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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.'"
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/doxygen/html/index.html
Fine. Now what programs use this API?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
For some reason I don't think they're sweating over the loss of a customer who can't even start sentences properly.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The summary confused me a little into thinking this was a new nvidia driver. It is in fact new features being added to their closed source driver.
TFA says it supports MPEG, H264 and VC1.
Mada mada dane.
You might be interested to know that ATI's equivalent was also revealed a short while ago.
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I'm guessing ATI has better Crossfire support right now, while Nvidia has better SLI support...
It's grammer. Get it rite.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
It is not yet the year of the linux desktop, we have time.
Why would anyone use a proprietary video API provided by a closed source driver tied to a particular piece of hardware... on an open source platform? Huh?
Meanwhile, it is interesting that after many years, Nvidia finally starts to support video decode/playback acceleration just days after ATI ships a driver with similar hardware acceleration support. Of course neither vendor uses any sort of common standard - although ATI claims their stuff is almost identical to the Direct X Video Acceleration (DXVA) API that MS has enforced on Windows.
What standard would that be? VA-API that has a few headers and zero implementations? Intel doesn't even follow the DXVA specification, and won't publish the interface or support video acceleration on XP. ATI is as you say a DXVA -> XvBA search&replace job, which might be good or just bring plenty DirectX luggage. If nVidia put some job into making a good public video acceleration interface for Linux, it might be the best of the bunch. Their implementation may be closed source but if it works well... let's just say I can live very well with a 98% open source system.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
What standard? Well, they could have done it the way the internet was built - with an RFC like approach. Coopetition and all that.
let's just say I can live very well with a 98% open source system.
Yeah, people always say that, until a show-stopper bug comes along in the 2% that's closed and they can't do a thing about it.
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Sorry, I don't know of any tech company that has decent support. My own experience with all companies, including AMD and ATi is similar.
Precisely. If the vendor can't fix it, they should not get in the way of you fixing it yourself, or of that smart guy who always posts to your favorite web forum.
Yeah, people always say that, until a show-stopper bug comes along in the 2% that's closed and they can't do a thing about it.
As opposed to the 100% that's closed and not nearly as terrible as you make it out to be? Reality is that most open source bugs I can't do anything with either, for practical values of "can't". I could file a bug report, been there done that and often it falls into the same black hole as closed source software. I could try to dig around the code myself, but just getting all the build requirements and trying to figure out the code base usually takes hours of time I don't want to spend. Bonus points if it's written in a language I don't know well. Or I could hire someone to do it, but I'd have to negotiate, make some reproducable cases (real fun if it happens randomly or specific to my hardware) and follow up with testing and payment. If nobody gives a shit about my problem and don't want to fix it to improve the application but only for the money, then hiring your personal developer gets real expensive real quick. None of my home PCs run anything mission critical, the solution to 99% of my issues is to simply roll back or not upgrade, if I've wisely tested something in advance.
I think open source is really great in that other people can borrow code from other projects, applications can fork, groups can develop specific functionality independently and so on which makes it possible for development teams to work with everything that's been done before rather than starting from scratch. That process I think in the end creates very mature software, but to be honest I really don't see it being that much help with fixing acute problems. Open source means there's competition on being support, and that you can hire people to do custom development, but unless you're paying very well there's no guarantee at all your problem will be solved in a timely fashion. Which is like closed source support in my experience, some bugs get fixed while others can be largely ignored. I suppose the escalation options are better with open source but really I don't see a situation where I in capacity of being a home user would ever use them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You mean that some scruffy, middle eastern looking dude with a history of extremist rhetoric, violence, and worst of all Marxist communist socialist redistributionist tendencies might not find a warm welcome?
I bet we'd sent him to Gitmo.
I buy from Newegg, you insensitive clod!
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
No.
Last I checked Nvidia did, but a single AMD HD4870 1Gb is quite powerful, and one of the few cards that does get a boost from the added ram, http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4870-1024mb-review/8 I don't know what the OC cap is though on the 1Gb version though, since I've seen the 512 go as high as 4.8Ghz, though 4.4Ghz is what most get stable at. the 4870X2 at release didn't have support for any of the open source games, I don't know the current drivers support though. I dunno about the Nvidia 9800GX2 though. But ether way I can't see the point in going multicard when one card can do the job for less cash, power and heat, since I've never seen where a dual card can get 2x performance, it only makes sense at 2560x1600 with everything turned up using cards in the top 2-3 models from either Nvidia or AMD to make it worth it, since often the slower cards can be outperformed by a single top of the line.
Uuum,you may need to correct me since it has been about 2 years since I messed with PowerDVD or WinDVD,but since the name is DVD I'm guessing that it is offloading DVD video,yes? Which again brings me back to my point. I could not care less about offloading standard def DVD video,since my P3 733MHz with 384Mb of RAM and an old Geforce MX4000 plays DVD discs full screen without skipping. What I want is to offload H.264,MP4,and WMV9 which it says my card can do. But after about 6 months of getting "shell out some cash for this and it MIGHT work,maybe" I gave up. Does PowerDVD actually offload the formats I named,or simply standard def DVD?
As for the other poster talking about a low power HTPC,I really REALLY wouldn't. Not unless the only thing you want to watch is standard def DVD on it. I would do this if I was you: Find a driver that will actually offload the formats you wish to watch FIRST. Then test the GPU by actually using something like process monitor to see how much load is actually being offloaded to the GPU. IF you are able to get the card to actually offload using the software THEN you can build a low power HTPC.
But as I said in my post I tried for 6 months and despite the claims all I ever saw offloaded was standard def DVD,which as I said is pointless. But I'm afraid that if you try you'll find out like me that you'll get a LOT of "shell out for this program and it MIGHT work,and oh yeah we don't support it." Believe me it is not fun and so far I haven't seen anyone but Nvidia make these claims. Has anyone found independent benchmarks for anything OTHER than DVD? Hopefully with a list of software used?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
usually takes hours of time I don't want to spend.
But at least you have the option of spending that time.
My personal example, from quite awhile ago -- Linux Kernel 2.4, which didn't have native support for AGP 3.0 / AGP 8x. No matter what I did, I couldn't force it back to an older standard, and I wouldn't have wanted to, anyway. Which was all fine -- ATI implemented AGP in their drivers to compensate, but it was broken -- detected my card as AGP2 instead of 3. So AGP didn't work -- I don't remember if this meant no hardware acceleration, or no X at all, but it did suck.
So I cracked open the source -- that AGP stuff was in the open part, at the time -- found the detection algorithm, commented the whole block out, and hardcoded it to AGP3.
Now, granted, there's no reason I should have to dig into the source for that. The detection should just work, and failing that, it should be possible to override that autodetection without recompiling your kernel.
But either way, I was able to work around the issue in a way which would have been impossible if it was closed source. My only alternative was to either buy new hardware (and hope it was compatible this time), or go back to Windows.
I was 16 at the time. I'm paid more now, but still not enough to keep buying new hardware until something works. I always lean towards open source, unless there's a compelling reason not to.
That said, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't mention -- I'm typing this on a Dell which came preloaded with Ubuntu. It's got an nVidia chip in it, which actually works fairly well. I do use Skype to talk to my brother in Taiwan.
But for things like that to happen, the proprietary version has to be sufficiently better that I'm willing to give up the ability to fix things myself. I'd be very wary of buying a car with the hood welded shut -- but if it's, say, an affordable Porche, it might bother me less.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
PowerDVD/WinDVD also support Blu-ray (and HD-DVD, not like anyone still cares about that), so yes, the video codecs they install (which are usable system-wide) support VC-1 (WMV9), H.264, 1080p, etc.
PureVideo doesn't actually require the $20 NVIDIA DVD decoder (which I think they've deprecated anyway); the NVIDIA DVD decoder is just for people who want to use MCE, and don't already have an MPEG-2 decoder. PureVideo is just an umbrella name for NVIDIA's video acceleration features (with varying levels of support), which is then used by specific applications (like WinDVD and PowerDVD). It's already cooked into the free drivers.
Ash-foxes blog post is close to being a troll.
Of course X does direct rendering. It's called Direct Rendering Interface - DRI. And the new improved DRI2 being worked on now.
His other argument is that Xorg will never be able to have a unified memory manager... which is exactly what TTM and its successor GEM do.
And noone in the Xorg team claims that indirect rendering is as fast as direct rendering.
Companies like NVidia just replace chunks of Xorg without contributing anything back. Whereas its companies like Intel that actually contribute to improving X for everything - pushing a unified memory manager (TTM/GEM) into the kernel etc.
You'd think that, but actually the level of Crossfire support in both is the same.
I am trolling
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.