GStreamer VA-API Handles New Video Capabilities

The GStreamer plug-ins for handling VA-API video encoding and decoding have been updated to support new features and capabilities.

The GStreamer VA-API Plugins 0.5.7 happened on Tuesday and with it comes support for GStreamer 1.2, support for video processing, and JPEG decoder bug-fixes and improvements. The video processing support is for handling VA-API scaling and color conversion, image enhancement filters of sharpening and noise reduction, and deinterlacing via motion-adaptive and motion-compensation. The JPEG improvements include support for multi-scan images and improved performance by about 12%.

G-Streamer VA-API Plug-uns currently support video decoding of JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4:2, H.264, and VC-1 formats. The decoded content can then be used with renderers on X11, GLX, Wayland, and raw DRM.

Gwenole Beauchesne followed up on the 0.5.7 release by already issuing a call for the 0.5.8 code. New to GStreamer VA-API Plugins 0.5.8 is support for MPEG-2 and H.264 video encoding. This VA-API encoding support requires Sandy Bridge and newer Intel graphics for H.264 encoding or Ivy Bridge and newer when dealing with MPEG-2.

The GStreamer VA-API Plugins 0.5.7 release announcement can be found on the gstreamer-devel mailing list along with the 0.5.8-pre1 call for testing.