[FFmpeg-user] Is libplacebo only for GPUs?

[Ferdi Scholten]

On 16-05-2025 01:33, Mark Filipak wrote:
> On 15/05/2025 18.48, Ferdi Scholten wrote:
>>> пт, 16 мая 2025 г., 00:12 Mark Filipak<markfilipak.imdb at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> On 15/05/2025 16.44, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
>>>>> On 5/15/2025 1:33 PM, Mark Filipak wrote:
>>>>>> What if I don't have a GPU?
>>>>> Then you have a 25+ year old video card?
>>>> Laptop
>>>>
>>>>> AFAIK all video chips for the last few decades have had
>>>>> some form of GPU, although it may not be that useful or not 
>>>>> accessible
>>>> for offload processing.
>>>>
>>>> FFmpeg says, "using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX"
>>>> I guess "AVX" is a GPU? I have no idea.
>>>>
>>> no, just another cpu SIMD extension ....
>>>
>>> but llvmpipe/lavapipe (software Vulkan rasterizer) probably can use it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> A better question might be "What if I don't have a supported GPU?"
>>>> It's not a _better_ question, Carl, it's the _next_ question.
>>>>
>>>>
>> Does anyone ever care to read documentation?
>
> Sure. Here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#libplacebo
>
>>
>> libplacebo currently supports Vulkan (including MoltenVK), OpenGL, 
>> and Direct3D 11. It currently has the following minimum hardware 
>> requirements:
>>
>>   * *Vulkan*: Core version 1.2
>>   * *OpenGL*: GLSL version >= 130 (GL >= 3.0, GL ES >= 3.0)
>>   * *Direct3D*: Feature level >= 9_1
>
> Where did you find that text? Should I be looking somewhere else for 
> documentation?
>
>> Otherwise, if you have a laptop that was produced after 2010 its 
>> hardware almost certainly supports libplacebo in some way as the 
>> oldest of the hardware requirements being OpenGL 3.0 was supported by 
>> almost all video devices (either dedicated or built in the processor) 
>> of the time. OpenGL 3.0 was released in 2008.
>
> I run FFmpeg in Windows.
>
>> The same if you are on Windows, Direct3D Feature level 9_1 was 
>> released in 2008
>
> Intel Graphic and Media Control Panel makes no mention of Direct3D. I 
> believe that Direct3D is from Microsoft.
>
>> Vulkan is much more recent, version 1.2 is from 2020
>>
>> In other words for Intel based laptops, everything going back to 
>> Sandy Bridge has hardware support for libplacebo and for AMD based 
>> this goes back to the K10 series processors.
>>
>>  From the documentation:
>> "
>> In principle, libplacebo has no mandatory dependencies - only 
>> optional ones. However, to get a useful version of libplacebo. you 
>> most likely want to build with ...
>
> Build? Come down to Earth, friend. And again, where are you finding 
> your documentation?
Libplacebo has it's own documentation that is where this info comes 
from, find it here: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libplacebo (You 
find this exact link in the first line of the Libplacebo documentation 
of FFmpeg as well)

Yes I build Libplacebo myself and use that build in FFmpeg (which I also 
build myself) and in other software such as Avidemux, VLC etc. and yes 
it does support OpenGL and Vulkan. I don't use Windows so I don 't build 
Libplacebo with DirectX support.

Simply put, Libplacebo was created to be a hardware agnostic tool that 
uses whatever acceleration is available on the system it's running on to 
reach it's goal.

That being said it still isn't a good idea to use it for HDR content on 
ancient hardware, it will be sluggishly slow.