gstreamer/README

  gstreamer-vaapi
  VA-API support to GStreamer

  Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Splitted-Desktop Systems
  Copyright (C) 2011-2020 Intel Corporation
  Copyright (C) 2011 Collabora Ltd.
  Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Igalia, S.L.


License
-------

gstreamer-vaapi helper libraries and plugin elements are available
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1+


Overview
--------

gstreamer-vaapi consists in a collection of VA-API based plugins for
GStreamer and helper libraries.

  * `vaapi<CODEC>dec' is used to decode JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4:2, H.264
    AVC, H.264 MVC, VP8, VP9, VC-1, WMV3, HEVC videos to VA surfaces,
    depending on the actual value of <CODEC> and the underlying
    hardware capabilities.  This plugin is also able to implicitly
    download the decoded surface to raw YUV buffers.

  * `vaapi<CODEC>enc' is used to encode into MPEG-2, H.264 AVC, H.264
    MVC, JPEG, VP8, VP9, HEVC videos, depending on the actual value of
    <CODEC> (mpeg2, h264, etc.) and the hardware capabilities. By
    default, raw format bitstreams are generated, so the result may be
    piped to a muxer, e.g. qtmux for MP4 containers.

  * `vaapipostproc' is used to filter VA surfaces, for e.g. scaling,
    deinterlacing (bob, motion-adaptive, motion-compensated), noise
    reduction or sharpening. This plugin is also used to upload raw
    YUV pixels into VA surfaces.

  * `vaapisink' is used to render VA surfaces to an X11 or Wayland
    display. This plugin also features a "headless" mode (DRM) more
    suited to remote transcode scenarios, with faster throughput.

  * `vaapioverlay` is a accelerated compositor that blends or
    composite different video streams.


Features
--------

  * VA-API support from 0.39
  * JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 AVC, H.264 MVC, VP8, VC-1, HEVC and
    VP9 ad-hoc decoders
  * MPEG-2, H.264 AVC,H.264 MVC, JPEG, VP8, VP9 and HEVC ad-hoc
    encoders
  * OpenGL rendering through VA/GLX or GLX texture-from-pixmap + FBO
  * Support for EGL backend
  * Support for the Wayland display server
  * Support for headless decode pipelines with VA/DRM
  * Support for major HW video decoding solutions on Linux (AMD,
    Intel, NVIDIA)
  * Support for HW video encoding on Intel HD Graphics hardware
  * Support for VA Video Processing APIs (VA/VPP)
    - Scaling and color conversion
    - Image enhancement filters: Sharpening, Noise Reductio, Color
      Balance, Skin-Tone-Enhancement
    - Advanced deinterlacing: Motion-Adaptive, Motion-Compensated


Requirements
------------

Hardware requirements

  * Hardware supported by i965 driver or iHD, such as
    - Intel Ironlake, Sandybridge, Ivybridge, Haswell, Broadwell,
      Skylake, etc. (HD Graphics)
    - Intel BayTrail, Braswell
    - Intel Poulsbo (US15W)
    - Intel Medfield or Cedar Trail
  * Hardware supported by AMD Radeonsi driver, such as the list below
    - AMD Carrizo, Bristol Ridge, Raven Ridge, Picasso, Renoir
    - AMD Tonga, Fiji, Polaris XX, Vega XX, Navi 1X
  * Other hardware supported by Mesa VA gallium state-tracker


Usage
-----

  VA elements are automatically plugged into GStreamer pipelines. So,
  using playbin should work as is.
  However, here are a few alternate pipelines that could be manually
  constructed.

  * Play an H.264 video with an MP4 container in fullscreen mode
  $ gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc location=/path/to/video.mp4 ! \
      qtdemux ! vaapidecodebin ! vaapisink fullscreen=true

  * Play a raw MPEG-2 interlaced stream
  $ gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc location=/path/to/mpeg2.bits ! \
      mpegvideoparse ! vaapimpeg2dec ! vaapipostproc ! vaapisink

  * Convert from one pixel format to another, while also downscaling
  $ gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc location=/path/to/raw_video.yuv ! \
      videoparse format=yuy2 width=1280 height=720 ! \
      vaapipostproc format=nv12 height=480 ! vaapisink

  * Encode a 1080p stream in raw I420 format into H.264
  $ gst-launch-1.0 -v filesrc location=/path/to/raw_video.yuv ! \
      videoparse format=i420 width=1920 height=1080 framerate=30/1 ! \
      vaapih264enc rate-control=cbr tune=high-compression ! \
      qtmux ! filesink location=/path/to/encoded_video.mp4


Sources
-------

  gstreamer-vaapi is Open Source software, so updates to this
  framework are really easy to get.

  Stable source code releases can be found at:
  <https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/gstreamer-vaapi/>

  GitLab repository for work-in-progress changes is available at:
  <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi>


Reporting Bugs
--------------

  Bugs can be reported in the GStreamer's GitLab system at:
  <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-vaapi/issues>