Intel® Graphics Media Stack

Overview

This comprehensive set of software packages is for hardware-accelerated video encoding, decoding, and processing on Linux*. Intel® GPUs contain one or more hardware-based decoders, encoders, and video processors for several popular codecs and features.

You can use existing applications for decoding, encoding, and processing hardware accelerators on GPUs. The integration is available in:

  • FFmpeg*
  • GStreamer
  • Chrome* media framework

Because of its strong hardware support, several customers choose Intel® Graphics Technology for popular uses such as game streaming, cloud gaming, video analytics, short videos, video cloud, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system, video surveillance, and more.

Media Stack

Intel® Graphics Media Stack provides a total media solution based on Intel Graphics Technology. It includes the media driver, Intel® Media SDK, libva, and Intel® oneAPI Video Processing Library (oneVPL). Intel Graphics Media Stack also supports well-known open source media frameworks like FFmpeg* and GStreamer.

For more information and performance data according to the discrete card, see Accelerate Media Delivery.

The following diagram shows all media stack components.

Media driver: An open source, hardware-accelerated video driver that supports Intel® HD Graphics.

Source code development libraries and SDKs to access hardware capabilities:

  • Libva: An open source library implementation for the Video Acceleration API (VAAPI) that provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities.
  • Libva-utils: A collection of utilities and examples to exercise VAAPI in accordance with the libva project.
  • Intel Media SDK: An API to access hardware-accelerated video decoding, encoding, and filtering on Intel® platforms with integrated graphics.

Reference design for popular use:

  • ​Video Analysis: Based on the OpenVINO™ toolkit and Compute Library for Deep Neural Networks (CLDNN) in an open source plan.

Third-party frameworks with access to hardware capabilities:

  • FFmpeg: Integrated support of hardware-accelerated video decoding, encoding, and processing on Intel® graphics via the AVCodec. There are two paths: VAAPI and Intel Media SDK.
  • GStreamer: Support for hardware-accelerated video decoding, encoding, and processing on Intel graphics. There are two paths: VAAPI and Intel Media SDK.

Branch & Release

To accommodate more customer requests, Intel® Graphics Media Stack has a flexible release model that includes a quarterly release and biweekly rolling releases.

The biweekly rolling releases have higher verification coverage and better criteria. It's a good option for developers who want to engage with new features early. The following diagram shows the release schedule.

Note All information is subject to change without notice. Contact your Intel representative to obtain the latest Intel® product specifications and roadmaps.

 

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