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NVIDIA Releases New Video API For Linux
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Nov 14, 2008 06:29 PM
from the finally-starting-to-play-ball dept.
from the finally-starting-to-play-ball dept.
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.'"
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Submission: NVIDIA Releases New Video API For Linux by Anonymous Coward
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Documentation here (Score:5, Informative)
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/doxygen/html/index.html [nvidia.com]
Form follows code. (Score:3, Interesting)
Fine. Now what programs use this API?
Re:Form follows code. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Form follows code. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Form follows code. (Score:4, Informative)
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 [nvidia.com]
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.
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Re: (Score:2)
Hey, they just released it. Give it time and everything that plays video on Linux will support it.
ATI (Score:2)
I was this close to just building an all AMD/ATI rig in the spring. 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.
Re:ATI (Score:5, Informative)
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Perhaps a dumb and semi-unrelated question, but who has the better SLI/Crossfire support in their Linux drivers right now, ATI or Nvidia?
Re:ATI (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing ATI has better Crossfire support right now, while Nvidia has better SLI support...
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Re:ATI (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:ATI (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [livejournal.com]. 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.
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Re: (Score:2)
Here is to hoping that Wayland addresses some of these issues.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not yet the year of the linux desktop, we have time.
Re:ATI (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:ATI (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:ATI (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [phoronix.com] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [gefen.com] 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.
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Re:ATI (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:ATI (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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This isn't a new nvidia driver (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ahh. New gingerbread to get nice children all plump for the oven. The Nvidia binary installer destabilizes the X windows on Linux, because it simply replaces the Mesa libraries without telling your package manager. And it's even worse about uninstalling itself: if you use the wrong Nvidia blob's uninstaller, you blow away your Mesa libraries entirely and it won't let you re-install the newer or different NVidia installer.
Of course, this what I expect from a company too stupid to use a consistent naming sche
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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. I
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed however the summary says,
"Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release"
It's not really a new one, it's the old one just updated.
Release Date (Score:2)
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VDPAU? A new Vulcan emmisary? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm glad to hear this news. It will be only a matter of time before others follow suit. Time to dust off the resume.. I think soon being a Linux coder will be a useful item on that list.
Linux has suffered some lag with driver releases, and even manufacturer hostility toward Linux. This is the year that I start a side business based on Linux and support for it. Not simply because of this news, but news like this in general. I'm thoroughly impressed with Ubuntu and other distributions to get done what I want
Cure for Venereal Disease (Score:2)
VDPAU sounds like some sort of local hawaiian cure for venereal disease
- VD Pau! Fo wen you ala-alas stay too itchy.
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. [phoronix.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [intel.com], 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...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 w
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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, b
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because there isn't a better open source alternative.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA:
VDPAU is an X extension, and anyone can implement it. It's a competitor to the XvBA extension being developed by AMD, only it exists now, with hardware support, and is derived from an existing technology that has been tested on other OSes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I struggled for months with ATI and cursed it every few minutes when it would screw up the text in my editor (closed source driver). By the time the open source driver came out I had already dumped the computer for one with an nVidia card because the drivers just work, out of the box. Intel wouldn't recognize the monitor, ATI would constantly screw up, if I could even configure it for the monitor, but
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I use whatever works. For me, the nVidia closed source driver works better than any open source driver.
I use it too. But the question wasn't about who will use the driver. The question is who will use the API. APIs are used by developers, and Linux developers don't like closed APIs or closed drivers. So I don't see them being big supporters of this.
Video API inside a single device driver? (Score:2)
So can anyone comment on whether this API is good enough to implement in other video drivers?
Or whether it's worth implementing the API in X, or even as part of Gtk/Qt/yourfavouritetoolkit, which would all seem to be more sensible places to put a video API than inside a single device driver. (â½)
Let me say this to you Linux guys (Score:2)
I sincerely hope you have better luck with Purevideo than we Windows users have. As someone who has been buying Nvidia cards since the days of the Geforce 2 I can say that trying to get Purevideo to work is the biggest exercise in frustration I have ever seen. Frankly after trying just about every video player and forum I just gave up.
And how can Nvidia claim you get all these advantages from Purevideo when the only way that they have to access it that I have seen is with 3rd party apps that they don't give
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 su
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For some reason I don't think they're sweating over the loss of a customer who can't even start sentences properly.
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Yeah, the money English scholars spend is worth much more than that monopoly money spent by TheGratefulNet
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Well, chances are the clerk that you buy the video card from has an English degree :)
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Or maybe, just maybe, an attempt to clean up what you write gives a better impression to whomever reads the post. And I'm not saying we all need to appease grammar nazis.
Re:too late, I won't buy nvidia now (Score:5, Funny)
It's grammer. Get it rite.
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maybe the 'rite' didn't properly convey my intent (Score:2)
sigh.
Re:XVID or DivX (Score:4, Informative)
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It supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1. No MPEG-4 (aka XVID/DIVX).
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/doxygen/html/group___vdp_decoder.html [nvidia.com]
Re:Translation (Score:4, Funny)
No.
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