webm

[pieter]

What I would love to see is gpu support for webm. Since flash support is not likely (need adobe for that), webm would be great. That way I could put youtube on html5 mode and view most if not all youtube 'movies'.

[jamesh]

I think we have a software implementation of webm on the GPU, but, like Theora, it's experimental, and I'm not sure it's exposed to the Linux world. It's also not HW accelerated at this stage.

Two or so years ago, I ported Flashlite to run on an Arm linux device using the VideoCore OpenVG accelerated backend. Handed project over once it was prototyped. Never saw it again. Not sure what Adobe's plans are in this area. There are though lots of Arm devices that do run flash, but it's all custom builds.

[pieter]

I'm a Archos user (Archos 7 internet Tablet).
Accelerated Flash was promised to be available at release but we had to wait for about 7 months before it was released and even then Archos had to do something in there android implementation itself to make it run the default flash client fast enough.
From what I understood back then was that Archos already had accelerated flash for a couple of months but had to wait for Adobe to aprove it. It was rumored that even Samsung was waiting for Adobe to aprove accelerated flash.

As long as youtube (in html5/webm mode) is useable I'm happy, even in non-HD mode

[emercer]

Gnash has some support for hardware acceleration (nominally, VA API, OMAP and some other options). Maybe it can be made to run accelerated on the Pi?

[portets]

Quote from jamesh on October 14, 2011, 12:26
I think we have a software implementation of webm on the GPU, but, like Theora, it's experimental, and I'm not sure it's exposed to the Linux world. It's also not HW accelerated at this stage.


according to: http://www.broadcom.com/press/.....id=s471536

The VideoCore processor utilizes a hybrid architecture with programmable hardware accelerators. This allows rapid support of new audio or video codecs, enabling hardware-based codec performance earlier to market, typically within 3 to 6 months of development start.

The WebM multimedia format is currently in development and expected to be available to VideoCore customers in Q3 2010. Broadcom worked with Google during the definition phase of the VP8 video codec included in WebM, reviewing the architecture's suitability for mobile applications.

and lastly:

The highly flexible architecture of the Broadcom® BCM2763 VideoCore IV processor will enable it to support WebM video up to WVGA (800 x 640) resolution at 30 frames per second (fps).

so being that the bcm2763 and bcm2835 are so similar, the 2835 should be able to do at least that, or better. and this was posted by broadcom almost a year and a half ago, so i can't see why the bcm2835 wouldn't support webm in hardware. shouldn't broadcom already have the code for this?

[jamesh]

Depends what you mean by support in HW. We can decode WebM on the GPU, but I think it's a software only implementation. i.e. doesn't make use of the hardware blocks. The Videocore is a combination platform - it has a processing core which runs 'normal' software albeit with vector extension, plus lots of HW blocks for dedicated tasks. So, it may decode stuff separately from the host processor, but it may not be HW accelerated in the conventional sense.

I'll try and get some more information on WebM when I get time - very busy with 'real' work at the moment.

[portets]

Quote from jamesh on November 3, 2011, 15:32
So, it may decode stuff separately from the host processor, but it may not be HW accelerated in the conventional sense.

better than cpu decode at least. i bet the cpu would be more tied up while web browsing, so any offloading helps. any rough performance figures like highest comfortable resolution with webm?

I'll try and get some more information on WebM when I get time - very busy with 'real' work at the moment.

no rush, thanks for the info.

oh, and is h.264 the only "truly" hw accelerated video format?

[jamesh]

Not sure - would need to ask the codec team. I think MP4 is also accelerated (but then H264 is just MP4 11 anyway).

[darethehair]

Any updates to this query? I am interested in HW support for WebM as well.

[elatllat]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592

https://github.com/emericg

A VP8 hardware decoding stack

[Gaute]

JamesH said:


Depends what you mean by support in HW. We can decode WebM on the GPU, but I think it"s a software only implementation. i.e. doesn"t make use of the hardware blocks. The Videocore is a combination platform - it has a processing core which runs "normal" software albeit with vector extension, plus lots of HW blocks for dedicated tasks. So, it may decode stuff separately from the host processor, but it may not be HW accelerated in the conventional sense.

I"ll try and get some more information on WebM when I get time - very busy with "real" work at the moment.


That's basically right.  (I did the VideoCore VP8 port, I should know).  Feel free to come and bother me in the office about this at your convenience.

[liz]

Hi Gaute - and thank you!

[elatllat]

Gaute said:

(I did the VideoCore VP8 port, I should know).
Hi Gaute, any chance you can share what type of performance we can expect from VP8 on the R-Pi?

[jamesh]

elatllat said:


Gaute said:


(I did the VideoCore VP8 port, I should know).


Hi Gaute, any chance you can share what type of performance we can expect from VP8 on the R-Pi?


Spoke to Gaute yesterday about this - about  720p20 is top wack. But WVGA is fine at 30fps, so anything SD or slightly above should be good to go..

[elatllat]

Thanks James.

Also this link might be of far future relevance:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p.....px=MTA0OTQ

[gsh]

In terms of hardware decode:

H264, MPEG4, MPEG2 and VP1

Hardware encode:

H264 and MPEG4

But obviously as Liz says many of these are not exposed because of licensing issues

Gordon