Zink sees VA API video acceleration implemented via Vulkan Video

Experimental code is now available for testing for the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver, which also implements the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) on the Vulkan Video APIs. This is an interesting measure that now allows VA API applications to rely on drivers with Vulkan video support.

David Airlie and Mike Blumenkrantz have been toying with the idea of ​​a VA API instead of Vulkan Video for a long time, while this merge application opened yesterday with the first parts. In this merge request, H.264 video decoding is done first with VA API, which works over Vulkan Video when using Zink. Most driver testing was performed with the underlying Radeon RADV Vulkan driver.

Although not part of the original merge requirement, there is code baking to get H.264 and AV1 video decoding working with this VA API over Vulkan Video flow as well. Plus video encoding support.

This morning Airlie commented in the merger filing: “There are a few broken things, so don't try it yet 🙂“We'll see if it's ready to merge in time for Mesa 24.3 or ends up being a Mesa 25.x feature. A full-featured Vulkan driver is becoming more and more valuable because in addition to the Vulkan API offerings with Zink, there is then also the ability to enjoy “free” support for OpenGL, OpenCL with Rusticl and now VA API.

A quick comment on this VA API over Volcano video achievement for Zink on David Airlie's blog.