claude-noether 7055b14f5e fresnel-fourier iter5b-β Phase 6 commit C: β refactor — OUTPUT lifecycle to CreateContext + CRIT-1 + CRIT-2
Strip OUTPUT-side V4L2 device-format lifecycle out of
RequestCreateSurfaces2 entirely. Move S_FMT(OUTPUT), CAPTURE-format
probe, cap_pool_init, per-surface destination_* fill into
RequestCreateContext where config_id (and therefore the bound
VAProfile) is known via config_object->pixelformat (wired by
commit B). The α' multi-CreateSurfaces2-mid-stream failure mode
disappears because β has no in-CreateSurfaces2 teardown branch;
each context cycle does its own setup, DestroyContext handles
teardown.

Phase 5 v2 review amendments:
- CRIT-1: removed video_format==NULL early-return at context.c:64-66
  (would have rejected every first β CreateContext).
- CRIT-2: added request_pool_destroy() to DestroyContext before
  REQBUFS(0). Pre-β only surface.c's resolution-change branch
  called request_pool_destroy; β strips that, so DestroyContext
  becomes the sole per-session teardown site.
- IMP-1: probe CAPTURE format first to derive output_type from
  video_format->v4l2_mplane (eliminates the hardcoded mplane=true
  hack from the Phase 4 v2 plan).
- IMP-2: surface_reset_format_cache() deleted (function + declaration
  in surface.h + call in DestroyContext + last_output_{width,height}
  fields in request.h). All dead under β.

CreateSurfaces2 now ~50 LOC (was ~250). Pure surface ID allocation
+ per-surface lifecycle bookkeeping; no V4L2 device state touched.

Signed-off-by: claude-noether <claude-noether@reauktion.de>
2026-05-12 14:41:35 +00:00
2016-08-26 15:43:09 +02:00
2016-08-26 15:43:09 +02:00
2018-09-08 08:51:51 +02:00

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.

S
Description
bootlin/libva-v4l2-request fork: multiplanar V4L2 support for Rockchip hantro (Fourier)
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