[Nouveau] "Decode videos"

[Mikhail Ramendik]

On 17 December 2010 01:10, Jimmy Rentz <jb17bsome at gmail.com> wrote:

> It would be nice for H.264 to be supported in nouveau.  The
> problem is that someone would have to write a shader to perform
> the mb/idct stage.  I guess it is doable, but I imagine that some gpus
> will have trouble running the shaders without slowing down too
> much.  However, it is unrealistic to think (for me) that someone will be
> trying to watch a H.264 blu-ray on an NV30/NV40.
> The ideal H.264 solution is to have full hw offload for >= NV50 cards
> using the decode hw.  That could take some time since the hw
> microcode/programs will need to be re if I remember correctly.

Well, h.264 is not just used in Blu Ray. There are satellite HD
programs and recordings of such. I have some (on UK Freesat), and I
have an NV44.

In my particular case, I got the NV44 in late 2006 because it had no
fan (I wanted a quiet system) and it gave a DVI output to my AGP
motherboard. Upgrading that would mean replacing the motherboard (to
get PCIx), that means replacing the RAM... and all that to see HD sat?

Or should I just forget acceleration and try to tweak the decoder -
currently the xine engine in kaffeine - to do HD sat in CPU? It's a 3
GHz P4 so it might do it, especially since the bitrate is not that
high and no scaling is required? I could do with 720p if I knew how to
decode that from a "full HD" stream.

-- 
Yours, Mikhail Ramendik

Unless explicitly stated, all opinions in my mail are my own and do
not reflect the views of any organization