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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
TFA mentions that patches for MPlayer to use VDPAU on Linux are already available. Hopefully Xine follows shortly.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
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.
Fine. Now what programs use this API?
mplayer (sort of, it's still pretty rough around the edges):
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/mplayer-vdpau-3076399.tar.bz2
It'll probably take a while before complete, stable support for all of VDPAU's features (like timestamp-based presentation) are fully supported by the common video players.
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!
nVidia have released patches for libavcodec, libavutil, and ffmpeg. So most Linux software should pick up support in pretty quick 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?
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.
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.
No.
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.