RFC: Video decode acceleration API

[Stephane Marchesin]

On 3/28/07, Roderick Colenbrander <thunderbird2k at gmx.net> wrote:
> I wonder if we need a new extension at all. Modern videocards from ati/nvidia/s3 and perhaps intel too which support formats like mpeg4, vc-1 and others all utilize the fragment shader engine of the gpu. They don't have dedicated decoding hardware for specific compression schemes. Perhaps it is a smarter idea to implement such a library using lets say GLSL. You could have code which works on all cards with fragment shader support. (For modern card this is being worked on).
>

Yes, I pretty much agree on that idea, except that as Alex says, older
cards aren't supported.

I had the idea the other day that we could write common OpenGL video
decoding code (inside glucose maybe) that implements whatever new API,
and have all the cards with shader support benefit from the nice
hardware video decoding.

That wouldn't prevent older cards from having their own stuff for
video decoding, but at the same time allows recent cards to get video
decoding support at very small cost.

Stephane