VA-API's Libva 1.4.0 Brings VP8 Encoding Support

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 30 September 2014 at 08:24 AM EDT. 18 Comments
INTEL
Intel's Haihao Xiang has announced the version 1.4.0 release of the VA-API library along with the company's updated VA-API driver.

Version 1.4.0 of libva brings many API changes including support for VP8 video encoding, H.264 MVC profiles encoding/decoding, buffer export interfaces for VA-API for interoperability with third-party APIs like EGL and OpenCL, support for encoding quality levels, fixed for building on 64-bit Android, and various fixes. Overall this is a very significant update namely for the VP8 and H.264 MVC support along with an API for third-party interoperability. The libva 1.4.0 announcement can be read on libva.

The libva-intel-driver 1.4.0 release that's the Intel Linux GPU driver implementation for this Video Acceleration API is also significant. Libva 1.4.0 adds support for exporting VA buffers, support for H.264 MVC encoding/decoding, support for the encoding quality level on Sandy Bridge and newer, support for inserting packaged sliced header and raw data for encoding, and support for Intel's forthcoming Cherryview hardware. While it doesn't look like Cherryview hardware is shipping now until early 2015, within the open-source Intel Linux driver stack they've been working to get the support ironed out.

The Intel VA-API driver also has GPU hang fixes for Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, and Haswell under certain H.264 playback conditions. More details via the release announcement.
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