NVIDIA Releases New Video API For Linux

Ashmash writes "Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release that brings PureVideo features to Linux. This video API will reportedly be in nVidia's 180 series driver for Linux, Solaris, and *BSD. PureVideo has been around for several nVidia product generations, but it's the first time they're bringing this feature to these non-Windows operating systems to provide an improved multimedia experience. This new API is named VDPAU, and is described as: 'The Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) provides a complete solution for decoding, post-processing, compositing, and displaying compressed or uncompressed video streams. These video streams may be combined (composited) with bitmap content, to implement OSDs and other application user interfaces.'"

Comments

Re:ATI

[Ash-Fox]

ATI was opening up their drivers. The OSS drivers were working well, and Nvidia wasn't doing anything. Nvidia addressed their horrible Linux XRender support, and now this. I may just have to stick with Nvidia in the spring.

It is actually quite far from the truth.

You might want to read a blog post I wrote about why nVidia rocks when x.org does not. It's likely to give you more reasons to move over to nVidia over ATi.

The only thing nVidia is not doing, is making their enhancements opensource.

Re:ATI

[Jherek Carnelian]

You might want to read a blog post I wrote about why nVidia rocks when x.org does not. It's likely to give you more reasons to move over to nVidia over ATi.

I don't find your arguments compelling.

For one thing, you assert that "because of vocal powers in the foundation that demand that things should stay compliant to a specification and they should work around the architecture rather than strip out certain pieces and implement them, add proper new features (memory management and API functions to go with it)" -- yet my reading of the Xorg mailing lists suggests that is exactly what is being done with the GEM memory manager and API's previously there was the TTM memory manager, but the APIs were not satisfactory, so they ripped it out and started again.

The bulk of your argument seems to be that Nvidia's got a much more complete OpenGL implementation than does anyone else. Nevermind that almost all of it is simply code duped from their MS Windows driver, your argument is really the ages-old "if it works, then who cares if it is closed source" argument we've heard time and time again.

Of course the fallacy of that approach becomes obvious the second it stops working and you are helpless to do anything about it.

That happened to a guy I know, he spent about $600 on a pair of top-end nvidia cards a few years back. All based on nvidia's highly touted support for linux. Except the cards did not work with his IBM T220 monitor. It wasn't anything to do with the ultra-high resolution. It was a trivial bug in the nvidia drivers - if the card could not read an EDID, the drivers assumed the card had a single-link DVI transmitter. A stupid, stupid bug because the actual nvidia chip had the DVI transmitters onboard and they were always dual-link, there was no way for any card in that generation to even be single link, and of course no matter what directives we specified in the config file, the driver "knew better."

He had to go out and spend another ~$150 for two Gefen DVI Detectives just to enable the nvidia card to see an edid so that the driver would correctly turn on the chip's DVI transmitter.

Nvidia's vaunted customer support? Totally clueless and useless, they completely dropped the ball, just ignoring the issue once they realized it was more than a "did you plug in the power cord" level issue.

And don't think that problem was unique to an odd-ball monitor - the same lack of edid is an issue for anyone using unidirectional fibre DVI extender cables.

So, while it is great for you personally that Nvidia's drivers work perfectly with the hardware you own, I'm pretty sure your tune would change right quick if you had to just bend over and take it due to such a trivial bug, the kind that could easily be fixed with a single line or two of code, if you just had the source.

Re:ATI

[Ash-Fox]

Here is to hoping that Wayland addresses some of these issues.

Wayland is not a new x11 implementation, it's a completely new windowing implementation, similar to Aqua as it would have widgets built into the server among other things.

Personally, I love x11, it's great - Majority of the issues currently with x.org and xfree86 are not x11 related, but architecture problems in x.org itself. A clean new implementation of x11 would probably benefit us a lot more than another Y windows, Wayward, Aqua etc.

Re:This isn't a new nvidia driver

[Ed Avis]

It's one thing to have a packaging standard for third-party applications which install in their own directory and require well-known libraries defined in the Linux Standard Base. I agree, there should be a cross-distro standard for installing these programs (and there is: LSB defines a package format, the only problem is getting the third-party vendors to use it). But the Nvidia drivers are not just any old application; they want to overwrite standard system files and otherwise mess around with things. It's unreasonable to expect all distributions to support that.

BTW, the moderation of your comment as 'Troll' is a sad reflection on the Linux-groupthink around here.

Re:ATI

[Ash-Fox]

Some of the programs you mentioned plan on being X.org-compatible from what I understand. If so, that'd basically be the same thing as making a "new" X.org. But, it would help adoption to keep the name.

The thing is, I don't see anything wrong with the current X11 protocol. I see plenty of things wrong with the current architecture provided by x.org and xfree86.

We don't need yet another windowing system, as the current limitations we have are purely due to implementation, not by protocol design.