Nouveau - Mar 2008 - GSOC '08 hardware accelerated video decoding

Hi,

I'm considering submitting a project for this year's Google Summer of
Code program that would involve making progress on hardware
accelerated video decoding for the nouveau driver and wanted some
feedback.

I know that this isn't a big priority at the moment amongst the
regular contributors, but I think it would make a good GSOC project
because of it's somewhat narrow scope. I think for a lot of people 3D
eye candy isn't a feature they're desperate for, they just care about
a functional and efficient 2D driver, and having video acceleration
would complement that nicely and entice them to switch from the Nvidia
binary driver and the old nv driver long before the people who want
the 3D features.

I've read through jb17bsome's notes on XvMC and I think all the work
he's done so far is a great head's up on what's involved. I've
also
read through the VAAPI page and I think that would also be a great
feature to try and support given all the non-MPEG2 video content out
there, it would probably entice even more people to use nouveau.

The only thing I'm concerned about at this point is that the only
Nvidia hardware I currently have is a GeForce FX GO 5200, so I'm not
sure how much help I could really be given the limited features of
that GPU.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions on this, or thinks that some
other area would make a better project I would love to hear your
comments.

Thanks all.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 7:55 PM, Younes M <younes.m at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I'm considering submitting a project for this year's Google Summer
of
>  Code program that would involve making progress on hardware
>  accelerated video decoding for the nouveau driver and wanted some
>  feedback.
>
>  I know that this isn't a big priority at the moment amongst the
>  regular contributors, but I think it would make a good GSOC project
>  because of it's somewhat narrow scope. I think for a lot of people 3D
>  eye candy isn't a feature they're desperate for, they just care
about
>  a functional and efficient 2D driver, and having video acceleration
>  would complement that nicely and entice them to switch from the Nvidia
>  binary driver and the old nv driver long before the people who want
>  the 3D features.
>
>  I've read through jb17bsome's notes on XvMC and I think all the
work
>  he's done so far is a great head's up on what's involved.
I've also
>  read through the VAAPI page and I think that would also be a great
>  feature to try and support given all the non-MPEG2 video content out
>  there, it would probably entice even more people to use nouveau.
>
>  The only thing I'm concerned about at this point is that the only
>  Nvidia hardware I currently have is a GeForce FX GO 5200, so I'm not
>  sure how much help I could really be given the limited features of
>  that GPU.
>
>  If anyone has any comments or suggestions on this, or thinks that some
>  other area would make a better project I would love to hear your
>  comments.
>
Hello,

I'm not sure if writing card-specific code is too much of a good idea
now, given the number of existing video architectures (nvidia for
example has different shaders on nv30, nv40 or nv50).

Although I'm not sure of the outcome of it, it seems more interesting
to write code over the gallium3D interface to achieve card-independent
acceleration. This is a SoC I proposed for DRI (DRI didn't get through
as a mentoring org, but we can do it through X.Org), you can read more
about it there:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/GSoC_2008

Stephane

Hi, I am one of those who doesn't care about 3D, but I would very much like
to have a fast 2d driver to replace the nvidia
closed-source one. My primary requirement is the ability to play 1080i video
(HDTV). I am doing this now with the nvidia
driver with good results. My hardware is a 6200A video card (NV4A), a DVI-D
monitor with 1920x1200 resolution, and a 3ghz
Pentium 4 cpu. I can achieve good results with just the blitter, and I do not
have XvMC turned on.

Here is the mplayer control statement I use: mplayer dvb:// -ao alsa -vo
xv:port=387 -fs

The nouveau driver is much too slow to play 1080i video, no matter which adapter
is used.

Good luck with the project. I may be able to help a little with testing, but I
do not have the knowledge necessary to
contribute to the coding.

Garnet

Younes M wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm considering submitting a project for this year's Google Summer
of
> Code program that would involve making progress on hardware
> accelerated video decoding for the nouveau driver and wanted some
> feedback.
> 
> I know that this isn't a big priority at the moment amongst the
> regular contributors, but I think it would make a good GSOC project
> because of it's somewhat narrow scope. I think for a lot of people 3D
> eye candy isn't a feature they're desperate for, they just care
about
> a functional and efficient 2D driver, and having video acceleration
> would complement that nicely and entice them to switch from the Nvidia
> binary driver and the old nv driver long before the people who want
> the 3D features.
> 
> I've read through jb17bsome's notes on XvMC and I think all the
work
> he's done so far is a great head's up on what's involved.
I've also
> read through the VAAPI page and I think that would also be a great
> feature to try and support given all the non-MPEG2 video content out
> there, it would probably entice even more people to use nouveau.
> 
> The only thing I'm concerned about at this point is that the only
> Nvidia hardware I currently have is a GeForce FX GO 5200, so I'm not
> sure how much help I could really be given the limited features of
> that GPU.
> 
> If anyone has any comments or suggestions on this, or thinks that some
> other area would make a better project I would love to hear your
> comments.
> 
> Thanks all.