test0r
19acc76da4
Pre-iter2 each VA surface was permanently 1:1 bound to one V4L2 CAPTURE
buffer. mpv reusing a surface for a new decode while the compositor still
held an EXPBUF'd dma_buf fd to the prior frame caused the kernel to
write fresh decode output into the same physical memory the compositor
was reading -- visible as stutter / back-and-forth swap on
mpv --hwdec=vaapi --vo=gpu playback.
Architecture:
- New cap_pool abstraction (cap_pool.{h,c}) owns N CAPTURE buffers
(N = max(surfaces_count, MIN_CAP_POOL=24)) with per-slot state
{FREE, IN_DECODE, DECODED, EXPORTED} guarded by pthread_mutex_t.
- Surfaces no longer own buffers; each vaBeginPicture acquires the
oldest FREE slot (LRU), binds it for the decode cycle, and the slot
cycles IN_DECODE -> DECODED (post-DQBUF) -> EXPORTED (post-EXPBUF).
- Slot is released on next BeginPicture for the same surface or on
vaDestroySurfaces.
Limitations (Sonnet Phase 5 review iter2 9.x, deferred to iter3+):
- Option-A statistical mitigation; race window narrows to "pool
exhausted, force-recycle of oldest EXPORTED slot." For typical mpv
16-surface playback with MIN_CAP_POOL=24 the fallback never fires.
- Multi-context concurrent use not addressed (one V4L2 device, multiple
cap_pools -- iter3 scope).
Other call sites updated:
- picture.c::BeginPicture acquires + binds, releasing prior slot if any.
- surface.c::SyncSurface marks slot DECODED after DQBUF.
- surface.c::ExportSurfaceHandle marks slot EXPORTED, retaining OUR
EXPBUF fd for force-recycle close().
- surface.c::DestroySurfaces releases via surface_unbind_slot;
cap_pool owns the mmaps now.
- surface.c::CreateSurfaces2 destroys the pool in the resolution-change
path before REQBUFS(0) (else stale v4l2_index after Fix 1's REQBUFS).
- context.c::DestroyContext invokes cap_pool_destroy.
- image.c::DeriveImage skips copy_surface_to_image when current_slot is
NULL (ffmpeg av_hwframe_ctx_init probes derive on undecoded surfaces).
Verified: mpv vaapi-copy 200 frames bbb_1080p30, 0 drops, LRU visibly
recycling slot indices, real luma gradient. mpv vaapi --vo=gpu
operator-inspection follows.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
v4l2-request libVA Backend
About
This libVA backend is designed to work with the Linux Video4Linux2 Request API that is used by a number of video codecs drivers, including the Video Engine found in most Allwinner SoCs.
Status
The v4l2-request libVA backend currently supports the following formats:
- MPEG2 (Simple and Main profiles)
- H264 (Baseline, Main and High profiles)
- H265 (Main profile)
Instructions
In order to use this libVA backend, the v4l2_request driver has to
be specified through the LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME environment variable, as
such:
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=v4l2_request
A media player that supports VAAPI (such as VLC) can then be used to decode a video in a supported format:
vlc path/to/video.mpg
Sample media files can be obtained from:
http://samplemedia.linaro.org/MPEG2/
http://samplemedia.linaro.org/MPEG4/SVT/
Technical Notes
Surface
A Surface is an internal data structure never handled by the VA's user containing the output of a rendering. Usualy, a bunch of surfaces are created at the begining of decoding and they are then used alternatively. When created, a surface is assigned a corresponding v4l capture buffer and it is kept until the end of decoding. Syncing a surface waits for the v4l buffer to be available and then dequeue it.
Note: since a Surface is kept private from the VA's user, it can ask to directly render a Surface on screen in an X Drawable. Some kind of implementation is available in PutSurface but this is only for development purpose.
Context
A Context is a global data structure used for rendering a video of a certain format. When a context is created, input buffers are created and v4l's output (which is the compressed data input queue, since capture is the real output) format is set.
Picture
A Picture is an encoded input frame made of several buffers. A single input can contain slice data, headers and IQ matrix. Each Picture is assigned a request ID when created and each corresponding buffer might be turned into a v4l buffers or extended control when rendered. Finally they are submitted to kernel space when reaching EndPicture.
The real rendering is done in EndPicture instead of RenderPicture because the v4l2 driver expects to have the full corresponding extended control when a buffer is queued and we don't know in which order the different RenderPicture will be called.
Image
An Image is a standard data structure containing rendered frames in a usable pixel format. Here we only use NV12 buffers which are converted from sunxi's proprietary tiled pixel format with tiled_yuv when deriving an Image from a Surface.