[Arm-netbook] [EOMA68] A20 G2D / VAAPI / VDPAU video acceleration in web browsers

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 10:40 PM, Russell Hyer <russell.hyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Luke,
>
> So, if I've understood this post correctly, video playback on vlc
> would perhaps be within the bounds of what the A20 hardware / software
> could do?

 yes.  ffplay, vlc, mpv, mplayer - all work fine, that's what this
update was about:
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/cedrus

 basically by using the full capabilities of the A20's accelerated
hardware (both CEDAR and G2D), the CPU usage is somewhere around the
10% mark.  peanuts in other words.

 the reason why those work is, through vdpau plugins there's two
parts: "decode" part and "actual on-screen display" part.  all those
video players have an option to do *both* things, and the vdpau-sunxi
plugin that the Cedrus team wrote goes "okay, we're configured to use
G2D, let's just go for it".

 that's why you end up with the overlay issues, btw, because the G2D
hardware is told to write direct to an area on-screen, bypassing the
X11 protocol.

 anyway, it's *ASSUMED* in the webkit and xulrunner engines that the
"on-screen display" bit can be handled by OpenGL or...
something-else-don't-know-don't-care-but-basically-it's-not.

 and that means a bit of rewriting of both webkit and xulrunner so
that they hand over the display bit to G2D.  that's going to require
some specialist work.

l.