux. Videos are usually OK until there are quick movements, then you can really see the tearing, and this is on both nvidia and ATI with both closed and open source drivers and always on high-resolution screens (1920x1080 or higher). I've even tried VDPAU through Mplayer using NVidia hardware and the closed driver with the same results. I thought this was one of the things Wayland was supposed to correct but it would be nice to fix it for Xorg which 99.9999999999999999% of Linux users use.

[krazy]

I'd just be happy having a tear-free desktop experience especially with video playback. I have yet to witness such a desktop on Linux.

Tear free video works here on the open source radeon driver. HD 4850, 1920x1200 screen, 1080p video.

[kersurk]

Should this also improve Adobe Flash video playback?