[mythtv] Support for upcoming VDPAU on AMD and Myth Player

[Robert Johnston]

On 09/06/2011 10:00 PM, Zuriel wrote:
>  > I have a new machine at home with an ATI graphic card ; I will try
>  > testing this VDPAU things cool and see what I come up with.
>  >
>  > JY
>
> I believe MythTV sends video to the VDPAU API which in turn sends it to
> the nvidia proprietary driver which sends it to the hardware video
> decoder on a recent nvidia card.
>
> Playing video using an AMD/ATI card's hardware decoder requires you to
> use AMD's XvBA API and AMD's proprietary driver, either directly or
> through the VA API --> XvBA backend.
>
> I just bought a Zotac ZBOX AD02 with an AMD E-350 processor, so I'll be
> playing with the AMD side of things myself shortly. I don't believe
> there's any way to use the hardware video decoder on an AMD card through
> VDPAU. I would be happy to be wrong about this.
>
> There's a patch ( http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/8593 ) adding VA
> API support to MythTV which would give AMD users hardware video decoding
> but I think wasn't added due to immature drivers and general bugginess.

If you read the whole thread, you'd find that there is some preliminary 
VDPAU support in the Mesa/Gallium drivers for AMD/ATI cards, which is 
what's being discussed here. It is, essentially, VDPAU->VAAPI->XvBA 
bridge(s), but it enables some VDPAU support on ATI.

At the moment, Greg <dargllun at googlemail.com> has it up and running, and 
has posted a log with some debug output, but he is having issues with 
playback not being smooth (Whereas it is smooth using "mplayer -vo vdpau")

This Recap was brought to you by the letters V, A, T and I. :)