Hardware-Based Video Acceleration Coming To Linux

sammydee writes "Phoronix reports that GPU based video decoding acceleration will be implemented in Gallium3d sometime this year. Drivers currently using Gallium3d include the open source nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards and experimental Intel GMA drivers. This is definitely good news for anybody who has ever tried to play high-definition 1080p content on any CPU older than about a year."

Comments

Re:Don't know what to say ...

[hairyfeet]

Your post,with the allegedly,and supposed to,kinda makes me think of a good point: How are we supposed to know whether or not these things actually do what they say they do? What I mean is,tomorrow they could say this thing can decode format X,Y,Z,but when you actually TRY to find a way of getting to decode X-Z,you get this maze of "allegedly" and "supposed to" and this endless hunt through forums where we are told to buy this or that programs that "should" do it,maybe.

These things are such black box hardware that short of someone actually getting it to work through CUDA I have no way of knowing without shelling out a bunch of cash and hoping my configuration works with their voodoo that the thing actually works. They can claim it'll render every codec known to man but if the only way to do it is some special driver that they don't offer to the public,how can that count? We can test for framerate,render quality,etc,but how do we accurately test for this? All Nvidia offers is a single Mpeg 2 codec for $20. I could not find anywhere where they would sell me an .mp4 codec for the card. And why are they allowed to tout this "feature" if there is no way to actually get the feature without shelling out more money to some third party that they don't even guarantee will work?

Everyone else has to put disclaimers like "batteries not included",but while I can go to the corner store for batteries,I am supposed to...what.write my own driver? Shell out a bunch of cash playing "guess which codec might work"? It seems like a total scam to me,because they are touting a "feature" that 90% of their audience will never be able to use for lack of a freakin' driver.But as always this is my 02c,YMMV