Vulkan Video Finally Introduces AV1 Video Decoding Extension

Introduced in April 2021 was the initial Vulkan Video support for a new video encode/decode API built around Vulkan. That initial Vulkan Video support was catered to H.264 and H.265 while finally with today's Vulkan 1.3.277 release there is a new extension introduced for AV1 video decoding.

Vulkan 1.3.277 was published this morning and it introduces VK_KHR_video_decode_av1, the new extension for Vulkan Video AV1 decode. This much anticipated extension was worked on by AMD, Red Hat, Intel, NVIDIA, Collabora, and others. You may recall that Mesa implemented its own AV1 decode extension as part of RADV prototyping AV1 video decode while now there is finally this cross-vendor extension.

There is no AV1 encode extension right now for Vulkan Video but for the vast majority of users it's the AV1 decode they are after anyhow. The Khronos Group announced the AV1 decode extension as well as the Vulkan SDK update today.

Adding VK_KHR_video_decode_av1 is the most exciting change of Vulkan 1.3.277 while there is also various documentation clarifications/fixes.