Radeon VCN Encode Support Lands In Mesa 17.4 Git

Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 17 November 2017 at 04:30 PM EST. 11 Comments
MESA
It's an exciting day for open-source Radeon Linux users today as besides the AMDGPU DC pull request (albeit still unmerged as of writing), Radeon VCN encoding support has landed in Mesa Git.

VCN video decoding support has been present in Mesa since earlier this year while now the VCN encode support has arrived. Earlier this month we covered the initial encode patches that have now been merged.

VCN is the new media block with the Raven Ridge APUs that handles both video encode and decode. VCN succeeds the UVD video decoding and VCE video encoding blocks that have been around for many generations now. "Video Core Next" supports MPEG-4 AVC and HEVC/H.265 encoding while on the decoding front is MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1, MPEG-4 AVC, H.265 HEVC, and VP9. Most likely VCN will premiere on the desktop side with next year's Navi architecture.

This VCN encode support in Gallium3D can now be used via exposed video encode state trackers like OpenMAX.

Raven Ridge laptops are beginning to ship (at least the HP launch model so far). From tracking the various trees, it's looking like you will need at least Linux 4.15 (but it's quite possible Linux 4.16 / branches, due to various DCN display changes not queued for 4.15) and Mesa Git for the best support. More details once I'm able to get my hands on a Raven Ridge device for Linux testing.
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