xf86-video-v4l X.Org Driver Sees First New Release In A Decade

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 14 August 2018 at 05:31 PM EDT. 2 Comments
X.ORG
The xf86-video-v4l v0.3.0 driver was announced today as the first new release for this DDX driver in ten years.

In case you don't have any recollection of this DDX driver, this "Video 4 Linux adapter driver" is used for registering generic X-Video (Xv) adapters that can be used in turn by any graphics driver.

The X-Video extension itself has been of little relevance in the past decade and in terms of Linux video acceleration the past number of years it has all been about VA-API, the former AMD XvBA, and VDPAU as the principal Linux video APIs.

With xf86-video-v4l 0.3.0, this is also the driver's first release adding support for V4L2 rather than just V4L(1). Back in 2011 is when we were last talking about this V4L DDX driver on Phoronix when the V4L2 patches were published for this driver.

Besides support for V4L2 devices, the xf86-video-v4l 0.3.0 driver can now also work with newer X.Org Server released as the past number of xorg-server cycles have broken the API/ABI.

Should anyone be using xf86-video-v4l, I would certainly be interested in hearing about your use-cases in the forums but you can go and grab this newest release via the xorg-announce message by Red Hat's Adam Jackson.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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