Apr 13, 2009

Download New Video Decode and Presentation API From Nvidia

Download New Video Decode and Presentation API From Nvidia

A new video API for Unix and Unix-like platforms, and a technology preview implementation of this API from NVIDIA has been announced.

The API is called VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix). It provides a large subset of PureVideo HD functionality for NVIDIA Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD users.

The current API documentation is here: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vd...tml/index.html

Some highlights of VDPAU:

* Defines an API for GPU-accelerated decode of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1 bitstreams.
* Defines an API for post-processing of decoded video, including temporal and spatial deinterlacing, inverse telecine, and noise reduction.
* Defines an API for timestamp-based presentation of final video frames.
* Defines an API for compositing sub-picture, on-screen display, and other UI elements.


Note that VDPAU does not address content protection.

Some highlights/limitations of NVIDIA's current implementation:

* Supported on NVIDIA GPUs with the NVIDIA second generation video processors or later (as of driver version 180.22, see the driver's README file for a list of supported GPUs).
* Currently, only one video stream can be decoded at a time; we hope to lift this restriction eventually.
* Available in 180.xx and later NVIDIA driver releases


The VDPAU support in the NVIDIA 180.xx release series is a preview. We are aware of cases of visual corruption and in some cases GPU hangs. We will be working on these issues over the next several NVIDIA driver releases. While NVIDIA's VDPAU implementation is not ready for end user use yet, it should be far enough along that interested application developers can begin working with it.

Various applications, such as ffmpeg, MPlayer, MythTV, xine, ... now support VDPAU, at least in some recent SVN versions.

NVIDIA originally developed patches for ffmpeg and MPlayer to demonstrate VDPAU. However, official ffmpeg and MPlayer SVN now include VDPAU support; we recommend that users use this instead of the NVIDIA patches. For posterity, the NVIDIA patches are available at ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/.

If other hardware vendors are interested, they are welcome to also provide implementations of VDPAU. The VDPAU API was designed to allow a vendor backend to be selected at run time.

As of driver release 180.22, the current list of supported GPUs is maintained in the README file distributed with the driver.

VDPAU users, please note that the arguments to VdpDecoderCreate have changed. Updated VDPAU patches are available.

Release Highlights:
Added support for the following GPUs:

* Quadro FX 2700M
* GeForce 9400M G
* GeForce 9800 GT
* GeForce 9800 GT
* GeForce 8200M G
* GeForce Go 7700
* GeForce 9800M GTX
* GeForce 9800M GT
* GeForce 9800M GS
* GeForce 9500 GT
* GeForce 9700M GT
* GeForce 9650M GT
* GeForce 9500 GT

1. Fixed a problem with the SDI sync skew controls in nvidia-settings.
2. Fixed a problem that caused some SDI applications to hang or crash.
3. Fixed an nvidia-settings crash when xorg.conf contains Device and Screen sections but no ServerLayout section.
4. Fixed a problem that caused the Linux OpenGL library to crash when used inside FreeBSD's Linux emulation layer.
5. Updated VDPAU:

* VdpDecoderCreate API has changed incompatibly. All client applications must be rebuilt because of this change.
* For H.264, require the application to tell VDPAU how many reference frames to allow. This allows the application to request more than 4 reference frames. VDPAU should now support level 4.1 reference frame limits on all GPUs (or very close to this limit). The application now has control over this aspect of VDPAU's memory usage.
* Fix corruption decoding some H.264 streams on some GPUs.
* Fix a bug that prevented VC-1/WMV3 decode from being allowed on some GPUs.
* Documentation enhancements and cleanups to vdpau.h.
* Don't paint the color key to presentation queue targets until the first frame is presented. This should reduce or remove the time the key is displayed before the presented frame is visible.


The 180.16 NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver Set for Linux/x86 is available for download via FTP.
The 180.16 NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver Set for Linux/x86-64 is available for download via FTP.

Please see the README for more information about this release.

Please note: This NVIDIA Linux graphics driver release supports GeForce 6xxx and newer NVIDIA GPUs, GeForce4 and older GPUs are supported through the 96.43.xx and 71.86.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers. GeForce FX GPUs are supported through the 173.14.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers.

Source : nvnews, techarena

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