[vlc-devel] nvdec GPU to CPU converter

[Quentin Chateau]

Hi,

You recently fixed vout_DisableWindow to not release the decoder device 
on failure. Thanks to this patch, the NVDEC decoder can now correctly 
fallback to a non-opaque chroma (CPU buffer) if the video initialization 
using an opaque chroma fails.

     for (chroma_idx = 0; output_chromas[chroma_idx] != 0; chroma_idx++)
     {
         p_dec->fmt_out.i_codec = p_dec->fmt_out.video.i_chroma = 
output_chromas[chroma_idx];
         result = decoder_UpdateVideoOutput(p_dec, p_sys->vctx_out);
         if (result == VLC_SUCCESS)
         {
             msg_Dbg(p_dec, "using chroma %4.4s", 
(char*)&p_dec->fmt_out.video.i_chroma);
             break;
         }
         msg_Warn(p_dec, "Failed to use output chroma %4.4s", 
(char*)&p_dec->fmt_out.video.i_chroma);
     }

Previously, only the first chroma of the output_chromas array could 
succeed due to the vout_DisableWindow bug.

It seems to me the GPU to CPU video filter (chroma.c file in the same 
directory as nvdec.c) is now useless: the decoder can already output 
either CPU or GPU buffers. Worse than than, its very existence degrades 
performance in the case where a CPU buffer is used as output.

Currently, even if the pipeline requires a CPU buffer as output, the 
decoder will output GPU buffers and the GPU-to-CPU video filter will be 
used: 1 GPU to GPU (decoder) + 1 GPU to CPU (filter) copies are made.

Disabling the video filter, the behavior becomes: the first call to 
decoder_UpdateVideoOutput fails, then the decoder retries with a 
non-opaque chroma and succeeds. In this configuration, only 1 GPU to CPU 
copy is performed by the decoder. The pipeline performance is 
objectively better (1 less GPU-GPU copy), but a lot of error logs are 
printed out during the first attempt by the decoder to use opaque chromas.

 1. Do you see any reason to keep the GPU-to-CPU video filter ?
 2. I think a --nvdec-prefer-opaque/--no-nvdec-prefer-opaque could be a
    good addition if one knows in advance which chroma type will be
    used. This would avoid the wall of error logs in certain
    circumstances. What do you think ?


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