gstreamer-vaapi 1.8: the codec split
On march 23th GStreamer 1.8 was released, along with all its bundled modules, and, of course, one of those modules is gstreamer-vaapi.Let us talk about this gstreamer-vaapi release, since there are several sweets!
First thing to notice is that the encoders have been renamed. Before they followed the pattern vaapiencode_{codec}, now they follow the pattern vaapi{codec}enc. The purpose of this change is twofold: to fix the plugins gtk-docs and to keep the usual element names in GStreamer. The conversion table is this:
| Old | New |
|---|---|
| vaapiencode_h264 | vaapih264enc |
| vaapiencode_h265 | vaapih265enc |
| vaapiencode_mpeg2 | vaapimpeg2enc |
| vaapiencode_jpeg | vaapijpegenc |
| vaapiencode_vp8 | vaapivp8enc |
But those were not the only name changes, we also have split the vaapidecode. Now we have a vaapijpegdec, which only decodes JPEG images, while keeping the old vaapidecode for video decoding. Also, vaapijpegdec was demoted to a marginal rank, because there are some problems in the Intel VA driver (which is the only one which supports JPEG decoding right now).
Note that in future releases, all the decoders will be split by codec, just as we did the JPEG decoder now; but first, we need to modify vaapidecodebin to choose a decoder in run-time based on the negotiated caps.
Please, update your scripts and code accordingly.
There are a ton of enhancements and optimizations too. Let me enumerate some of them: Vineeth TM fixed several memory leaks, and some compilations issues; Tim enabled vaapisink to send unhandled keyboard or mouse events to the application, making the usage of apps like gst-play-1.0 or apps based on GstPlayer be more natural; Thiago fixed the h264/h265 parsers, meanwhile Sree fixed the vp9 and the h265 ones too; Scott also fixed the h265 parser; et cetera. As may you see, H265/HEVC parser has been very active lately, it is the new thing!
I have to thank Sebastian Dröge, he did all the release work and also fixed a couple compilation issues.
This is the short log summary since 1.6:
2 Lim Siew Hoon
1 Scott D Phillips
8 Sebastian Dröge
3 Sreerenj Balachandran
5 Thiago Santos
1 Tim-Philipp Müller
8 Vineeth TM
16 Víctor Manuel Jáquez Leal