[MPlayer-dev-eng] Vidix Status

[Benjamin Zores]

On 2/5/07, Attila Kinali <attila at kinali.ch> wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 14:22:02 -0500
> Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
>

> > While we're at it, is anyone interested in making wrappers so that
> > vidix drivers build as kernelspace modules? Running them in userspace
> > is exceedingly stupid, requiring your movie player to run as root or
> > else use kernel modules with root vulns (svgalib_helper).
>
> Alex wrote the kernelhelper module long long ago. But it never
> really worked. I never checked why it does not. I don't even
> know whether the vidix API is suitable for a kernel module.

Here's my opinion about kernel modules. It has pros and cons as well.

Pros:
- would be faster than userland implementation
- it would allow using vidix as non-priviledged user (i.e. non root)
which would make the vidix driver the best suited implementation of a
vo driver, as faster than XV.
- if integrated in kernel, it would be much more famous, might
interest more people, so more developers and maybe even manufacturers,
which would result in better drivers.

Now for the cons:
- Whatever one can say, vidix is not what i would call an active
project and the kernel API is evolving A LOT ! This seems that it
would require a constant maintainership in order to allow us to
maintain the driver over kernel releases.
- The only way to do that would then to write drivers expecting them
to be included in main kernel line.
- Also the Vidix project's goal is to provide h/w acceleration on *NIX
and doing a kernel driver would result in a Linux only driver.

What I'd like more to see in vidix (whether it is in user or kernel
space) is a way
to handle more than overlay (i.e the GPU decoding capabilities, like XVMC does).

Ben


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