GStreamer VAAPI is now part of upstream GStreamer

[Tim-Philipp Müller]

Hi,

The GStreamer-VAAPI module which provides support for hardware-
accelerated video decoding, encoding and post-processing on Intel (and
other) graphics hardware on Linux has moved from its previous home at
the Intel Open Source Technology Center (01.org) to the upstream
GStreamer repositories, where it will in future be maintained as part
of the upstream GStreamer project and released in lockstep with the
other GStreamer modules.

The current maintainers will continue to spearhead the development at
the new location:

  http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi/

GStreamer-VAAPI relies heavily on certain GStreamer infrastructure API
that is still in flux such as the OpenGL integration API or the codec
parser libraries, and one of the goals of the move was to be able to
leverage new developments early and provide tighter integration with
the latest developments of those APIs and other graphics-related APIs
provided by GStreamer, which should hopefully improve performance even
further and in some cases might also provide better stability.

Thanks to everyone involved in making this move happen!


NEW VERSIONING SCHEME AND SUPPORTED GSTREAMER VERSIONS

The version numbering has been changed to match the GStreamer version
numbering to avoid confusion: there is a new gstreamer-vaapi 1.6.0
release and a 1.6 branch that is roughly equivalent to the previous
0.7.0 version. Future releases 1.7.x and 1.8.x will be made alongside
GStreamer releases.

Whilst it was possible and supported by previous releases to build
against a whole range of different GStreamer versions (such as 1.2,
1.4, 1.6 or 1.7/1.8), in future there will only be one target branch,
so that git master will track GStreamer git master, 1.8.x will target
the upcoming GStreamer 1.8, and 1.6.x is targetting the current 1.6
series.


MISCELLANEOUS CHANGES

All GStreamer-VAAPI functionality is now provided solely by its
GStreamer elements. There is no more public library exposing GstVaapi
API, this API was only ever meant for private use by the elements.
Parts of it may be resurrected again in future if needed, but for now
it has all been made private.

GStreamer-VAAPI now unconditionally uses the codecparser library in
gst-plugins-bad instead of shipping its own internal copy. Similarly,
it no longer ships its own codec parsers but relies on the upstream
codec parser elements.

The GStreamer-VAAPI encoder elements have been renamed from
vaapiencode_foo to vaapifooenc, so encoders are now called
vaapih264enc, vaapih265enc, vaapimpeg2enc, vaapijpegenc, and
vaapivp8enc.


BUG TRACKING

Bugs had already been tracked on GNOME bugzilla [bgo] but will be moved
from the gstreamer-vaapi product into a new gstreamer-vaapi component
of the GStreamer product in bugzilla. Please file new bugs against the
new component in the GStreamer product from now on.

[bgo]: http://bugzilla.gnome.og


PENDING PATCHES

The code base has been re-indented to the GStreamer code style, which
affected some files more than others. This means that some of the
patches in bugzilla might not apply any longer, so if you have any
unmerged patches sitting in bugzilla please consider checking if they
still apply cleany and refresh them if not. Sorry for any inconvenience
this may cause.


MORE INFORMATION

Also see Víctor's blog post here:

  http://blogs.igalia.com/vjaquez/2016/02/09/gstreamer-va-api-under-the
-umbrella-of-gstreamer/

Cheers
 -Tim